SHAKESPEARE SURVEY - Cambridge University Pressassets.cambridge.org/97805216/60747/sample/9780521660747wsc00.pdf · Shakespeare Survey was ﬁrst published in 1948. ... 2 Hamlet at

SHAKESPEARE SURVEY

AN ANNUAL SURVEY OF

SHAKESPEARE STUDIES AND PRODUCTION

52

Shakespeare and the Globe

EDITED BY

STANLEY WELLS

published by the press syndicate of the university of cambridgeThe Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge cb2 1rp, United Kingdom

cambridge university pressThe Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 2ru, United Kingdom http://www.cup.cam.ac.uk

40 West 20th Street, New York, ny 10011±4211, USA http://www.cup.org10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia

# Cambridge University Press 1999

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisionsof relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part maytake place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 1999

Printed in Great Britain at the University Press, Cambridge

Typeset in Bembo 10/12pt [CE]

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

isbn 0 521 660742 hardback

Shakespeare Survey was ®rst published in 1948. Its ®rsteighteen volumes were edited by Allardyce Nicoll.

Kenneth Muir edited volumes 19 to 33.

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations page ix

Reconstructions of the Globe: A Retrospective by Gabriel Egan 1

Ùseful in the Year 1999': William Poel and Shakespeare's `Build of Stage'by Marion O 'Connor�� 17

Reconstructing the Globe: Constructing Ourselves by W. B. Worthen �� 33

From Liturgy to the Globe: the Changing Concept of Space by Jerzy Limon 46

The Arithmetic of Memory: Shakespeare's Theatre and the National Pastby Anthony B. Dawson �� 54

Maximal and Minimal Texts: Shakespeare v. the Globe by Andrew Gurr �� 68

William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet: Everything's Nice in America?by Barbara Hodgdon �� 88

Which is the Jew that Shakespeare Knew? Shylock on the Elizabethan Stageby Charles Edelman 99

A Little Touch of Harry in the Light: Henry V at the New Globe by Yu Jin Ko 107

Gulls, Cony-Catchers and Cozeners: Twelfth Night and the Elizabethan Underworldby Angela Hurworth 120

The Globe, the Court and Measure for Measure by John H. Astington �� 133

Macbeth and the Antic Round by Stephen Orgel 143

Macbeth / Umbatha: Global Shakespeare in a Post-Colonial Marketby Kate McLuskie � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 154

When All is True: Law, History and Problems of Knowledge in Henry VIIIby Barbara Kreps 166

Àll which it inherit': Shakespeare, Globes and Global Media by Peter Donaldson 183

`Delicious traf®ck': Alterity and Exchange on Early Modern Stagesby Ania Loomba 201

The 1998 Globe Season by Richard Proudfoot 215

Shakespeare Performances in England, 1998 by Robert Smallwood 229

vii

Professional Shakespeare Productions in the British Isles, January±December 1997by Niky Rathbone 254

The Year's Contributions to Shakespeare Studies1 Critical Studies reviewed by Janette Dillon 2682 Shakespeare's Life, Times, and Stage reviewed by Alison Findlay 2833 Editions and Textual Studies reviewed by Eric Rasmussen 302

Books Received 327Index 328

viii

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

1 Measure for Measure at the Royalty Theatre, 9±11 and 18 November 1893. Act 2, scene 2 page 20[By permission of the Victoria and Albert Picture Library, London]

2 Hamlet at Carpenters' Hall, 21 February 1900. Act 1, scene 2 21[By permission of the Victoria and Albert Picture Library, London]

3 The Alchemist at Apothecaries' Hall, 24±5 February 1899. Act 5, scene 4 22[By permission of the Victoria and Albert Picture Library, London]

4 The Two Gentlemen of Verona at His Majesty's Theatre, 20 April 1910: newspaperphotograph of Poel supervising stage construction 23[The Daily Mirror, 21 April 1910]

5 The Coxcomb, the Inner Temple Hall, 10±11 February 1898. Original pencil drawingby Ralph Cleaver, published in The Illustrated London News, 19 February 1898 25[By permission of the Victoria and Albert Picture Library, London]

6 The Comedy of Errors, Gray's Inn Hall, 7 December 1895. Act 5, scene 1 27[By permission of the Victoria and Albert Picture Library, London]

7 Ye Olde Globe reconstruction at `Shakespeare's England' Exhibition, Earl's Court,London, May±October 1912. Photograph of the stage 31[By permission of Birmingham Central Library, Languages and Literature Department(Shakespeare Library), Birmingham Public Library]

8 Martin Behaim's Erdglob, 1492 184[By permission of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum]

9 The Whole Earth from Space 191[By permission of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration]

10 Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (toms) Image 195[By permission of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration]

11 The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare's Globe. Kathryn Pogson as Portia, Nicholas Monu 218as the Duke of Venice[Photo: John Tramper]

12 The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare's Globe. Norbert Kentrup as Shylock 219[Photo: John Tramper]

13 As You Like It, Shakespeare's Globe. Tonia Chauvet as Celia, Anastasia Hille as Rosalind,Paul Hilton as Orlando, Jonathan Cecil as Le Beau 223[Photo: Donald Cooper]

ix

14 As You Like It, directed by Michael Bogdanov for the English Shakespeare Company.Ivy Omere as Rosalind, David Shelley as Orlando. Act 4, scene 1 232[Photo: Robert Workman]

15 Much Ado About Nothing, directed by Declan Donnellan for Cheek by Jowl. Ann Firbankas Ursula-Antonio, Sarita Choudhury as Hero, Saskia Reeves as Beatrice, ZoeÈ Aldrich asMargaret. Act 4, scene 1 234[Photo: John Haynes]

16 Twelfth Night, directed by Adrian Noble for the Royal Shakespeare Company. ScottHandy as Orsino, Helen Schlesinger as Viola. Act 2, scene 4 236[Photo: Shakespeare Centre Library]

17 The Tempest, directed by Adrian Noble for the Royal Shakespeare Company.David Calder as Prospero, Scott Handy as Ariel. Act 5, scene 1 237[Photo: Shakespeare Centre Library]

18 The Merchant of Venice, directed by Gregory Doran for the Royal Shakespeare Company.Philip Voss as Shylock. Act 4, scene 1 239[Photo: Shakespeare Centre Library]

19 Measure for Measure, directed by Michael Boyd for the Royal Shakespeare Company.Jimmy Chisholm as Pompey, and prisoners. Act 4, scene 3 242[Photo: Shakespeare Centre Library]

20 Richard III, directed by Elijah Moshinsky for the Royal Shakespeare Company.Robert Lindsay as Richard III. Act 1, scene 1 245[Photo: Shakespeare Centre Library]

21 Romeo and Juliet, directed by Michael Attenborough for the Royal Shakespeare Company.Ray Fearon as Romeo, ZoeÈ Waites as Juliet. Act 2, scene 5 247[Photo: Shakespeare Centre Library]

22 Antony and Cleopatra, directed by Sean Mathias for the Royal National Theatre.Helen Mirren as Cleopatra, Alan Rickman as Antony. Act 1, scene 1 252[Photo: Mark Douet ]

x

L IST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

RECONSTRUCTIONS OF THE GLOBE: A

RETROSPECTIVE

GABRIEL EGAN

I ought not to have suggested in The Stage of the Globe, 356, that the ®rst Globe might have been rectangular.1

The Globe playhouse occupies special places inthe collective conscious and unconscious ofShakespeare studies and ± where id was, thereshall ego be ± the Wanamaker reconstruction hasbrought important theoretical and practicalcon¯icts into the open. The validity of histor-ical methods and pursuit of authenticity havealways been contentious issues, but the act ofmaking a physical reconstruction focuses theminds of supporters and objectors in a way thatno hypothetical model can. The Wanamakerproject can be credited with the achievement ofaccelerating research into the design and opera-tion of the Globe so that in the last thirty yearsthe body of published work on the subject hasmore than doubled. Whether or not the recon-structed building itself aids scholarship, theresearch underlying its claim to authenticityrepresents a considerable return on the capitaloutlay.

