Raising the Bays

Iain Mackintosh, renowned theatre historian and member of the Architectural Advisory Group, which assemble to discuss and supervise matters concerning the Globe, explains the decision to raise the bays inside the Theatre for the 2007 Season.

  • All recreations of Shakespeare's Globe of 1609 or of any other Elizabethan theatre involve guesses which proceed from interpretations of secondary sources. There is no primary evidence for the Globe other than an archaeological fragment of foundations discovered in 1990. It was this that led to the choice of 20 sides to the structure rather than the earlier guess of 24 sides
  • We are now questioning one of the informed guesses made over 20 years ago, which concerned the height of the lower gallery above the yard. The decision to sit the timber frame on four courses of brick was based on both the builders' contract for the Fortune Theatre of 1600 and on the supposition that the ground was flat. It is now thought that it was shaped with shovels to give a dished depression for the yard, and a raised ring on which the foundations for the galleries were laid.
  • The result, with which we have lived for 10 years, was a lower gallery from which the first row could barely see over the heads of the groundlings. The actors found they were playing either to the yard, which merged with the lower gallery, or to the upper galleries. None of the audience was at actors' eye level as was universal in most playhouses for the next 250 years.
  • An alternative view, with which we are now experimenting, is that the lower gallery was pitched at stage level - as is suggested in the De Witt drawing of the Swan theatre of 1596. It is now suggested all Elizabethan theatres, whether playhouses or multi-purpose gamehouses, shared a common ancestry of old structures which included in their attractions the baiting of bears or bulls by dogs in the yard, from which the occupants of the first gallery would need protection.
  • We have raised, temporarily, the first two bays closer to the stage which previously were the least attractive positions. If this is judged an improvement we may raise the remaining bays and at the same time move the access to the lower gallery to the stairtowers rather than through the yard. The entire lower gallery would be established 2 foot 6 inches higher and provide a focus for the actors, with the yard below and the two galleries above.
  • It was an article of faith of our founder Sam Wanamaker that the present Globe was to be modified if both further research and the experience of both audiences and actors suggested alterations which would move us closer to the theatre which nurtured Shakespeare.

Iain Mackintosh, May 2007

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