Shakespeare's Globe Centre (USA) Centre for Globe Research

Rebuilding Shakespeare's Globe

Interior Decoration

Playhouses in Shakespeare's time were left plain on the outside. By contrast, the stage and its surroundings were brilliantly painted. Details of the Globe's original decoration do not survive, but the evidence unearthed by research has been sufficient for the new decoration to be authentic in manner if not in the minutiae. One of the great skills of Elizabethan times was the decoration of oak pillars to look like marble and this has been emulated in the new Globe with the main oak stage posts and frons scenae pillars appearing as Italian antico rosso marble columns with gold leaf Corinthian-style capitals. The decorations would have been full of symbolism employing conventions well known to Elizabethan audiences. Above the stage were the Heavens (shown above), generally emanating the benign influences of the gods, the spheres and the constellations. Below the stage was Hell or the underworld with its malign influences. Caught between the two was the resultant disarray of earthly existence, with all its trials and follies, tragedies and comedies played out on the stage.

A sixteenth-century rendition of the celestial hemispheres of the constellations was used as a reference for the design for the Heavens.

The canopy above the stage is a series of panels painted to represent the twelve astrological figures, with a central trap containing the 'supernal' light. The panels are framed in gold, substantiated by the reference in Hamlet: 'This most excellent canopy... this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire.' The Heavens continue into the Lords rooms behind the stage, and framed Roman planetary deities decorate the upper edge of the gallery flanked by Mercury to the right and Apollo to the left. The stage galleries themselves are decorated with the two Muses of comedy and tragedy.

Questions? Email the Research Archive(globe@deans.umd.edu)
Updated on: 1 March 2002