The ®rst landmark in the scholarly recon-struction of the Globe is E. K. Chambers'sThe Elizabethan Stage which contained hishypothesized plans for the building.2 All earlierattempts at reconstruction lacked Chambers'scompendious knowledge of early moderndrama and cultural history. Chambers arguedthat the movement of playing companiesbetween different playhouses, especially in theperiod prior to the construction of the Globe,suggests standardization of design3 and he foundfew differences between late sixteenth-centuryplays and early seventeenth-century plays thatmight be taken to indicate that the Globe

or Fortune differed substantially from theirpredecessors.4

Chambers offered no precise defence of hisdrawing because it was intended to be schematicrather than architectural, and showed neither thedimensions nor the arrangement of structuralmembers. General features, not unrecoverableparticularities, were his concern. It is worthnoting that Chambers's octagonal playhousewhich was supposed to be Globe-like andtypical seems dependent upon J. C. Visscher'sengraving of 1616 called Londinium Florentis-s[i]ma Britanniae Urbs.5 When Chambers's bookwas published in 1923 the Visscher engravingwas still considered authoritative and of theseveral pictures which suggest that the Globehad as few as six or eight sides, it enjoyed thehighest status. The belief that the Globe was sixsided derived from Hester Thrale who, in 1819,recorded having seen its uncovered foundationssome ®fty years before.6 Interest in ®ndingcorroboration for Thrale's claim has persistedalthough most scholars disregard her evidenceentirely.7

1 E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, 4 vols. (Oxford,

1923), vol. 2, p. 434n2.2 Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, vol. 3, p. 85.3 Ibid., p. 50.4 Ibid., p. 103±1045 R. A. Foakes, Illustrations of the English Stage 1580±1642

(London, 1985), pp. 18±19.6 Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, vol. 2, p. 428.7 Martin Clout, `Hester Thrale and the Globe Theatre',

The New Rambler, 9 (1993±4), 34±50.

1

In 1942 John Cranford Adams published hisThe Globe Playhouse: Its Design and Equipmentand in 1950 Adams and Irwin Smith completeda beautiful scale model of the First Globe whichwas immediately incorporated into a publicdisplay at the Folger Library in Washington.Following the Visscher engraving, Adams madehis Globe octagonal and from the Fortune andHope construction contracts Adams deducedthat the Globe was `84 feet across betweenoutside walls, 34 feet high to the eaves, and 58feet across the interior yard'.8 The Fortunecontract speci®ed galleries 12 feet 6 inchesdeep9 and Adams assumed that this included 6inches for the outer wall, so the real centre-to-centre spacing of the posts was 12 feet. TheFortune would have been constructed fromregularly shaped units, Adams reasoned, and thesimplest arrangement would have been torepeat the 12 feet square bays that formed thecorners of the auditorium. Six and a half suchbays form a structure 78 feet between centres or80 feet once the thickness of posts and exteriorcovering is added.10 The width of the enclosedyard would be that of four and a half bays, 54feet between centres, or 55 feet to the furthestedges of the posts. Finding that his arrange-ments led so easily to the 55 feet and 80 feetspeci®cations of the Fortune contract con-vinced Adams that he had hit upon the ground-plan.

What if the Globe also used 12 feet squarebay units? Two such bays could form each ofthe eight sides of the playhouse. Adams calcu-lated ± wrongly, as it happened ± that thiswould give the Globe an external diameter of84 feet including the six inches of outer cov-ering at either end;11 the true ®gure was 83feet. Adams constructed his Globe's stage froma line connecting `the middle post of one sectoracross to the middle post of the next sector butone'12 which gave a width of 43 feet. TheFortune's stage was 43 feet wide and Adamsthought this correspondence could not becoincidence ± he must have hit upon thegroundplan of the Globe.13

Unfortunately, Adams's calculation of thewidth of his stage was also wrong. The correct®gure is the width of one side of the playhouseyard, 24 feet, plus the width of the bases of tworight-angled isosceles triangles whose hypot-enuses are half the width of one side of theplayhouse yard, which comes to very nearly41 feet. A discrepancy of almost 2 feet ± over41

2 per cent ± is gross enough to invalidate hispostulated correspondence with the Fortunecontract and, since this correspondence vali-dated all the assumptions which led to it, theentire reconstruction must be discounted aspure speculation.

Adams spotted the fatal error in his calcula-tions and in 1943 he published a revised text ofthe book with the offending calculationsemended. Although a note was added acknowl-edging the error,14 libraries frequently cataloguethe 1942 and 1943 printings as a single ®rstedition. Adams excised his insistence that thecorrespondence between the Fortune stage andhis Globe's stage validated the method, but putnothing in its place to substantiate his claim tohave discovered the precise dimensions of theGlobe. However, it was not the mathematics inAdams's book that drew ®re from scholars oforiginal staging, but rather the interior featuresand facilities of his Globe.

Adams's Globe had a total of six main stagetraps and a large recessed alcove discoveryspace. Suspended above this playing space wasa second stage which was fronted with abalustraded balcony (`tarras') and which hadanother, smaller, recessed alcove discoveryspace at its rear. At either side of this balcony,and at 45 degrees to it, was a glazed bay

8 John Cranford Adams, The Globe Playhouse: Its Design

and Equipment (Cambridge, Mass., 1942), p. 3.9 Ibid., pp. 20±1.

10 Ibid., p. 21.11 Ibid., p. 21.12 Ibid., pp. 22, 90.13 Ibid., p. 22.14 Ibid., 2nd printing with corrections (Cambridge, Mass.,

1943), p. 90.

GABRIEL EGAN

2

window which overhung a correspondinglyangled stage door on the platform stage.Extending from the top of the tiring house, andconnected to it at the eaves, was a `heavens'covering the entire stage. At the height of thethird auditorium gallery the tiring house had amusic room. The upper stage (at the sameheight as the second auditorium gallery) had atrap door set in its ¯oor which providedcommunication with the main stage.

Adams's Globe was rich in features to assisttheatrical spectacle and to provide a physicalreferent for almost every scenic structure men-tioned in Renaissance drama. If a scene re-quired a `corner' to hide around, or a `balcony'from which to be wooed or to be thrown,Adams's Globe could offer a realistic analogue.Supporting his design with dramatic quotations,Adams cared not which playhouse a particularplay was written for: the Globe was the ®nestplayhouse and so it must have incorporated atleast the major features of all the others.

The history of the scholarship of Globereconstruction in the ®fty years since itspublication can broadly be characterized as oneof reaction to, and refutation of, Adams's book.Adams shared Chambers's conviction that theplayhouses were largely alike and he used awide range of play texts as evidence for thestaging needs which any playhouse might haveto satisfy. But as a necessary consequence of thismethod one is able to reconstruct only anidealized `typical' playhouse, not any particularplayhouse. Chambers implicitly accepted thisprinciple. Adams implicitly rejected it andproduced highly detailed plans of the Globewhich he misrepresented as reliable scholarlydeduction.

Adams's aesthetic judgements werechallenged by those who felt that he showedlittle appreciation of theatrical conventionwhich, contrary to his assumption, would allowa scene set indoors to be played on the front ofa thrust stage. But with the mathematical errorglossed over, the ®rst part of Adams's Globe tocollapse was the octagonal outer wall. In the

®rst volume of Shakespeare Survey, I. A. Shapiroproved that Visscher's engraving was derivedfrom the panorama in John Norden's CivitasLondini and was therefore entirely withoutauthority.15 After considering several otherpictures and rejecting their authority, Shapiroconcluded that the Hollar engraving of 164716

was the most reliable view of the Banksideplayhouses. In Hollar's picture the Globe andthe Hope appear to be round. A differentapproach was needed to demolish Adams'sinterior arrangements.

