The Globe Theatre Old and the New.

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The original Globe opened in 1599. It burned down in 1613 and was immediately rebuilt. It was closed by the Puritans in 1642.

Now, 200 yards from its original site, after almost 400 years, the Globe Theatre has been opened to the public again.   Her Majesty the Queen officially inaugurated the rebuilt playhouse on Thursday 12 June 1997, its Opening Season ran from 29 May to 21 September 1997, and every summer it now offers performances of plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries on the type of stage they were written for, many of them in authentic clothing.

The Globe Theatre presents a lavishly painted stage with trompe l'oeil decoration, in the heart of the 'Wooden 'O' '.

The playhouse is made up of 20 bays constituting a nearly circular structure. They are built with oak beams and goat and lime plaster. The roof is thatched. In Elizabethan times, the building would have been rendered, i.e. the timber would not have been visible. The outside would have been white. The original Globe was surrounded by trees, whereas the new Globe is right by the bank of the Thames. The gates are decorated with iron figures of insects, plants and animals referring to quotations from Shakespeare's plays.

The flag indicates that a performance is to take place on the given day. The new Globe has two flags: one for the theatrical season (May 21 to September 21), one for the education season (year-round, but mostly autumn to spring).

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In the original Globe, the main season was in winter as the risk of spreading the plague increased during the summer months due to the crowds gathered together in the playhouses. In fact, the playhouses were closed by order each time the plague threatened (i.e. if there were over 50 deaths due plague in one week). Shakespeare wrote his poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece during one such long closure in 1592-93. So the acting companies often travelled in the summer months.

 The temporary Heavens erected for the Prologue Season presented an essentially lunar decoration. They were painted with ...

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