The Elizabethan theatre

General features• Theatres were circular or

octagonal in shape• There was no roof• The audience could stand

around the stage or sit in galleries

• Women actresses were not allowed

• The stage was divided into apron, backstage and upper stage

• Theatres had a wooden structure

The Globe in Shakespeare’s time

• One of the first theatres to be built inside the city walls in 1599, it was destroyed by fire in 1613 during a performance of Shakespeare’s play “Henry VIII”

• The Globe was rebuilt in 1613. In 1642, the Puritans closed all theatres. The Globe was pulled down in 1644, to make room for the construction of new buildings.

• The audience could eat and drink and even throw food if they didn’t like the play.

Sam Wanamaker• Sam Wanamaker, a young

American actor, came to London in 1949, with an idea in his mind: he wanted to see the Globe.

• He knew that the Globe lay in Southwark, near the South bank of the river Thames, but the only thing he found there was a bronze plaque on the wall of a brewery which said “Here stood the Globe playhouse of Shakespeare”.

• Sam Wanamaker conceived the project of building an exact replica of the Globe as a memorial to William Shakespeare, the greatest playwright of western civilisation.

• Yet he did not live enough to see his project completely finished. He died in 1993.

The Globe today

“All the world is a stage”• “All the world's a stage, And all

the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages…”

• (from “As you like it”)

Set of “Shakespeare in Love”

• The movie tells about the love affair between a young, beautiful lady, Viola, and the young Will Shakespeare who madly falls in love with her.

• Hence the plot of “Romeo and Juliet” where Viola herself acts despite the legislation of the time

The author in London