Before publishing his major work onElizabethan playhouse design, The GlobeRestored, C. Walter Hodges published twoarticles concerning the De Witt drawing of theSwan. In the ®rst Hodges insisted that De Wittshowed that the Swan was a polygon withsuf®cient number of sides that it was virtuallyround (`This to my mind rules out the notionof an octagonal building in favour of, say, asixteen-sided polygon') and that the ìnnerstage' `was neither a permanent nor an indis-pensable part of Elizabethan public stagepractice'.17 The following year Hodges pub-lished an article with Richard Southern whichargued that De Witt's Swan was essentially aRenaissance rather than a Tudor design. Inparticular the stage posts being, as De Wittstated, painted to resemble marble, their ornatebases and capitals, and their entasis, all point toclassical and continental in¯uence upon theindigenous building tradition.18 Students ofElizabethan playhouse design can be assignedplaces along a spectrum of `faith in De Witt'and the reaction to Adams's Globe was acollective move towards the `greater faith' end

15 I. A. Shapiro, `The Bankside Theatres: Early Engrav-

ings', Shakespeare Survey 1 (1948), 25±37.16 Foakes, Illustrations of the English Stage 1580±1642,

pp. 29±31, 36±38.17 C. Walter Hodges, `De Witt again', Theatre Notebook, 5

(1951), 32±4, p. 34.18 Richard Southern and C. Walter Hodges, `Colour in

the Elizabethan Theatre', Theatre Notebook, 6 (1952),

57±60.

3

RECONSTRUCTIONS OF THE GLOBE: A RETROSPECTIVE

of this spectrum. The work of Hodges andSouthern helped by showing that the sketchdoes not necessarily contradict anti-theatricaldenunciations of playhouse opulence.

Despite its title, Hodges's The Globe Restoredcontained no representation of the ®rst Globe.Instead Hodges offered a typical playhouse of1595 and the second Globe of 161419 for whichHodges had the authority of the Hollarengraving, validated by Shapiro. Hodges'sdecision not to reconstruct the ®rst Globeappears to have been a reaction to Adams'sover-con®dence which went `far beyond thewarrant of evidence'.20 Hodges attempted toreconcile the De Witt drawing with the needsof the plays and with George Kernodle's workon baroque decoration.21 Hodges's `typicalplayhouse' of 1595 added no major features notpresent in De Witt. To provide a larger upperstage as well as a discovery space Hodgesconjectured the use of a stage booth.22 Hodgesrejected the staging principles of Adams's bookand with them the need for a permanent upperstage.

In the same vein as Hodges, A. M. Nagleroffered a thorough critique of Adams's Globe asan inappropriate venue for the drama. Naglerconsidered the only reliable evidence to be `thestage directions in the quartos and the FirstFolio of Shakespeare's plays' and the documentsof Platter and Henslowe23 and he poured scornon Adams's theory that many scenes wereplayed on an inner stage and on a large upperstage. Nagler argued for acceptance of theevidence of the De Witt drawing, which showsa ¯at wall, and for discoveries and concealmentsachieved using a portable booth.24 Instead ofAdams's large upper stage Nagler, like Hodges,offered the stage balcony shown by De Witt,augmented at need by the solid upper surface ofa stage booth placed against the back wall.25

Adams's large upper stage had practical draw-backs too. Warren D. Smith noted that itcaused a problem in Adams's reconstruction ofthe original staging of Shakespeare's KingLear.26 The Folio text has a stage direction for

Edgar to come out from his hiding placeimmediately before Edmund's call `Brother, aword, discend',27 which Adams was forced tomove down three lines to give Edgar time todescend from the upper stage.28 Smith arguedinstead for a booth-like scaffolding serving foràloft' scenes. George F. Reynolds concurredand blamed Adams's errors on his misguidedconvictions about naturalistic staging.29

The attack on Adams was sustained in threearticles by Richard Hosley.30 One demolishedAdams's upper stage by showing that Shake-speare's use of a raised playing space was lessfrequent than Adams claimed and that it usuallyinvolved engagement with the main stage (forexample a conversation or an observation)which kept the players near to the balustradedfront of the àloft' space. The De Witt drawingof the Swan shows an upper playing space

19 C. Walter Hodges, The Globe Restored: A Study of the

Elizabethan Theatre (London, 1953), pp. 174, 177.20 Ibid., p. 53.21 George R. Kernodle, From Art to Theatre: Form and

Convention in the Renaissance (Chicago, 1944), pp. 130±

53.22 Hodges, The Globe Restored: A Study of the Elizabethan

Theatre, pp. 56±60.23 A. M. Nagler, Shakespeare's Stage (New Haven, 1958),

p. 19.24 Ibid., pp. 26±32.25 Ibid., pp. 47±51.26 Warren D. Smith, Èvidence of Scaffolding on Shake-

speare's Stage', Review of English Studies, 2 (1951), 22±9,

p. 24.27 William Shakespeare, The Norton Facsimile of The First

Folio of Shakespeare, ed. Charlton Hinman (New York,

1968), tln 948±9.28 John Cranford Adams, `The Original Staging of King

Lear', in Joseph Quincy Adams Memorial Studies, ed. James

G. McManaway, Giles E. Dawson and Edwin E.

Willoughby (Washington, 1948), pp. 315±35, p. 319.29 George F. Reynolds, `Was There a ``Tarras'' in Shake-

speare's Globe?', Shakespeare Survey 4 (1951), 97±100.30 Richard Hosley, `Shakespeare's Use of a Gallery Over

the Stage', Shakespeare Survey 10 (1957), 77±89; Richard

Hosley, `The Discovery-Space in Shakespeare's Globe',

Shakespeare Survey 12 (1959), 35±46; Richard Hosley,

`Was There a Music-Room in Shakespeare's Globe?',

Shakespeare Survey 13 (1960), 113±23.

GABRIEL EGAN

4

suf®cient, Hosley argued, for the staging needsof all of Shakespeare's plays.31 In `The Dis-covery Space in Shakespeare's Globe' Hosleyargued against the inner stage by showing thatthere is no positive evidence to suggest such aspace. The term `study' appears in the stagedirections of a few relevant plays, but Hosleyargued that these were `®ctional' stage direc-tions referring to the imagined location and notthe playhouse fabric.32 To establish the bodyof relevant evidence, Hosley produced a listof thirty plays performed by Shakespeare'scompany between 1599 and 1608 when theironly permanent London venue was the Globe.As George F. Reynolds argued in his work onplays at the Red Bull,33 if a company had onlyone playhouse for a certain period of time thenany play written for the company during thattime ought to assume, and to re¯ect, thefeatures and practices of that venue. Not least ofthe problems with this method is its potentialfor logical circularity: the staging of plays isgenerally inferred from performance conditions,and here the performance conditions are beinginferred from the staging. Nonetheless, mostpeople prefer a method that at least aims to beeconomical with evidence over one that,Adams-like, makes no distinction betweenpublic theatre plays of the 1580s and privatetheatre plays of the 1610s.

Of the thirty `Globe plays' claimed byHosley, twenty-one have no scenes using thediscovery space and in the remaining ones theuses are `few and infrequent', are èssentially``shows'', or disclosures of a player or objectinvested with some special interest or signi®-cance', and `do not involve any appreciablemovement within the discovery-space'.34 Still,some kind of discovery space is needed andHosley argued that a discovery `can be effectedwithout curtains in a tiring-house whose doorsopen out upon the stage',35 with perhaps theassistance of a booth-like arrangement ofcurtains.36

In `Was There a Music-Room in Shake-speare's Globe?' Hosley used his list of Globe

plays to show that Adams's third-level musicroom is contradicted by the evidence of thedrama. Most of the Globe plays have stagedirections for music, but in only nine of theplays is the location speci®ed. In these nineplays there are a total of seventeen such stagedirections and in every case but one the musicis described as coming from `within'. Theexception is the direction for `Musicke of theHoboyes is vnder the Stage' in Antony andCleopatra.37 This suggests that there was noelevated music room at the Globe before 1609.

In these three articles Hosley demonstratedby a strict economy of evidence that the DeWitt drawing of the Swan shows everythingneeded to stage all the plays written for theGlobe. This was a signi®cant achievementbecause it placed the subject on what someconsider to be the ®rmest evidential basis avail-able: a contemporary drawing. Later, John B.Gleason provided impressively detailed evi-dence that we ought to trust the representa-tional skills of De Witt and his copyist VanBuchell and should ignore John Dover Wilson'sobscurely racist dismissal of òne Dutchman'scopy of another Dutchman's sketch'.38

If the De Witt Swan is capable of staging allthe plays written for the Globe then it, togetherwith the Fortune contract, could form the basisof a Globe reconstruction so long as we assume

31 Hosley, `Shakespeare's Use of a Gallery Over the

Stage'.32 Hosley, `The Discovery-Space in Shakespeare's Globe',

p. 35.33 George F. Reynolds, The Staging of Elizabethan Plays at

the Red Bull Theater 1605±1625, MLA General Series, 9

(New York, 1940), pp. 1±29.34 Hosley, `The Discovery-Space in Shakespeare's Globe',

pp. 44±5.35 Ibid., p. 41.36 Ibid., pp. 42±3.37 Shakespeare, The Norton Facsimile of The First Folio of

Shakespeare, t l n 2482; Hosley, `Was There a Music-

Room in Shakespeare's Globe?', p. 118.38 John B. Gleason, `The Dutch Humanist Origins of the

De Witt Drawing of the Swan Theatre', Shakespeare

Quarterly, 32 (1981), 324±38, p. 329.

