View a panorama of the interior of the Globe: 
 Shakespeare's Globe Theatre

The original Globe opened in 1599. It burned down in 1613 and was immediately rebuilt. It was closed by the Puritans in 1642.

Now, 200 yards from its original site, after almost 400 years, the Globe Theatre has been opened to the public again: the rebuilt playhouse was officially inaugurated by Her Majesty the Queen on Thursday 12 June 1997, its Opening Season ran from 29 May to 21 September 1997, and every summer it now offers performances of plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries on the type of stage they were written for, many of them in authentic clothing.

After the Globe was closed by the Puritans in 1642, its form and layout became an enigma. Only a few relevant documents exist and none of these provide a complete and accurate picture of its design. There have been countless attempts at reconstructing the Globe, whether on paper or in real size.

In 1970, Sam Wanamaker established the Shakespeare Globe Playhouse Trust. A site of 0.4 hectare was identified that very year on Bankside, but construction work only began in 1987.

In 1982, Professor John Orrell provided new evidence on the shape and dimensions of the Globe. His analysis of Wenceslas Hollar's `Long View of London' (1647) - a panorama of London taken from the tower of Southwark Cathedral - proved that the angles and relative heights of the buildings depicted in the drawing were accurate.

The next step in collecting evidence came in 1989. The Globe's original foundations were discovered on Bankside, about two hundred yards from the reconstruction site, together with those of the Rose theatre. Significant archaeological evidence was presented to scholars and the Globe's project architects, Pentagram Design - despite the fact that 95% of the site of the original Globe is covered by a listed building (Anchor Terrace, shown in the illustration, now converted into the "Globe Apartments").

Faithful design and the use of traditional materials and techniques have been key to the reconstruction of the Globe. The circular theatre is made up of twenty wooden bays, each three storeys high. These are thatched with Norfolk reed and the walls are made with lime plaster.

The stage is roofed and thatched. The back wall (Frons Scenae) is fixed, highly decorated and elaborately carved in an early classical style with three openings. Huge oak pillars, painted tolook like marble – one on each side of the stage – support the Heavens, the coffered and painted canopy over the stage.

On 12 December 1996, Shakespeare's Globe was voted the best attraction in Europe : it was awarded the European Tourism Initiative Golden Star Award by the European Federation of Associations of Tourism Journalists.

Since it opened its doors in August 1994, hundreds of thousands of visitors from all over the world have come to visit the Exhibition and see the Globe, both under construction and since it was finished. The Exhibition tells the story of the Elizabethan theatre and the present reconstruction, and includes a tour of the Globe Theatre.

The permanent Exhibition (now open) is designed to give people of all levels an insight into the works of Shakespeare and the society in which he lived and worked. The target opening date was 21 September 1999, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the first record of a performance at the original Globe, by a Swiss visitor, Thomas Platter, who saw Julius Caesar, one of the plays also presented in the 1999 season.

Details of the current Globe Theatre programme can be found at the Globe Website – which
also gives details of the seating plan and how to get there.

Not digging up the Globe

Andrew Gurr (1997)

English Heritage is the government body responsible for sites in England that are scheduled and protected because they are thought to be of Heritage1 interest. It has a statutory responsibility to endeavour to preserve all such sites. Unfortunately in recent years it has converted that responsibility into a policy of keeping archaeologists away from sites of archaeological interest.  Now it has found another victim. The foundations of the original Globe, public interest in which is attested by the three hundred thousand visitors that passed through the new Globe exhibition nearby in the last two years, are not to undergo any further excavation.

The 5% or so of the Globe that a Museum of London team of archaeologists uncovered in 1989 from the open space behind Anchor Terrace in Southwark was a segment on the north-east flank of the auditorium. Analysis of this fragment made it clear that the most significant and valuable foundations, the stage area, must be underneath Anchor Terrace itself. A tentative dig was done in the Terrace's cellarage in 1992, and established that the remains are there.

Now, it seems, the opportunity to learn anything from them is to be buried permanently.

At a meeting on 7 January, Southwark Borough Council's Planning Committee affirmed English Heritage's policy by granting permission to the owners of Anchor Terrace, which is a scheduled late Georgian block built in 1839 facing Southwark Bridge Road, to convert the building into flats, and to return the Globe's remains "to the burial regime which has protected them in the past".

Without consultation, least of all with the scholars and theatre historians who could have told them how important the site is, nor taking any account of the high level of public interest, English Heritage has concluded that "further archaeological investigation with the basement of Anchor Terrace is not justified at present".

