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

Rebuilding Shakespeare's Globe

Visual Evidence

A few contemporary panoramas provide firsthand information about the Globe. The most informative surviving view of the first Globe is contained in John Norden's panorama Civitas Londini, dated 1600.

The original Globe from John Norden's 1600 panorama. The Globe is in the lower right hand portion of the image.
	John Norden also sketched the Globe for a map insert for his main panorama.
The Theatre, Shakespeare's original playhouse in Shoreditch, whose timbers were used to build the first Globe; artist unknown.

The Long View of London by Wenceslas Hollar was published in 1644. Hollar showed the second Globe 'erected on the foundations of the first' after it was destroyed by fire in 1613. The carefully surveyed pencil and ink drawings were analysed proving that it was made with a perspective glass (right) from the top of Southwark Cathedral (left). This has provided the alignment of the Globe, its accurate position on the south bank and its 99 ft diameter.

Hollar's panorama was turned into an engraving and showed the Globe with the wrong annotation on it.

The Globe was also drawn by Jodocus Hondius in 1610, which was published as a small insert to John Speed's atlas the Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain 1611-1612. Claus Jan Visscher's View of London includes the Globe and was published in 1616. The panoramas other than Hollar's that also depict the Globe were not surveyed through a glass, and artistic license is likely. So Hollar's image remains the most reliable.

Jodocus Hondius drew the Globe for an atlas map insert in 1610.
	The Globe appeared in Claus Jan Visscher's View of London, 1616.

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