The Development of English Drama Shakespeare’s Stage

Moveable Screen Capable of Supporting Illusion of Hanging

Moveable Beds

Various Properties

Stage Tricks and Illusions

Generic Playhouse

CORD Generic Playhouse Tour

Vischer’s View of London, 1616

The Inn Yards Plays were performed in private houses, public halls and especially in inns, which provided not only food and accommodation for the players, but also a yard in which to perform, surrounded by galleries for the spectators. Some inn-yards were converted into permanent theatres, but in 1574 the City Corporation began to regulate inn-yards, an inconvenience which may have led James Burbage in 1576 to build the first playhouse, the Theatre, outside the city limits to the north. Other theatres were built outside the city, but the inns continued to be used during the winter when they were more convenient in bad weather.

The Inn Yards

Bankside: The Globe

The Globe The Globe, the home of Shakespeare’s acting company, was an open-air, virtually circular, amphitheatre on the Bankside, Southwark. It was begun in December 1598 by the brothers Richard and Cuthbert Burbage, who pulled down their old house, the Theatre in Shoreditch, and used the materials for the new building. It was a round wooden structure on a foundation of brick and cement and had a thatched roof.

The Globe Henry V was probably produced here in 1599. In the prologue, the Chorus says, “May we cram / Within this wooden O the very casques / That did affright the air at Agincourt?” In 1607 the Stationers’ Register states that “a book called Mr. William Shakespeare his history of King Lear was played before the King’s Majesty at Whitehall by his Majesty’s servants playing usually at the globe on the Banksyde.”

The Globe Over the door was the sign of Hercules bearing the world on his shoulders. In Hamlet 2.2.361 Rosencrantz declares that the boy actors carry away “Hercules, and his load too.” The Globe Theatre was where Richard Burbage acted and Shakespeare’s greatest plays were produced, the poet being one of the shareholders in the house.

The Globe On June 29th, 1613 ‘a discharge, of pieces’ in the performance of the play All Is True (Henry VIII) set fire to the thatched roof, and the whole theatre was destroyed. It was rebuilt with a tiled roof.

The New Globe Theatre

Indoor Private Theaters