5


that the outdoor playhouses of London wereessentially alike. Two articles published inShakespeare Survey 12 (1959) indicated the rangeof opinion about the homogeneity of the play-houses. W. F. Rothwell argued that playingconditions were far from standardized and that,at least until 1598, players were required toadapt to the exigencies of a variety of venues.39

Conditions at court were unlike the conditionson tour ± it was àn era of change and experi-mentations in matters dramatic and theatrical' ±and hence standardization of playhouse designis unlikely.40 By Rothwell's reasoning theDe Witt drawing of the Swan and the Fortunecontract are good evidence for the Swan andthe Fortune, but not for any other playhouses.

Taking the opposite view about typicality,Richard Southern attempted to adjust thedimensions given in the Fortune contract tomake them practicable for a `round' playhousewith reasonable sight-lines.41 Because Hollarshows what appears to be a smoothly roundedexterior to the Globe, Southern's model had asixteen-sided polygonal frame which, from adistance, would look almost circular. Southern'sstage cover, stage posts, and frons scenae werederived from the De Witt drawing of the Swanwith the exception of a small discovery spacebetween the stage doors. This was justi®ed,quite ingeniously, by supposing that on the dayDe Witt happened to attend the theatre theback-wall curtain was never parted and so thevisitor `supposed it a mere decorative hangingagainst a solid wall'.42 Southern's reconstructionused the 80 feet width and the gallery heights ofthe Fortune contract, displaying precisely thecon®dence about transference of dimensionsfrom one playhouse to another that Rothwellsought to discredit.

In 1975 Hosley published an extended essaywhich represented his work on the Globe inthe form of a single hypothetical model, and itwas the ®rst full reconstruction to be publishedsince Adams's assistant, Irwin Smith, had point-lessly re-iterated their discredited arguments.43

Having shown that the De Witt Swan has

everything necessary to stage the Globe plays,Hosley based his model upon this sketch plustwo additions: a trap and a ¯ight machine.44

From a revised list of twenty-nine Globe plays± one less than before because A Warning forFair Women was inexplicably dropped ± Hosleyinferred the Globe's ®xtures and ®ttings.45

Although three stage doors would be conve-nient for some scenes, Hosley concluded thattwo would suf®ce for all the plays. The needfor a discovery space of at least 14 square feetcould be supplied by one of the stage doors andan arrangement of curtains. The need for anàloft' playing space of at least 14 square feetcould be satis®ed by one or more of the `boxes'in the gallery over the stage shown by De Witt.There was no need for the music room to bevisible or elevated, and hence none is shown byDe Witt.

Hosley defended his addition of a trap ±De Witt shows none ± by reference to four`Globe plays'. In A Larum for London there is a`vault' into which a character is pushed andthen is stoned,46 and in the graveyard scene inShakespeare's Hamlet a trap seems the logicalway to provide a grave into which may descendOphelia, followed shortly by Laertes andpossibly Hamlet.47 In Shakespeare's Macbeth

39 W. F. Rothwell, `Was There a Typical Elizabethan

Stage?', Shakespeare Survey 12 (1959), 15±21.40 Ibid., p. 20.41 Richard Southern, Òn Reconstructing a Practicable

Elizabethan Public Playhouse', Shakespeare Survey 12

(1959), 22±34.42 Ibid., p. 32.43 Irwin Smith, Shakespeare's Globe Playhouse: A Modern

Reconstruction in Text and Scale Drawings, Introd. James

G. McManaway (New York, 1956).44 Richard Hosley, `The Playhouses', in The Revels History

of Drama in English, ed. Clifford Leech and T. W. Craik

(London, 1975), vol. 3: 1576±1613, pp. 119±235,

pp. 165, 172.45 Hosley, `The Playhouses', pp. 182±95.46 A Larum for London, or the Siedge of Antwerpe (London,

1602), e4v-f1r.47 S. P. Zitner, `Four Feet in the Grave: Some Stage

Directions in Hamlet, v. i', Text: Transactions of the Society

for Textual Scholarship, 2 (1985), 139±48.

GABRIEL EGAN

6

apparitions must rise and fall and likewise inBarnes's The Devil's Charter devils àscend' and`discend'.48 Hosley's trap was a simple horizon-tally mounted door, but one of Barnes's devilsappears to need assistance in rising: `Fieryexhalations lightning thunder ascend a King,with a red face crowned imperiall riding upon aLyon, or dragon'.49 The player's legs must bevisible upon the lion/dragon for him to beriding it, so walking up steps would be dif®cult.Perhaps the lion property was ®tted with falsehuman legs so that the player's legs couldmanage the ascent, although the effect might beconsiderably more comic than seems appro-priate. This evidence seems to imply an elevatormechanism underneath the Globe's stage-¯oortrap, although Hosley made no mention of it.In his handbook for Italian theatre architects,published in 1638, Nicola Sabbattini claimed tohave managed ascent using four strong-armedmen lifting a platform by brute force, and, onanother occasion, by arranging a see-saw underthe stage with one end supporting the platformwhich rose into the trap.50 John Astingtonconsidered these methods impractical and con-cluded that the existing technology of elevatormachines would have an obvious application inthe understage area of a playhouse.51

In support of the existence of a ¯ight machineat the Globe, Hosley cited the torturing of theEnglish Factor by strappado and hanging inA Larum for London.52 Since the torture takesplace in a street scene it is dif®cult to understandHosley's insistence that a rope descended fromthe stage superstructure. When ¯ight machineryis used for the descent of supernatural charactersthe rope is the means to a theatrical end and canbe ignored by the spectators. In a scene ofpublic torture, however, the rope exists in theworld of the play and may be carried on stageby the torturers. Throwing the rope around thebalustrades of the stage balcony seems morenatural than Hosley's method which brings anundesirable suggestion of supernatural assis-tance. The only other use of `suspension gear' inthe Globe plays offered by Hosley was the

raising of Antony to the top of Cleopatra'smonument in Shakespeare's Antony andCleopatra for which Hosley summarized anargument made at length elsewhere.53 As withthe `suspension' of the English Factor inA Larum for London, the raising of Antony is afeat achieved within the world of the play, sothe assistance of a ¯ight machine seems un-necessary.

The evidence does not support Hosley's¯ight machine, so its inclusion makes him asguilty as Adams of scholarly wish-ful®lment.Indeed, we might wonder if Hosley's oddterminology (`suspension equipment') betrayshis realization that no Globe play uses ¯ying.Rigorous application of Hosley's minimalistmethod which takes the De Witt drawing asthe highest authority on the design ofElizabethan playhouses has the inevitable con-sequence of producing a Globe which isfunctionally identical to the Swan.

Glynne Wickham posited a radical disjunc-tion between the Swan depicted by De Wittand all later playhouses. Wickham argued thatthe origins of the playhouses lay in multi-purpose arenas in which `play' meant a range ofentertainments including animal torture andformalized combat.54 Drama moved out of

48 Barnabe Barnes, The Divils Charter; a Tragaedie Con-

teining the Life and Death of Pope Alexander the Sixt

(London, 1607), a2v.49 Ibid., g1v.50 Barnard Hewitt, ed., The Renaissance Stage: Documents of

Serlio, Sabbattini and Furttenbach, trans. Allardyce Nicoll,

John H. McDowell, and George R. Kernodle, Books

of the Theatre, 1 (Coral Gables, fla, 1958), pp. 123±4,

177.51 John H. Astington, `Counterweights in Elizabethan

Stage Machinery', Theatre Notebook, 41 (1987), 18±24.52 A Larum for London, or the Siedge of Antwerpe, d4r-d4v,

e4r-e4v.53 Hosley, `The Playhouses', pp. 192±3; Richard Hosley,

`The Staging of the Monument Scenes in Antony and

Cleopatra', Library Chronicle, 30 (1964), 62±71.54 Glynne Wickham, Early English Stages 1300 to 1660,

3 vols. (London, 1963), vol. 2: 1576 to 1660, Part i,pp. 153±72.

