The second globe

Erm, a new Globe? Yes. It needed to be rebuilt because A FIRE BURNT THE WHOLE THEATRE DOWN. During a Henry VIII performance on 29 June 1913, small cannons were fired from the attic as part of the special effect within the play. The cannon fired blank charges, using just gunpowder and wadding. A piece of the wadding caught fire and landed on the roof, setting it alight. The theatre burned down in about an hour.

Although the fire was big news back then, no one was harmed in the fire. Not only did the audience and actors got out safely, but the company had time to save their scripts and costumes. A man's breech was caught on fire, but a bystander put them out with his bottle of beer. By the next day, 2 different ballads had been written about this. (I said it was big news!)

A new Globe was quickly built on the brick foundations of the first. This time the company built a tiled roof (well clearly the company had learnt their lesson). It was the same size and shape, but was much more extravagantly decorated; the company could now afford it. Shakespeare didn't write for the second Globe, but he might have acted there.

In 1642, the Globe was closed along all other theatres in England under Puritan administration. It was demolished to make room for tenements in 1644.

Getting the deTails right

Shakespeare’s Globe was built as close to the site of the old Globe as possible – just one street nearer the river. Working with architect Theo Crosby, The Shakespeare’s Globe Trust did huge amounts of research to make the theatre as accurate a reproduction as possible. The builders, McCurdy and Co, began at the very beginning.

To know the appearance of the original Globe, the builders referred to panoramas by cartographers (big word for "map makers"), written accounts by visitors from overseas, and even from the description in the script of Shakespeare's plays!

"And shall this cockpit hold the vasty field of France? Or may we cram within this wooden 'O'" ~Act 1, Prologue, Henry V

Most drawings from the time are not very accurate. The Globe were shown as six-sided buildings in some paranormas and eight-sided in some others. After examining the result of an archaeological dig of the original Globe site, academics and architects finally decided on the 20-sided polygon outlook for the modern reconstruction. The most accurate of the paranomas (Hollar's Long View of London) was the key evidence of making the modern Globe 100 feet in diameter.

The second Globe, preliminary sketch (c. 1638) for Hollar's 1647 Long View of London

The builders hoped to recreate the Globe as similar to the original as possible, and thus they followed the building techniques and details at that time. ‘Green’ oak was cut and fashioned according to 16th-century practice and assembled in two-dimensional bays on the Bankside site; oak laths and staves support lime plaster mixed according to a contemporary recipe and the walls are covered in a white lime wash. The roof is made of water reed thatch, based on samples found during the excavation.

They couldn’t do everything in the same way. Safety regulations meant they had to use modern scaffolding and cranes. But they made every joint in the same way and fixed the timbers together using wooden pegs. Building regulations mean that they had to line the thatch with fire-retardant material.

Academics did not know if there was glass in the window of the original Globe. However, they know from the contract to build the Fortune Playhouse that its tiring house windows were glazed, so it was certainly a possibility.

Tudor timber framed buildings had a low foundation wall of bricks. The bricks for the reconstructed Globe were hand-made based on Tudor bricks in the museum of London.

The reconstructed Globe's roof is made with water reed thatch, based on samples found during the evacuation of the original site of the Rose Theatre. In Shakespeare's time, the reed would have been available locally from the surrounding countryside. However suitable reed for the reconstructed Globe came from Norfolk.

The builders of the original Globe in Shakespeare's time and the modern Globe used mortise and tenon joints (入榫) to build the wooden frames of the theatres. The mortise is the timber with a hole, and the tennon the timber with a tongue of wood that fits into the hole. A hole is drilled through both timbers and the joints are locked tight by driving wooden pegs through this hole.

A 1595 sketch of a performance in progress at the nearby Swan Theatre. Academics and architects were able to gain a good understanding of what an outdoor Elizabethan playhouse was like by referring to these sketches and archaeological remains of related sites.

The reconstruction is as faithful to the original as modern scholarship and traditional craftsmanship can make it, but for the time being this Globe is – and is likely to remain – neither more nor less than the ‘best guess’ at Shakespeare’s theatre.

Attic

The attic of the Globe is above the stage, and houses many props and costumes used through performances. Special effects such as storms are created in the attic using thunder machines, and actors can be lowered from the attic down onto the stage through the Heavens trap. In the original Globe, this is the place where the cannons were fired that led to it burning down.

Looking down from the attic through the Heavens trap, with the Musician's Gallery and the stage visible below.

The original Globe and the modern one, has a large bell in the attic. In Elizabethan times the bell would have been rung to call people into the theatre before a performance. Sometimes trumpeters may also play. The large bell that hangs in the reconstructed Globe was commissioned when it was built, with a line from Othello written on it. However there's a mistake on it. The quote on the bell reads "Silence that dreadful bell, it frights the land", but the line is actually "Silence that dreadful bell, it frights the Isle".

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