The Story of the Globe Theatre

Berkshire based McCurdy & Co, the company who has been employed to rebuild the Globe as authentically as possible, has had plenty of experience in restoring timber-framed buildings, typical of 17th century London. But what about building the Globe exactly as before? Finding the materials used back then would not be a great problem, because a few examples still stood. The real problem would be in designing the Globe. Pentagram, the Globe's designing company, would need to find documentation of the Globe's location and appearance.

Only a handful of drawings of the Globe have survived. First is an unscaled panoramic drawing by Norden of the four bankside playhouses in 1600 called Civitas Londini. It shows the playhouses as hexagonal in this view, but as circular in the inset drawing of the Globe. The middle of the Globe was open at the top with an internal gable, interpreted as a canopy over the stage.

One of the most valuable and accurate drawings of the Second Globe, built in 1614, is a scaled panoramic drawing called The Long View of London from Bankside, 1647 by Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-77). It is interpreted as showing that the Globe had a diameter of 100 ft. John Orrell, the person responsible for most of the research done for the new Globe, relied on this drawing the most to figure out orientation, dimension and situation of the Globe.

The next sketch is also very important for representing the interior of the Globe. A Dutch student, Johannes de Witt, attended a play at the Swan Theatre in London, in the same area as The Globe. His friend, Arend van Buchell, made this copy of the drawing. It is one of the only surviving drawings of any public theatre of this type. There are three galleries and a thrust stage. This drawing shows that the interior roof does in fact cover the stage. The Globe is said to be similar to this rendering of the Swan.

More drawings were done by a man named Visscher, of whom I know very little, but his drawings of London were not accurate, and so disregarded. But they sure do look pretty.

In 1989 about 8% of the foundation of the original Globe was located and a large portion of the remains of The Rose Theatre, from about the same time period, across the street. The foundations were less helpful than the drawings above, but they made the scholars decide that the Globe had twenty sides instead of the predetermined 24.

More useful than the actual remains of the Globe were the building contracts by Peter Streete, the builder of the Globe, for the Fortune Theatre in 1600 and of the Hope Theatre in 1613. The two buildings had many of the same dimensions. It would then be safe to assume that the Globe also had the same dimensions as they did.

With these forms of documentation, a proper design could be made. Now, what about the hands-on construction of the Globe? How would McCurdy peg the timbers to gether as they did in the 16th century? What kind of joints would they use? The answers were in the remaining buildings from that time, like the mid-16th century roof of the Queen's House at the Tower of London and the two-story octagonal market of about 1600 at Wymondham in Norfolk.

Using these examples, they knew how to create the Globe. The plaster is a mixture of lime, sand, and goat hair. The Globe's Norfolk reed thatched roof is the first allowed in London since the Great Fire of London in 1666, with many precautions taken to avoid a repeat performance. The bricks are copies of the ones found in its original foundation and those of the Rose. All timbers are made of oak. Most of the work was done by hand, to make it look as authentic as possible.

The stage is as ornately finished as it is assumed the original was. The description of the Globe in the 17th century, above, was taken from research of the other theatres in that time. It is the same description of the new Globe, plus two oak pillars painted with golden leaves to look like marble. The Heavens are painted with the sun, the moon, and the zodiac. The two farthest statues above the stage embody Comedy and Tragedy. There are no spotlights nor sound equipment.iv The actors have to have booming voices to fill the open audi-torium that seats 1,500 people, half of what the original theatre fit into its walls. The lighting "mimics" the sunlight of midday, when plays were performed.