Raising the bays

Dear spectator

All recreations of Shakespeare’s First (1599) or Second (1613) Globe involve speculation based on the limited – and often contradictory – evidence that is available. Unlike the Rose, for example, whose foundations were excavated in 1989, the only archaeological remains of the Globe that it has been possible to uncover consist of a small fragment, discovered in 1990, from which it was decided to opt for a 20-sided structure rather than the earlier choice of 24 sides.

New evidence (like the Rose excavation) does occasionally surface, or a scholar might make an incisive new and persuasive interpretation of the existing records (such as maps or other illustrations), or details of contemporary playhouses (such as those contained in the builder’s contract for the Fortune playhouse, built shortly after the Globe, and to which the contract refers).

It has also, however, been the mission of the Globe to respond not only to new, or reinterpreted historical evidence, but also to the experience of those who use the Globe now – spectators and performers.

Consequently, we are now revisiting one of the decisions made when this Globe reconstruction was built in the mid-1990s, concerning 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 originally flat. It is now thought that it was shaped with shovels to give a dished depression for the yard, with a raised ‘ring’ on which the foundations for the galleries were laid.

The result was a lower gallery from which the first row of audience could barely see over the heads of the spectators standing in the yard. For their part, the actors found they were playing either to the yard, which merged with the lower gallery, or to the upper galleries, as none of the audience was at the actors’ eye level, which is a common feature of subsequent playhouses.

As a result of this, we are now experimenting with a temporary revision of two bays of the lower gallery: to raise them level with the stage and, also, to make the rake of the bench seating in them steeper. Apart from improving the view, this will bring the configuration of the lower gallery more in line with the two galleries above, and do away with the blank space of wall currently above the heads of the back row which forms a band of white wall round the playhouse at the lower level. If, in the view of the spectators and performers, and of those who form the Architectural Research Group, this experiment is judged to be an improvement we may raise proceed to raise the remaining bays.

A knock on effect would be to alter how the audience accesses the lower gallery. The evidence for how spectators made their way to different vantage points in the open-air playhouses is contradictory, and so open to different interpretations. The work to the lower gallery would mean that audiences headed there would go via the stair-towers rather than, as now, first entering the yard.

Your response as an audience member to this experiment will be of considerable value to us, especially if you can compare your experience to other occasions you have sat in the lower gallery.

Thank you.

Architectural Research Group.

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