New Globe Theater To London example essay topic

The First Globe Theater The Globe Theater was built around 1598 in London's Bankside district. It was one of four major theaters in the area - the others were the Swan, the Rose, and the Hope. It was an open air octagonal amphitheater that could seat up to 3,000 spectators. The theater was three stories high, with a diameter of approximately 100 feet. The rectangular stage platform on which the plays were performed was nearly 43 feet wide and 28 feet deep. The staging area housed trap doors in its flooring's and primitive rigging overhead for various stage effects.

The original Globe theater was constructed by the Lord Chamberlain's men, the acting group to which Shakespeare belonged. Before the Globe was constructed, they performed at the Blackfriar Theater in the heart of London. But having a theater in the heart of London was a bad idea because the plague caused frequent closings. After a year of closure due to the plague, the company stripped the Blackfriar to its foundation and moved the materials across the river to the Bankside. There, they proceeded to build the Globe. Their decision to do this stirred up some controversy because the Blackfriar was leased to the Lord Chamberlain's Men.

The owner, who had been away from London at the time that this was happening, filed a lawsuit against the company. But the company won the case and the theater. The Globe was destroyed by fire in 1613 when, during a production of Henry V, a cannon was fired above the stage to signal some important business of the play. The wadding that stuffed the cannon, which was some form of heavy cloth, was ignited by the explosion and shot up out of the auditorium and landed on the dry thatch roof.

The straw caught fire and in only minutes the entire building was consumed in flame. But amazingly, not one person was killed. Here is the first verse from a sonnet about the fire that destroyed the Globe Theater- "A tearful fire began above, A wonder strange and true, And to the stage house did remove, As round as tailor's chew; And burnt down both beam and snag And did not spare the silken flag, O sorrow, pitiful sorrow, And yet all this true". The second Globe theater, which was rebuilt to be the most expensive and complicated in England ever built, was completed before Shakespeare's death in 1616. But then in 1642, a new Puritan Government decided plays were immoral and banned them all over England.

In 1644, the Globe Theater vanished, "pulled down to the ground to make tenements in the room of it". The New Globe Theater In 1970, the American actor Sam Wanamaker established the Shakespeare Globe Playhouse Trust. Seventeen years after the Trust was started, a ceremony was held on a site near the where the original Globe Theater stood to welcome the new Globe Theater to London. In 1989, the foundations of the original building were discovered. The discovery of the small percentage of the foundation helped scholars make certain design adjustments. Using other Elizabethan buildings to help with the structure, style, interior, and roofing, scholars and architects finished the design of the new Globe Theater.

Using the same methods and materials as they would have in Shakespeare's time, builders completed work on the new Globe in the mid 1990's. A regular season was inaugurated at the new Globe Theater in 1997.