7


doors and into these arenas in the second half ofthe sixteenth century, but the structuresretained their multi-use capabilities.55 Theprivy council order of 1597 which suppressedplaying was intended to put the theatricalcompanies on a new footing: to serve themonarch.56 We cannot rely on the De Wittdrawing of the Swan for information about theGlobe because, Wickham reasoned, the `newdeal' made court performance the aim of publicplaying and so court conditions became thenew template for the public theatres.57

The foregoing is, very roughly, wherescholarship of Globe reconstruction stood at thecommencement of the Wanamaker project.Nothing was achieved by the Wanamakerproject during the 1970s, but in 1982 theInternational Shakespeare Globe Centre(ISGC) Trust was formed and Andrew Gurrand John Orrell became formally responsiblefor the practical scholarship upon which thereconstruction would be based.58

Orrell's ®rst published article on the Globewas concerned with the construction practicesof its builder, Peter Street.59 Orrell argued thatsince Street was illiterate (he signed the Fortunecontract with just his mark) his work should beconsidered within the tradition of medieval andTudor practice rather than continental innova-tion. Street was a surveyor, not an architect,and the primary tool of his trade was the 161

2feet `rod' and the `three-rod line' marked off inrod lengths.60 Orrell noted that the 43 feetwidth of the Fortune stage is approximately thealtitude of an equilateral triangle whose sidesare each 3 rods in length. Equilateral trianglesare the basic unit of division used by surveyorsbecause their area is conveniently half the basemultiplied by the height. Using just the three-rod line and the well-known technique ofad quadratum geometry, Street could have con-structed a groundplan for the foundations of theFortune which would provide the external andinternal dimensions of 80 feet and 55 feet asspeci®ed in the contract.61 Ad quadratumgeometric progression works by inscribing a

circle around a given square and then pro-ducing a further square from four tangents ofthis circle. The ratio of the widths of the twosquares is 1:H2±. The ratio of the areas of the twosquares is 1:2, and this is the ratio of the twosquares (one 56 feet 1 inch square, the other 79feet 2 inches square) which formed the yardand outer wall of the Fortune, once the thick-nesses of the wall posts had been allowed for.62

Like Adams before him, Orrell thought he hadfound a numerical correspondence which wasunlikely to be coincidental, and hence ad quad-ratum was Street's working method.

Because the second Globe was built on thesame foundation as the ®rst it must have sharedthe same groundplan. This allowed Orrell todeduce the size of the ®rst Globe from thepreliminary sketch made by Hollar for his`Long View' of London which shows thesecond Globe and which is apparently free ofthe artistic distortions fashionable in the period.The sketch shows a Globe whose overall dia-meter is 1.397 times that of its yard, if weassume that the upper galleries did not projectover the lower ones and hence that the innercircuit of the roof is directly above the yardwall. Orrell thought 1:1.397 close enough to1:H2± to prove his point about ad quadratumconstruction. Orrell noted that the Hopecontract speci®es its ®rst gallery as 12 feet high,and that since this is the same as the ®rst galleryat the Fortune, it is reasonable to suppose thatthe other galleries at the Hope followed thoseof the Fortune, making the Hope 34 feet highto the plates. In Hollar's sketch the Globe isdrawn exactly the same height as the Hope

55 Ibid., pp. 299±323.56 Ibid., Part ii, pp. 9±29.57 Ibid., pp. 29±30.58 Barry Day, This Wooden Ò': Shakespeare's Globe Reborn

(London, 1996), pp. 82±5.59 John Orrell, `Peter Street at the Fortune and the

Globe', Shakespeare Survey 33 (1980), 139±51.60 Ibid., pp. 140±1.61 Ibid., pp. 143±4.62 Ibid., p. 146.

GABRIEL EGAN

8

despite being nearer to the vantage point, andhence it must have been a little shorter. Fromthis approximation of the height of the GlobeOrrell got the approximate scale of thedrawing, and calculated the width to be 100feet. This yields a centre-to-centre diameterbetween opposite main posts of 99 feet. Thead quadratum principle would give a yard of 70feet between centres and a stage 49 feet 6 incheswide, which is exactly the length of Street'sthree-rod line.63 Again, coincidence seemed anunlikely source of this correspondence.

At a symposium held at Wayne StateUniversity in Detroit to discuss physical recon-struction of the second Globe, Orrell revealedan entirely new way to read the Hollar sketchbased upon the hunch that Hollar used adrawing frame which yielded almost photo-graphic accuracy.64 The proper test of thishypothesis required that Orrell locate at leastfour landmarks whose real-world intervals atthe vantage point, St Saviour's church, were inthe same ratio as their intervals in the sketch. Inthe event Orrell was able to line up ®ve land-marks in this way and he emphasized that thisindicated an accuracy far beyond the reach ofartistic judgement: Hollar must have been usingan instrument.65 Moreover, only at a certainangle relative to north ± the angle towardswhich Hollar's instrument pointed ± wouldthese particular intervals occur, and so Orrell'smethod revealed the exact orientation of theinstrument. The distance from each landmarkto St Saviour's church is known, so the rule of`similar triangles' told Orrell just how large agiven object in the scene would have been toproduce the image of itself in the sketch. Afteran allowance for anamorphosis ± a distortionunique to circular objects ± Hollar's sketch tellsus that the Hope was 99.29 feet wide and theGlobe was 103.35 feet wide.66 This ®gure was alittle too high to reconcile with his theoryabout ad quadratum layout and the three-rodline, but when the work appeared in bookform, Orrell had revised the ®gure down to102.35 feet ± � 2 per cent ± helped by the

realization that the sketch is a little wider thanhe had thought.67 Now Orrell could say thatthe Globe and the Hope were probably thesame diameter of à few inches over a round100 ft'68 and that the ìnveterate sightseer'Hollar drew them the same size, despite theHope being further away, because he wanted toshow that they were alike in size.69

Knowing the exact angle of Hollar's drawingframe, Orrell was able to deduce that the clearlyvisible stage-cover fascia board, and hence theGlobe stage, faced 48.25 degrees east of north,which is very nearly the bearing on which thesun would have risen at midsummer in South-wark.70 Whether by design or chance, in themiddle of the afternoon the stage would beentirely shaded. With the size, shape, andorientation of the second Globe ®rmlyestablished, the data were available to design areconstruction of the ®rst Globe.

Throughout the detailed planning andconstruction of the Wanamaker Globe, Orrell'sarguments held sway despite objections to thesize of the building and to the design of thestage cover. Orrell argued that the short coverextending from a chordally ridged stage `house'shown by De Witt was not copied at the 1599Globe, which instead had a radially ridgedcover projecting from the auditorium roof tothe middle of the yard.71 The ®rst storey of thereconstructed auditorium had to be made at

63 Ibid., p. 150.64 John Orrell, `Wenceslaus Hollar and the Size of the

Globe Theatre', in The Third Globe: Symposium for the

Reconstruction of the Third Globe Playhouse, Wayne State

University, 1979, ed. C. Walter Hodges, S. Schoenbaum

and Leonard Leone (Detroit, 1981), pp. 108±16.65 Ibid., pp. 110±1.66 Ibid., p. 116.67 Ibid., 116n9; John Orrell, The Quest for Shakespeare's

Globe (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 89, 102.68 Ibid., p. 104.69 Ibid., p. 106.70 Ibid., pp. 154±7.71 John Orrell, `The Problems', in `The Shape of the Globe':

Report on the Seminar Held at Pentagram Ltd London By

ISGC on 29 March 1983, ed. Andrew Gurr, John Orrell

9


least twice the height of a person to make roomfor an entrance tunnel to the yard and awalkway around the back of the lowest gallery,so the Fortune's 13 feet allowance for the lowerstorey would not do for modern-sizedpeople.72 Assuming that we are 10 per centbigger than the Elizabethans pushed the heightof the Globe reconstruction to 361

2 feet to theplates, which is 2 feet 6 inches taller than theFortune and considerably taller than Orrell'sapproximated measurement from the Hollarsketch.73 This was the ®rst numerical choicewhich deviated from the known facts of play-house design in order to meet modern needsand it marks the moment when mere recoveryof historical fact became inadequate to the taskin hand.

