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

Chronology of the current reconstruction -- Prehistory

Sam Wanamaker (1919-1993)

Following are the important dates in the life (and death) of Shakespeare's original Globe Theatre, which had just as dramatic a life as could be told in any of the Bard's plays. The story continues after the Globe's death with the attempts to rediscover what it was like to stage plays there.

• 1548 -- Paris, France: The Confrerie de la Passion builds the Hotel de Bourgogne, the first theatre building erected in Europe since the fall of the Roman Empire
• 1567 -- The Red Lion theatre is built one mile east of London by John Brayne. Theatres (and other sordid entertainments) had to be built outside the jurisdiction of the London authorities, who had outlawed such dens of iniquity inside the city proper.
• 1576 -- The Theatre is built northeast of London by James Burbage.
• 1598-99 -- Burbage loses the lease to the land on which The Theatre stands, so he has it dismantled in December, 1598, using timbers from The Theatre to build the Globe playhouse south of the Thames on Bankside. The Globe is listed as a new building by 16 May, 1599, though it would not have been completed until fall.
• 1613 -- The Globe is destroyed by fire on June 29, during a sold-out performance of Henry VIII. Surprisingly, all 3,000 spectators escape unharmed (except for one unlucky gentleman whose trousers catch fire--but were put out with a bottle of ale).
• 1614 -- The Globe is rebuilt, with a tile roof, by June 30.
• 1616 -- Shakespeare dies.
• 1642 -- Puritan-controlled government closes all theatres.
• 1644 -- An annotation to John Stowe's survey of London states that the Globe was pulled down on Monday, April 15, "to make tenements in the room of it." Speculation differs as to whether the structure was torn down completely and new buildings erected, or if apartments were fashioned out of the Globe's galleries.
• 1767 -- Edward Capell, seventh editor of Shakespeare's Works, is the first scholar to call for an investigation into "the stage he appear'd upon, its form, dressings, actors . . . as every one of those circumstances had some considerable effect upon what he compos'd for it."
• 1790 -- Edmond Malone, in his The Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare, includes the contract Phillip Henslowe and Edward Allen used for carpenter Peter Streete to build the Fortune Theatre. Streete had built the Globe, and the Fortune contract instructs Streete to base the Fortune on the same dimensions. Maddeningly, the contract refers to an accompanying sketch, which has been lost.
• 1817 -- German novelist and scholar Ludwig Tieck visits London to research Shakespeare.
• 1836 -- Tieck and theatre architect Gottfried Semper convert their analysis of the Fortune contract into architectural drawings.
• 1881 -- William Poel begins staging Shakespeare, experimenting with the relationship of play texts to their original performance context.
• 1888 -- William Archer publishes his report on Karl T. Gaedert's discovery of the de Witt/van Buchel drawing of the interior of the Swan Theatre, c. 1596 (right). It is the only pictorial evidence of what the stage in an Elizabethan public playhouse looked like.
• 1893 -- Poel constructs a portable stage, "the old Fortune Theatre," based on the Swan drawing.
• 1902 -- The London Shakespeare Commemoration League displays a model for a proposed Globe Theatre reconstruction, at the urging of Poel. The plans later develop into a state-of-the-art theatre for Shakespeare's plays rather than a faithful reconstruction.
• 1907 -- Archer and architect Walter H. Godfrey draw up their own plans based on the Fortune contract. They went an extra step and converted their plans into a scale model.
• 1912 -- A "Shakespeare's England" exhibition at Earl's Court features a working Globe Theatre.
• 1921 -- Nugent Monck builds the Maddermarket Theatre, an 18th century chapel converted into and approximation of Shakespeare's Blackfriars (the smaller, indoor theatre they used).
• 1934 -- At the Chicago World's Fair, Thomas Wood Stevens builds a working (though smaller--the third gallery was strictly decorative) Globe Theatre reconstruction for the English Village portion of "A Century of Progress." Stevens staged mostly 30-40 minute versions of Shakespeare, with an occasional longer performance. It is this Globe that first drew a young Sam Wanamaker's attention to Shakespeare.
• 1935 -- The San Diego Globe is built from the same plan as the Chicago Globe, but without a roof over the yard. Other fairs in Cleveland, Dallas, and numerous other (and more loosely interpreted) adaptations. The impact of these reconstructions and interpretations helps stimulate the rise Shakespeare festivals in America.

Go forward to:
The Beginnings until 1986 when Sam acquired the site

1987 until Sam's death in 1993

1994 through the present

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