The Elizabethan theatre
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