Two stage posts were to support the stagecover and to be placed far enough forward andfar enough apart `to afford clear views of thetiring house doors'. A useful rejoinder to thiscomment would have been `from where?',since the positioning of the posts caused con-troversy later. Specifying its differences fromthe Globe, the Fortune contract called forpilastered columns, so the stage posts at theGlobe would instead be turned and, to keepthem slender, proportioned in the Corinthianorder.74 At this ®rst seminar John Ronayneargued that the interior decoration of the Globemust have been something between `theEnglish tradition of the ornamented facade,low relief decorating ¯at surfaces, and theinnovation of classical sculptural principles'.75

Ronayne pointed out that in exterior views theGlobe appears white with stone walls, althoughit must have been timber-framed. The Fortunecontract speci®es àll the saide fframe and theStairecases thereof to be suf®cyently enclosedwthoute wth lathe lyme & haire',76 andRonayne remarked that for the Globe àmagpie black and white half-timbering is notacceptable'.77 Because De Witt praised thesumptuousness of playhouses his apparentlystark sketch cannot alone determine the interiorof the Globe, and Ronayne offered contem-

porary examples of lavish decoration whichmight be copied. As well as marbelizationeffects on the columns and false painted balus-trading on the gallery fronts, the frons ought notto be considered a visually neutral surfaceserving only an acoustic function, but should be`the centrepiece appropriate to a house offantasy, imagination and illusion'.78 The projecthad moved a long way from Hosley's minima-listic approach to reconstruction as articulatedin his 1975 paper.

The Wanamaker project was set to proceedwith a design based on Orrell's ®ndings whentwo archaeological discoveries provided awealth of new evidence to be absorbed. Inearly February 1989 the foundations of theRose were unearthed and non-destructivelyexcavated.79 These foundations showed boththe original con®guration of the building andthe result of the extensive alterations made in1592, known from the expenses recorded byHenslowe.80 Upon ®rst glance the remains ofthe Rose controverted the most basic assump-tion about playhouse design: the groundplans ofboth phases were irregular polygons, and so

and John Ronayne, The Renaissance Drama Newsletter

Supplements, 1 (Coventry, 1983), pp. 4±11, p. 10.72 Ibid., p. 5.73 Andrew Gurr, `The Conclusions', in `The Shape of the

Globe': Report on the Seminar Held at Pentagram Ltd

London By ISGC on 29 March 1983, ed. Andrew Gurr,

John Orrell and John Ronayne, The Renaissance

Drama Newsletter Supplements, 1 (Coventry, 1983),

pp. 14±21, p. 14.74 Ibid., p. 16.75 John Ronayne, `Style', in `The Shape of the Globe':

Report on the Seminar Held at Pentagram Ltd London By

ISGC on 29 March 1983, ed. Andrew Gurr, John Orrell

and John Ronayne, The Renaissance Drama Newsletter

Supplements, 1 (Coventry, 1983), pp. 22±4, p. 22.76 R. A. Foakes and R. T. Rickert, eds., Henslowe's Diary,

Edited with Supplementary Material, Introduction and Notes

(Cambridge, 1961), p. 308.77 Ronayne, `Style', p. 23.78 Ibid., p. 24.79 Day, This Wooden Ò': Shakespeare's Globe Reborn,

pp. 192±201.80 Foakes & Rickert, eds., Henslowe's Diary, Edited with

Supplementary Material, Introduction and Notes, pp. 9±13.

GABRIEL EGAN

10

chaos prevailed where order was expected. Theoriginal design appeared to be a 14±sidedpolygon of about 74 feet across.81 In bothphases the stage was tapered and, unless thestage was remarkably small, the frons scenae musthave followed the angled wall formed by thefronts of the bays against which the stage stood.Even with this allowance, the original stage wasa mere 475 square feet in area.82 In a studyencompassing all the theatres of early modernLondon Orrell had offered evidence that `thetwo Globes, the Rose, the Hope and the Boar'sHead all faced northeast, away from the after-noon sun'83 but the stages of the Rose remainswere both òn the northern side of thepolygon'84 and hence the Rose faced south andits stage received illumination from the after-noon sun. Neither stage reached as far as themiddle of the yard, and the earlier stagecertainly (and the later possibly) met the yardwall not at a corner but rather in the middle ofa bay. The theoretical reconstruction to whichthe uncovered Rose bore closest resemblancewas, to everyone's surprise, the discreditedGlobe of John Cranford Adams.

Franklin J. Hildy called an academic con-ference at the University of Georgia inFebruary 1990 to assess the discoveries. Whilethis was being planned a second team from theMuseum of London began working on the siteof the ®rst Globe and on 12 October 1989 theyannounced discovery of part of the Globefoundations. At the conference Orrell presentedhis considered response to the evidence fromthe Rose and his preliminary examination ofthe evidence from the Globe.85 The Globeremains appeared to be part of the foundationsof the outer wall and one stair turret. Thelocation of this turret, on a radial about 60degrees east of north, matched neither of theturrets shown by Hollar, and it was 50 per centwider than it should have been.86 Orrelladmitted that these anomalies threw doubt onHollar's representation of the orientation of theGlobe, but drew comfort from the fact that theturret was centred on an angle of the main

frame wall, as he expected, and not centredmid-wall as Hosley thought.87

Orrell attempted to measure the angles anddimensions suggested by the scant remains, andfrom them determine the size and shape of theGlobe. Assuming that the Globe was a regularpolygon ± an assumption made less safe by theRose remains ± the few measurable angles anddimensions in the Globe remains suggested a20-sided polygon with a diameter of verynearly 100 feet.88 The ground ¯oor gallerieswere 121

2 feet, or 12 feet 8 inches deep ifmeasured radially, which is some 3 feet less thanwe would expect from the ad quadratummethod, but nonetheless they could have beenconstructed using a three-rod line if geometricpre-calculation were used to derive the correctlength for each bay's outer wall.

The ISGC decided to build two experimentalbays based on Orrell's tentative response to theevidence of the Globe remains, assuming thatthe original had 20 gallery bays each 121

2 feetdeep, the overall diameter being 100 feet acrosspoints.89 Orrell had concluded that this was not

81 John Orrell and Andrew Gurr, `What the Rose Can

Tell us', Times Literary Supplement, 4497 (1989), 636,

649, p. 636.82 Ibid., p. 649.83 John Orrell, The Human Stage: English Theatre Design,

1567±1640 (Cambridge, 1988), p. 92.84 Orrell & Gurr, `What the Rose Can Tell us', p. 636.85 John Orrell, `Beyond the Rose: Design Problems for

the Globe Reconstruction', in New Issues in the

Reconstruction of Shakespeare's Theatre: Proceedings of the

Conference Held at the University of Georgia, February

16±18, 1990, ed. Franklin J. Hildy (New York, 1990),

pp. 95±118.86 Ibid., p. 97.87 Richard Hosley, `The Shape and Size of the Second

Globe', in The Third Globe: Symposium for the Reconstruc-

tion of the Third Globe Playhouse, Wayne State University,

1979, ed. C. Walter Hodges, S. Schoenbaum and

Leonard Leone (Detroit, 1981), pp. 82±107, pp. 88±91.88 Orrell, `Beyond the Rose: Design Problems for the

Globe Reconstruction', pp. 99±100.89 Peter McCurdy, `Shakespeare's Globe Theatre: The

Construction of Two Experimental Bays in June 1992',

in The Timber Frame ± From Preservation to Reconstruction:

