Shakespeare’s Reconstructed Globe Theater and Me (a sort of love story)

by Stephanie Cowell

The reconstructed Globe Theater, Bankside, London

For the longest time I wanted to go home, but it was a place I could only travel in my mind. Nothing remained of it in London: only a plaque on a brewery wall. And well over three hundred years had passed since it had been callously destroyed.

It was the famous Globe Theater in Bankside on the Thames, raised up by a group of young actors in 1599 in the last few years of Queen Elizabeth’s life. One of the actors was the vibrant Will Shakespeare and the stage saw the first performance of his play Hamlet. He was long dead when the Puritans pulled the Globe down because they thought theater and pretty much of everything else was immoral. But so many years after the theater had been gutted, it rose again on the banks of the Thames thanks to a visionary American actor Sam Wanamaker who dedicated his life to doing it.


In 1949, Sam Wanamaker crossed the ocean and visited the site of the original Globe, finding only that time-darkened plaque. Sam was one of many actors blacklisted during the McCarthy era and moved to England. He worked as an actor there but never lost his passion to reconstruct the Globe and began seriously to campaign for it in 1969.It took 25 years but he never looked back. He enlisted theater people and people who could give money and in 1993 construction began on the New Globe Theater a short distance from the original site which was now under a building.

Visionary actor Sam Wanamaker who recreated the Globe

They did it with great care. A study was made of what was known of the construction of The Theater, the building from which the 1599 Globe obtained much of its timber and of other theatrical documents from the period. The architect was Theo Crosby and construction was done by McCurdy & Co. The modern theater has a circular yard, a thrust stage and three tiers of circular seating. The only covered parts are the stage and the seating areas. Those who choose to stand may be rained upon! Plays are given between May and early October and you can tour it year round. There is no amplification now as there was none in 1599. The theater is constructed entirely of English oak; it is an authentic 16th century timber-framed building with no structural steel used. The seats are plain hard benches and the roof is thatched.

My first novel (on Kindle)

In spring of 1993, I had my first novel coming out about an Elizabethan boy who becomes an actor (Nicholas Cooke: actor, soldier, physician,priest) and I went to London hoping to see the newly recreated theater. I saw one fourth of it. It had taken twenty years or so for Sam to get enough support to build this much and they were trying to raise enough money for the rest. His assistant, Mrs. Blodgett, gave me a tour. “Sam’s not here,” she said. “He’s always off somewhere trying to get some wealthy person to give English oak!” So I returned to America, sent him an advance copy of my book, and he wrote me back how much he liked it.

He died in December that year, never to see the complete rising of his new Globe. I was never to meet him but he knew before he died that that the theater would live again.

In 1997, four years after Sam’s death, I traveled to London with my husband to see The Merchant of Venice at the completed Globe. All those of you who love English history, and have spent much of your life recreating it in your mind through what you read or write, will understand that when I walked through those doors and saw the rising galleries and the stage I felt faint. I was choked with tears. It was as if it were waiting for me. I almost expected the handsome Shakespeare, then in his thirties and sporting one gold earring, to rush up to me and say, “Where have you been? We’ve been waiting for you!”

Marcello Magniin the clown in MERCHANT

The Italian clown jumped into the groundings (those who stood in the pit) and teased and joked with them.

Thanks to a visionary actor we do not only have a weather-worn plaque on a brewery to commemorate the theater now, but the theater itself has risen again from the ashes. Shakespeare, if he walked in it, would be surprised by the sprinkler system under the thatched roof and the lighted exit signs (concessions to modern building safety code) but I think he would feel at home. Sam Wanamaker’s Globe is a grand and vivid testimony to what those of us who love English history will do to bring it back to life again.

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About the author: Historical novelist Stephanie Cowell is the author of Nicholas Cooke, The Physician of London, The Players: a novel of the young Shakespeare, Marrying Mozart and Claude & Camille: a novel of Monet.  She is the recipient of the American Book Award. Her work has been translated into nine languages. Stephanie is currently finishing two novels, one on the love story of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, and the second about the year Shakespeare wrote Hamlet and all the troubles he had! Her website is http://www.stephaniecowell.com

A Masque, A Mask, and a Mystery

by Sandra Byrd

Although she bore no child, Queen Elizabeth I mid-wived a number of bright achievements during her reign which persist to this day, among them a settled religious faith, a healthy national commerce, and a nursing of the fine arts, specifically, the development of theater. London still has one of the finest, if not the premiere, theater districts in the world. But in truth, the English love of drama began much earlier than the 16th century.

Palace Theater, London

Theater—A  Crash Course by Rob Graham states: "During the 12th century, nonliturgical vernacular plays based on biblical stories were performed at festivals, such as Christmas. These were called the Mystery Cycles (the 'mystery' was redemption...). Local lads from the crafts guilds and companies performed those 'passions' on rough wagons in procession through the streets or on fixed circular stages."

Early Chester Mystery Play

These plays, staged locally, were mostly enjoyed by the lower classes. The upper class enjoyed theater, too, especially when they put it on themselves. To plays based solely upon Scripture, courtiers added topics such as Greek and Roman gods, comedy, tragedy, and life as they (and their countrymen) knew it.

Henry VIII was well known as a person who loved to sponsor and act in masques and disguisings. He preferred, of course, to play the valiant knight, or sometimes, what else? the sun itself!



Later in the sixteenth century, plays, playwrights, and performers came into their own and the love of theater spread. The Age of Shakespeare by Frank Kermode, shares that poets and playwrights depended on aristocratic patrons for support. Many of the most highly titled men in Elizabeth's court sponsored their own troupe, known by the sponsor’s name. For example, The Earl of Leicester's Men were sponsored by the queen's favorite, and later, The Queen's Men were sponsored by Her Majesty herself.

When the queen finally sponsored her own troupe, the cloudy reputation of players and playwrights finally lifted. The Lord Chamberlain's Men were sponsored by Baron Hunsdon, Queen Elizabeth's cousin by Mary Boleyn. William Shakespeare wrote many of his plays for the troupe sponsored by The Lord Chamberlain, including Hamlet, Othello, and Macbeth. Others were writing and performing too. Kermode tells us that, "between 1558 and 1642 there were about three thousand (plays), of which six hundred and fifty have survived."

Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon

Shakespeare was not only a playwright, he sometimes acted in secondary roles and later, when partnerships began to sponsor performances for financial gains, he was an investor. He was among those who received a grant of arms and a great deal of money for his talents. Some of his better known colleagues and competition weren't so lucky. Christopher Marlow was stabbed to death at 29; Ben Johnson was often in jail and ended up with a branded thumb.  Plays were also used for political purposes, even against the queen who allowed them to flourish.

Sir Henry Lee

Historian Simon Schama tells us that the traitorous Earl of Essex sponsored a special production of "Richard II - which deals with the murder of an incompetent king ... to gee up his supporters against Elizabeth..."

Elizabeth herself approved a play written by Sir Henry Lee, The Hermit's Tale, which celebrated a woman who chose her father's dukedom and duty over her own love. She used the tale, masterfully, to signal to her courtiers and her people that she would always put her true husband, England, first.

Then, and now, drama allows us to explore our lives, our problems, our hopes and dreams, and our loves and losses. In fact, we, too, are players, for as William Shakespeare wrote, "All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and entrances and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages."   

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Please visit Sandra Byrd's website, here, to learn more about the Ladies in Waiting series, and her blog, here, for Elizabethan themed giveaways!