This is rather like burying the Elgin Marbles in the hope that everyone will forget they exist.

When converted to its new use, Anchor Terrace will be able to use its Grade 2 Preservation Order to keep itself immune from any digging throughout the foreseeable future. The rest of the Globe behind Anchor Terrace is also to be buried indefinitely under a new block of flats.

The sites of the Globe and its near neighbor the Rose are unique.

The fragments of the two of them that the Museum of London archaeologists uncovered in 1989 told us much more about Shakespeare's theatres than had been achieved through centuries of painstaking analysis of the documentary evidence. As theatres their design was unique. The Globe and all the other similar early theatres were demolished during the Cromwell era in the 1640s, and few records of what they were like survive. Consequently we know less about the venue for which Shakespeare wrote his greatest plays than about almost any other kind of theatre in the world. It was the workplace where he staged his greatest plays. He himself contributed one-eighth of its building cost in 1599. Abandoning the study of these remains means that we lose permanently the opportunity to learn anything new about our greatest playwright's own theatre.

English Heritage's policy was really designed for Roman and similar remains, not for these rarities. The Globe and Rose sites are unlike other archaeological remains precisely because they are unique. More than two hundred Roman theatres have survived. Leaving some of them buried will not affect what has been learned already from the early excavations. But only  eight or nine theatres like the Globe were ever built in London during the first brief flourish of Shakespearean theatre, and most of them have already been lost to later redevelopment. Both the Rose and the Globe sites are protected by scheduling as Heritage sites, but the knowledge they contain is what gives them life. Protection in the form of permanent burial is a function appropriate to the dead. The Globe site does not deserve permanent interment.

None of the principles that were invoked when this decision was made will bear much scrutiny. The argument, for instance, that "the burial regime... has protected them in the past" is itself scarcely tenable, on the evidence of a report by English Heritage's own Archaeology unit. When the Rose's remains were concreted over in 1989 to allow Rose Court to be built over its head it was acknowledged that this form of preservation for a half-dug site was new and experimental. Sensors were installed to identify any changes in the condition of the remains. A report based on the records from these sensors handed to English Heritage in 1993 said that indications of significant changes in the moisture content together with bacterial activity had been found. Since then nothing has been done to check on the progress of these changes. The remains stay buried and decaying. A similar shell of concrete protects the Globe's relics dug up in 1989 behind Anchor Terrace. We simply do not know whether this "protection" will prevent the remains from decaying in the future.

The technology needed to dig under Anchor Terrace is not a novelty. There is no need to demolish the whole of this not unhandsome building, but only to dig a few more holes in its sturdy basement floor. This has already been done once by the archaeologists. An innovative ground radar survey in 1991, looking for density differences at the level of the Globe's foundations under the floor of the Terrace, led in 1992 to four test pits being dug to check on the hints that the radar scan gave. These digs proved that the whole of Anchor Terrace's foundations consist of a raft of concrete three feet thick, and that some remains of the Globe do lie under that raft. In the hope of prompting further digs, the Globe Centre in 1995 commissioned a more sophisticated ground radar scan in the basement. This produced significant indications that there are ample remains of the Globe there under the raft. There is ample space in the vicinity of the stage area for a further analytical dig which would do no harm to those three feet of concrete which hold the Georgian building in place.

The Globe is a site of truly international interest, and anything that can add to our knowledge of it as Shakespeare's workplace is invaluable. Leaving the remains undisturbed is the very form of protection which left us ignorant of even their existence for three hundred years. A policy on archaeological sites which insists on leaving them undiscovered is a paradox, brilliantly economical in cost, but appallingly smug about the ignorance those savings leave us in over the sites for which English Heritage has statutory responsibility. It acclaims the heritage concept and historical knowledge in principle, but denies it in practice.

Further information about this issue can be found on the Web by accessing the Globe page at http://www.reading.ac.uk/Globe. The only form of pressure that can be applied to change this policy and the decision over the Globe site is by loudly voicing public interest. The Globe is a scheduled site, so the decision can be referred to the Heritage Minister in the Department of the Environment and the Secretary of State for the Environment. If you have even a mild opinion about the loss which implementing this decision will entail, please write to the Heritage Minister and to the government minister ultimately responsible as Secretary of State for the Environment. Their addresses are c/o the House of Commons, Westminster, LONDON SW1.