11


an ad quadratum design since the diameters of thecircles within which are inscribed the inner andouter polygons of the groundplan are not in a1:H2± relation. But the workshop experience ofthe project's timber-framing expert, PeterMcCurdy, suggested that the wall plate framewould be fabricated at the same time as theground sill frame, and that Peter Street wouldhave considered the proportions of the former,which de®ned the dimensions of the uppermostgallery bay, to be just as important as those ofthe ground sill frame. If there was a jetty (the`Juttey-forwards' of the Fortune contract) of12 inches in each of the two elevated bays, theuppermost gallery bay would be in an ad quad-ratum relationship with the overall diameter.McCurdy noted that the possibility of con-verting the Theatre into tenements, discussed byAllen and Burbage,90 indicates that the rakerswhich supported the seating were not struc-turally integrated into the frame since suchconversion would require their removal. Only aplayhouse constructed ¯oor-on-¯oor, andhence with an overhanging jetty and withoutintegrated rakers for bracing, could be con-verted to tenements.91

When more of the Globe's foundations wereunearthed, Orrell measured the most intactangle in what appeared to be part of the innergallery wall as 162 degrees, which indicated a20-sided playhouse.92 If the playhouse wasabout 100 feet across, as Orrell had longbelieved, a 20-sided con®guration could bemade to ®t extremely well with the uncoveredremains.93 In an article describing the construc-tion of the experimental bays, Hildy argued thatOrrell had not used the most accurate drawingsof the uncovered Globe remains ± the onesmade on the site ± and that these showed theone measurable angle to be 160 degrees ratherthan 162. This small difference would reducethe extrapolated playhouse to 90 feet diameterand 18 sides.94

The discovery of the Globe remains gave thebest indication yet of the precise geographicalsite of the playhouse and Orrell fed into his

formulae derived from Hollar's sketch toproduce a revised diameter of 97.6 feet � 2 percent.95 Orrell accepted that the published plansof the remains were inaccurate, but showedthat Hildy's òriginals' too were distorted. At ameeting to determine how the project shouldproceed, plans of competing con®gurationswere laid over a diagram of the Globe remainsto see which would best ®t. Apart from Orrell'sproposed con®guration, the closest ®t was an18±sided 90 feet diameter con®guration offeredby Hildy. All sides accepted that they wereworking with inaccurate drawings, and Hildyargued that the only proper method was tocount the grid squares on the original drawingsand to derive the angles by trigonometry, as hehad done.96 Gurr, as chair of the meeting,called for delegates to vote on whether theproject should adopt Orrell's or Hildy's plan.Orrell's design won by 14 votes to 6.97

The Wanamaker Globe is 100 feet acrossbecause of this vote, apparently taken in a hurryand with ambiguous and distorted evidenceplaced before the voters. With two Globe bays

Papers Presented at the International Council on Monuments

and Sites UK Timber Seminar Held at Haydock Park on

26 April 1993, ed. F. W. B. Charles (London, 1993),

pp. 1±20.90 C. W. Wallace, The First London Theatre: Materials for a

History (Lincoln, 1913), p. 216.91 McCurdy, `Shakespeare's Globe Theatre: The Construc-

tion of Two Experimental Bays in June 1992', pp. 11±12.92 Simon Blatherwick and Andrew Gurr, `Shakespeare's

Factory: Archaeological Evaluations on the Site of

the Globe Theatre at 1/15 Anchor Terrace, Southwark

Bridge Road, Southwark', Antiquity, 66 (1992),

315±33, p. 331.93 Ibid., pp. 332±3.94 Franklin J. Hildy, ` `Ìf You Build it They Will Come'':

The Reconstruction of Shakespeare's Globe Gets

Underway on the Bankside in London', Shakespeare

Bulletin, 10.3 (1992), 5±9, p. 7.95 Andrew Gurr, Èvidence for the Design of the Globe:

The Report of a One-day Seminar Held on 10 October

1992 at Pentagram in London', in The Design of the

Globe, ed. Andrew Gurr, Ronnie Mulryne and

Margaret Shewring (London, 1993), pp. 1±19, p. 5.96 Ibid., p. 10.97 Ibid., pp. 11±14.

GABRIEL EGAN

12

completed, perhaps the pressing need to getstarted on the remaining bays rather thandismantle what had already been accomplished± as Hildy's plans would have required ± wasuppermost in committee members' minds.Objections to the vastness of the Globe recon-struction ± the entire Rose playhouse could beplaced within its yard ± were received from allquarters and the disagreement continues.98

Of course, a 100 feet diameter is about 11per cent greater than a 90 feet diameter, andmodern humans are about 10 per cent largerthan Elizabethans, so it could be argued thatour Globe feels about as large to us as theirGlobe felt to them. However, it is not clear thatour voices are commensurately louder andactors know that adding a little to the diameterof a circular auditorium adds a lot to thevolume of air to be moved. The signi®cance ofthe decision to make the Globe reconstructiontaller than the original to allow for a two-person clearance in the lowest gallery has beenoverlooked in arguments about the size of thebuilding. If the original was about 100 feetacross then the extra height of the reconstruc-tion throws the building out of proportion, afact not publicly acknowledged by the project.If the proportions are right, then the building'soverall size may be defended as an attempt torecreate the `feel' ± in relation to human body-size ± of the original.

The three-quarters-complete WanamakerGlobe opened for a workshop season in theautumn of 1995 and, as has been extensivelyreported, the proposed location of the stageposts was rejected by a number of theatrepractitioners.99 Moving the posts necessitatedredesigning the stage cover, but the chosensolution involving a pentice apron `skirt' to thecover was defended as the kind of thing Streetcould have made if his clients had objected tothe posts being near the corners of the stage.

As the Wanamaker Globe reached comple-tion a book was published which providedjusti®cation for its least well-documentedfeature: the decoration. Ronayne's position on

the external rendering of the building hadaltered since his comment that à magpie blackand white half-timbering is not acceptable'.100

Now he argued the opposite:

As our reconstruction is the ®rst major timber-framed building in the capital since the Fire, our

decision, on balance, was to expose the structure ofwhat is a rare sight in London, rather than cover itup as the Elizabethans may have done, taking forgranted the frameworked appearance. For them,

outer rendering was grander. For us, half timberingis more generally evocative.101

98 The progression of the arguments can be traced through

John Orrell, `The Roof of the Globe', Richard Hosley,

`The Stage Superstructures of the First Globe and the

Swan', Andrew Gurr, `The Discussion', John Orrell,

Àfterword', in `The Shape of the Globe' and `The Interior

of the Globe': Reports on Seminars Held on 29 March 1983

and 12 April 1986, ed. Ronnie Mulryne and Margaret

Shewring, The Renaissance Drama Newsletter Supple-

ments, 8 (Coventry, 1987), pp. 33±41; 42±78; 81±9;

96±107; Orrell, `Beyond the Rose: Design Problems

for the Globe Reconstruction'; Blatherwick & Gurr,

`Shakespeare's Factory: Archaeological Evaluations on

the Site of the Globe Theatre at 1/15 Anchor Terrace,

Southwark Bridge Road, Southwark'; Hildy, ` `Ìf You

Build it They Will Come'': The Reconstruction of

Shakespeare's Globe Gets Underway on the Bankside in

London'; Gurr, Èvidence for the Design of the Globe:

The Report of a One-day Seminar Held on 10 October

1992 at Pentagram in London'; Paul Nelsen, `Rein-

venting Shakespeare's Globe? A Report of Design

Choices for the ISGC Globe', Shakespeare Bulletin, 10.4

(1992), 5±8; Franklin J. Hildy, À Minority Report on

the Decisions of the Pentagram Conference', Shake-

speare Bulletin, 10.4 (1992), 9±12; John Orrell, `The

Accuracy of Hollar's Sketch of the Globe', Shakespeare

Bulletin, 11.2 (1993), 5±9; Tim Fitzpatrick, `The

Fortune Contract and Hollar's Original Drawing of

Southwark: Some Indications of a Smaller First Globe',

Shakespeare Bulletin, 14.4 (1996), 5±10; and John Orrell,

`The Size and Shape of the First Globe: Interpreting

the Archaeological and Mathematical Evidence', Shake-

speare Bulletin, 16.3 (1998), 5±8.99 Paul Nelsen, `Positing Pillars at the Globe', Shakespeare

Quarterly, 48 (1997), 324±35.100 Ronayne, `Style', p. 23.101 John Ronayne, `Totus Mundus Agit Histrionem

[The Whole World Moves the Actor]: The Interior

Decorative Scheme of the Bankside Globe', in

Shakespeare's Globe Rebuilt, ed. J. R. Mulryne,

13


This is a surprising shift in the theoreticalunderpinning of the project, since the statedaim was always recovery of `what had been' inthe Elizabethan period and not `what is evoca-tive' of the period.

