Search results
VIRTUAL TOUR. Everyone, no matter where they are in the world, can now walk around Shakespeare’s Globe with our virtual tour and 360 iOS app. Use this page or download the app to tour the Globe Theatre from the comfort of your own home. Our interactive 360 degrees virtual tour uses photos, videos and audible wonder to guide you along the way.
The new theatre was larger than the building it replaced, with the older timbers being reused as part of the new structure; the Globe was not merely the old Theatre newly set up at Bankside. [ 21 ] [ 22 ] It was probably completed by the summer of 1599, possibly in time for the opening production of Henry V and its famous reference to the performance crammed within a "wooden O". [ 23 ]
Browse Getty Images' premium collection of high-quality, authentic The Globe Theater stock photos, royalty-free images, and pictures. The Globe Theater stock photos are available in a variety of sizes and formats to fit your needs.
Browse 16,610 authentic the globe theatre stock photos, high-res images, and pictures, or explore additional shakespeare or tate modern stock images to find the right photo at the right size and resolution for your project.
- Overview
- The second best playhouse
- The success of the Globe
Globe Theatre, famous London theatre in which after 1599 the plays of William Shakespeare were performed.
Early in 1599 Shakespeare, who had been acting with the Lord Chamberlain’s Men since 1594, paid into the coffers of the company a sum of money amounting to 12.5 percent of the cost of building the Globe. He did so as a chief shareholder in the company, and by doing so he helped to establish a uniquely successful form of commercial operation for the actors of the time. This investment gave Shakespeare and the other leading actors both a share in the company’s profits and a share in their playhouse.
Shakespeare’s company built the Globe only because it could not use the special roofed facility, Blackfriars Theatre, that James Burbage (the father of their leading actor, Richard Burbage) had built in 1596 for it inside the city. The elder Burbage had a long history as a theatrical entrepreneur. In 1576 he had built the first successful amphitheatre, known as The Theatre, in a London suburb. Twenty years later, when the lease on The Theatre’s land was about to expire, he built the theatre in Blackfriars as its replacement. But the wealthy residents of Blackfriars persuaded the government to block its use for plays, so Burbage’s capital was locked up. He died early in 1597, his plans for the future of theatre in London frustrated.
Thus, the members of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men were forced to rent a playhouse. At the end of 1598, they decided to build one for themselves. Because the inheritance of Burbage’s sons, Cuthbert and Richard, was tied up in the Blackfriars, they formed a consortium with Shakespeare and four other actors, who became co-owners of the new Globe. The same shortage of cash made the consortium reluctant traditionalists; they gave up the idea of an indoor theatre in the city. The old playhouse was one of their few remaining resources, but they could not use it in situ because the lease had expired, so they dismantled it, took the timbers (illegally) to make the skeleton of their new amphitheatre, and kept the basic auditorium shape of The Theatre for the new building.
For all its hurried construction in 1599, the Globe proved a triumph. Its first decade of use made it a favourite not just with subsequent generations of theatregoers but with the company itself. In later years the troupe paid a lot to keep it going. At least two circumstances provide evidence for this statement. In 1608, when the company could finally fulfill James Burbage’s original plan for the Blackfriars, the members chose, extravagantly, to operate the two theatres together, using the open-air Globe in the summer and the roofed Blackfriars in the winter. Had they chosen to, they easily could have rented one of the buildings to another company, since there was a shortage of playhouses in London in this period. But they kept both for themselves. They were given a second chance to transfer full-time to the Blackfriars in 1613, when the Globe burned to the ground, its thatch accidentally set alight by a cannon during a performance of Henry VIII. By then the Blackfriars was already beginning to bring better profits than the Globe, since the smaller house size was more than compensated by its higher prices. Instead, bearing the cost out of sentiment and traditional loyalty, the company members dug deep into their own pockets and rebuilt the Globe more splendidly than before.
Are you a student? Get Britannica Premium for only 24.95 - a 67% discount!
Learn More
Technically, the 1599 Globe and its 1614 replacement span an era in the history of theatre design. The first Globe, based on the skeleton of the original Theatre of 1576, was unique not just as the most famous example of that peculiar and short-lived form of theatre design but because it was actually the first to be built specifically for an existing acting company and financed by the company itself. Shakespeare designed As You Like It, Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Othello, All’s Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Pericles, and The Winter’s Tale, not to mention Troilus and Cressida and Timon of Athens, for performance there.
The Globe Theatre you see today in London is the third Globe. The first opened in 1599 and was built by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, the company that William Shakespeare wrote for and part-owned. We think that the first play Shakespeare wrote for the original Globe was Julius Caesar in spring 1599. Later that year he also wrote As You Like It ...
People also ask
Where is the Globe Theatre?
What happened to the Globe Theatre?
Who built the Globe Theatre in London?
When was the Globe Theatre built?
When was the globe built?
What happened to the Globe Theatre in 1613?
Browse 17,768 authentic globe theatre stock photos, high-res images, and pictures, or explore additional the globe theatre or globe theatre london stock images to find the right photo at the right size and resolution for your project.
