The Heavens, Earth & Hell

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The stages in Elizabethan playhouses consisted of three levels, like the three levels in the auditorium: the ground and lower gallery, the middle gallery and the upper gallery.

The stage platform at the 1599 Globe contained a trapdoor and two pillars, and the tiring house wall had a large central opening and two flanking doors used for entrances and exits.

The central opening could be used for mass entrances, like a duke or king with his entourage, or it could be used to thrust out large props, like the bed in Romeo and Juliet and Othello. Most experts agree that the central opening was a ‘discovery space’ used to reveal characters or symbolic props, like the caskets in The Merchant of Venice.

The trapdoor would lead to the area under the stage, known sometimes as hell or the underworld at the new Globe. It is likely to have served as Ophelia’s grave in Hamlet and as the tomb of the Andronici in Titus Andronicus.

The second level over the stage consisted of a balcony and Lord's rooms. The balcony was used for musicians and for scenes or entrances ‘above’, such as the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet.

The uppermost level was the stage roof, which was a large canopy supported by two pillars, protecting the actors and their costumes against the sun and rain. The stage roof was painted with the celestial bodies: stars, the sun, the moon and signs of the zodiac. At the centre of the stage roof was another trapdoor, sometimes used to lower characters on to the stage, like Jupiter in Cymbeline.

It has been suggested that the vertical structure of the theatre had a symbolic purpose in Shakespeare’s time. The stage roof that Hamlet calls ‘this majestical roof fretted with golden fire’ may have been referred to as the heavens; the stage platform or ‘sterile promontory’ was earth and the space beneath the stage was called hell. This symbolism suggested, as Shakespeare often declared, that the theatre was like a little world, and therefore the world was like a theatre: ‘All the world’s a stage…’. Why else would Shakespeare’s playhouse be called the Globe?

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