After becoming weary of languishing negotiations to renew the lease on the theatre his troupe was using on the north side of the Thames, Shakespeare made the fateful decision to disassemble his theatre in the night (so legend has it) and rebuild it on the other side of the river.
The Southwark district at the end of the sixteenth century was a dubious area teeming with brothels and bear-baiting houses, but acting was then itself a less-than-respectable profession so, The Globe was an instant success. It was such a hit, due to Shakespeare’s growing reputation as a playwright, that it forced London’s original play house, The Rose, to move to another part of London to survive.
The Globe we enjoy today is not the original, though it was built in 1989 to what is believed to be the approximate dimensions and materials of it’s progenitor that was located down the street and around the corner. It’s only through great fortune that we know what the Globe looked like. A visitor to London in the early 1600’s with an ability to sketch made a panorama of London from the southeast side, in which the Globe, with its polytagonal shape, wood sides, thatched roof and brick staircase, features prominently in the foreground.
The original space of the Globe is now marked, but easy to miss, as I almost did last night while I wandered the neighborhood around the new Globe waiting for the start of the Bard’s Richard II. A bronze plaque barely draws the eye to a vacant car park. A decade ago, researchers dug and found the foundation for the original Globe’s brick staircase. They took measurements and photos and then flooded the structure to preserve it, and replaced the parking lot. In the photo below, the dark cobblestones mark the spot of the Globe’s foundation.
Why didn’t the researches excavate the rest of the site? Well, it happens that a modern, swanky apartment complex sits lucratively on top of it. Imagine living in a home directly above the stage where William Shakespeare performed in his own plays: Hamlet, Macbeth, Midsummer Night’s Dream! I’d be constantly on the lookout for the ghost of Yorick.
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