Ronayne cited contemporary accounts of thesumptuousness of playhouses to defend thebrightly painted interior of the WanamakerGlobe, and the `carved proporcions CalledSatiers'102 from the Fortune contract to defendthe statues in the frons scenae.103 Triumphalarches made of wood but painted to look likestone were another source of information,made relevant by De Witt's statement that theSwan stage posts were cunningly painted likemarble. The interior decoration of the Globewas based upon analogues from the late 1590sand early 1600s rather than the 1570s when theTheatre was built because in the hurrieddismantling and move to Southwark only themain timbers would have been preserved; thedecoration would have been remade in 1599 atthe new site.104 The iconographical scheme atthe Wanamaker Globe, which relates the nameof the playhouse to its function, was chosenbecause early modern English design combined`Northern continental ``classicism'' with thegrotesques, strapwork, cartouches and feignedarchitectural patterns of Flemish Mannerism'and `. . . it was conventional for Early Moderndecorative schemes to make some statementabout their use, purpose or patrons'.105

There is no possibility of recreating Eliza-bethan London, its politics, its relations with arapidly expanding world of commerce, and itsinhabitants who visited its theatres. New His-toricist and Cultural Materialist scholars havepointed out that, detached from its culturalmilieu, a reconstructed playhouse is vulnerableto anachronistic ideas about the drama. Thistheoretical objection has practical correlations.From the mid 1590s spectators sat on the stageat outdoor theatres,106 and this provided oppor-tunities for characters to `hide' from others onstage by sitting amongst the onstage audience. Ifa character were dressed in everyday clothes

similar to those worn by members of theaudience this trick might be reasonably realistic,but in a modern performance this wouldrequire the character to wear modern dress.Authentic original dress would be a barrier tothe recreation of the authentic original trick.

A similar dilemma relates to the playhousefabric: as Ronayne noted, a building with anexposed timber frame is as unusual in latetwentieth-century London as one with exteriorrendering would have been in early modernLondon. But to use this as a justi®cation for notcovering the timber frame of the WanamakerGlobe is to privilege historical effect overhistorical cause and amounts to a prejudgementof a result of the experiment. The true historicistvalue of an authentic reconstruction can bemeasured by the number and detail of appar-ently insigni®cant features which are recreated.

New Historicist and Cultural Materialistattacks upon the Wanamaker Globe have con-centrated upon the struggle between South-wark Council and ISGC and on the support theproject has received from right-wing elementsof the academic, theatrical and politicalestablishment. Two typical studies are JohnDrakakis's `Theatre, Ideology, and Institution:Shakespeare and the Roadsweepers',107 andTerence Hawkes's chapter `Bardbiz' in his

Margaret Shewring and Andrew Gurr (Cambridge,

1997), pp. 121±46, p. 122.102 Foakes & Rickert, eds., Henslowe's Diary, Edited with

Supplementary Material, Introduction and Notes, p. 308.103 Ronayne, `Totus Mundus Agit Histrionem [The

Whole World Moves the Actor]: The Interior

Decorative Scheme of the Bankside Globe', p. 124.104 Siobhan Keenan and Peter Davidson, `The Icono-

graphy of the Globe', in Shakespeare's Globe Rebuilt, ed.

J. R. Mulryne, Margaret Shewring and Andrew Gurr

(Cambridge, 1997), pp. 147±56, 155n2.105 Keenan & Davidson, `The Iconography of the Globe',

p. 148.106 Orrell, The Human Stage: English Theatre Design,

1567±1640, p. 90; Gabriel Egan, `The Situation of the

`Lords Room': A Revaluation', Review of English

Studies, 48 (1997), 297±309.107 John Drakakis, `Theatre, Ideology, and Institution:

Shakespeare and the Roadsweepers', in The Shakespeare

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Meaning By Shakespeare.108 Drakakis andHawkes rightly claim that many supporters ofthe project are motivated by an urge not tohistoricize Shakespeare but to glorify him. Butthis objection is poor historicism if it glossesover the remarkable tensions between and con-tradictions within the various groups and forceswhich aligned to make Wanamaker's intentionsviable. Hawkes raised a theoretical objection tothe project, but it was not serious:

If the ®rst Globe is the òriginal one', then a centralproblem must be that the timbers from which it was

built were themselves òriginally' used to constructBurbage's ®rst playhouse, called The Theatre, situ-ated on the north bank of the Thames and dis-

mantled in December 1598. . . . The dizzyingprospect of a third remove enters with the fact thatthe best physical picture of the Globe is the one

afforded by Wenceslas Hollar's `Long View' ofLondon. But this gives a view of the second Globe,which is of course a reconstruction on the same site

of the ®rst Globe. Finally, as if in mockery of all suchreaching after authenticity, it happens that Hollar'sengraving reverses the captions on the two buildings,with the result that the one it clearly nominates as

`The Globe' is no such thing.109

Leaving aside the error concerning Hollar'swork (it is the preliminary sketch, not thelabelled engraving, that constitutes `the bestphysical picture of the Globe'), this apparentobjection is in fact a good example of therelative freedom from theoretical dif®cultywhich certain aspects of the project enjoy as aconsequence of evidential plenitude. Wepossess an exterior view of the Theatre (AbramBooth's Ùtrecht' engraving), plus details ofcourt cases arising from the transformation ofthe Theatre into the Globe and from therenegotiation of the lease for the Bankside landon which the second Globe was built, and alsoa deposition swearing that the second Globe re-used the foundations of the ®rst Globe. Thereare grave problems concerning the notion ofauthenticity but the `third remove' identi®edby Hawkes is not among them and the fact thathe can so easily trace the history of the

Burbages' outdoor playhouses is testament toearly twentieth-century scholarship of historicalrecovery within relatively unproblematic con-ceptual parameters.

Hawkes quoted from Joseph QuincyAdams's speech upon the opening of theWashington Folger Library which described`the forces of immigration' as à menace to thepreservation of our long-established Englishcivilization'.110 Such bigotries are worthrecording, but it must be remembered that theresources of the Folger Library are as availableto New Historicist and Cultural Materialistscholars as they are to their opponents. It is adelicious irony that Karl Marx minutelydissected the economic instability of capitalismfrom within one of its greatest expressions ofcon®dence, the British Library, and likewise anedi®ce built to the glori®cation of a transcen-dent bard must, if it is meticulous, underminethat very transcendence by rendering Shake-speare's world strange to us.

Historical materialism aims to create intellec-tual models of the cultural and political milieuof early modern London which necessarilypresuppose that worthwhile knowledge aboutthe past is recoverable. No further theoreticaljusti®cation for the Wanamaker project isneeded if it is accepted that the experiment mayas likely fail as succeed. That is to say, it may bediscovered that playhouse design has no impor-tant bearing on the meaning of, and methods ofsigni®cation used within, early modern drama.If it is found that playhouse design is animportant determinant of the drama then thereconstructed Globe may be defended as ahistoricist tool which undermines the claim thatShakespeare's work transcends historical andcultural difference. The constituency of, andthe class antagonisms within, the original

Myth, ed. Graham Holderness, Cultural Politics (Man-

chester, 1988), pp. 24±41.108 Terence Hawkes, Meaning By Shakespeare (London,

1992), pp. 141±53.109 Ibid., p. 142.110 Ibid., p. 152.

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audience cannot be recovered, but this isequally true of intellectual and physical modelsof the past: our partial, anachronistic, twen-tieth-century minds are all we have to startwith. As Leah Marcus pointed out, E. K.Chambers's motivation for his monumentalstudies was essentially anti-historicist: heàdvocated the study of history in order todiscount it'.111 That is to say, Chambersattended to the minute details of materialin¯uence in order to subtract this from the

drama of the period in the hope of revealing thetranscendent àrt'. Even if, as Hawkes claimed,the Wanamaker project `packages' historicaldifference and smoothes over historical tensionsand contradictions, the scholarship of theproject is equally available to materialists andidealists and, as with Chambers's work, theformer are likely to make full use of it.

111 Leah S. Marcus, Unediting the Renaissance: Shakespeare,

Marlowe, Milton (London, 1996), p. 21.

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