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 modern emulsions as opposed to the permanent building. Indigo was the chosen pigment for the final Heavens, which feature the constellations of the Zodiac and, as here, golden stars and the phases of the moon. Thus players on the stage can be said to be visibly be enacting destinies influenced by the movements of the stars and planets.
The Heavens will also have a trap from which gods and goddesses may descend. And in the roof, there will be an equivalent of the cannon whose shot set fire to the first Globe in 1613.
The stage of the new Globe is made of bare boards, as it was in the original Globe.
The stage wall, or Frons Scenae is decorated in trompe l'oeil marble and stone, and illustrated with real and fake statues of gods and planetary deities, as close as possible to the descriptions made by visitors to the original Globe.
Behind the wall, the Tiring House is the part of the playhouse where Elizabethan actors would get dressed.
In the Renaissance, the surface of the stage would have been strewn with rushes, which acted as an insulant, and were also used in London homes.
The stage is 5 feet high, which makes quite difficult to climb onto or jump from, but ensures that most groundlings (standing audience) see the action. It is believed that Elizabethan actors would not have left the stage to play in the yard because of the risk it presented to their persons and their clothing.
In the original Globe, you could sit on the wooden benches of one of three galleries when it rained or if you could afford to pay two pence rather than the one-penny groundlings paid to stand in the yard. Your padded clothes would have provided some comfort, but as there was no limit on the number of people, it probably got rather cramped.
The original Globe could house up to 3000 playgoers, whereas the new Globe has a limit of 1700, of which 1000 are seated in the galleries. In the New Globe, prices reflect the quality of the sightlines and numbers are limited due to safety regulations - and to the larger size of 20th century people. You can also hire a cushion for the duration of the performance, as was the case in the original globe.
All the balusters in the new Globe were turned by hand on a traditional woodturning device. They are based on a fragment found during the archaeological excavation of the Rose Theatre in 1989. Their multiple facets catch light and sound in a warm and living way that no machine-made balusters could have matched. The balusters on the middle gallery are three-dimensional, whereas the ones on the upper gallery are flat, and will eventually be painted in trompe l'oeil like the stage. The middle gallery has four rows and offers a good overall view of stage and yard. The lower gallery is convenient if you want to alternate standing and sitting, but the acoustics are less satisfactory than in the yard or the upper galleries. Management are experimenting with ways of solving this problem (e.g. with hangings at the back), and actors will be concentrating ever more on clarity of elocution. The balcony runs across the whole of the Frons Scenae, and is divided into three sections - however there are no inner partitions at the New Globe, although some scholars believe there should be. The musicians usually use the central section, while members of the audience sit in the side sections. In the Renaissance, the aristocracy favoured these seats because they could be seen (and heard) as well as see the actors from very close. That is why they were called the Lords' Rooms. In the 20th century, these seats apparently seem less desirable, although the proximity with actors and musicians makes them very exciting. Early Modern patrons probably had to go though the Tiring House to access these seats, but in the new Globe there are also communication doors between the Tiring House (backstage area) and the galleries.
The yard is the most original part of the Globe: up to 700 people can stand in it, huddling around the stage, some watching the action from closer than any theatre can offer. They are free to move around, though on very busy days it can be rather difficult. In the original Globe, 1000 people could stand in the yard, and it got so smelly and hot that they were also nicknamed "stinkards".
Food and drink can be bought in the yard, or just outside, and consumed during the performance. But the groundlings are the audience members who make performances at the Globe so memorable: they mediate between stage and galleries, they have an immediate response to jokes, they are made part of the action, both imaginatively by the actors who see them as an army, a forest or a court, but also by their own verbal and physical participation.
An Elizabethan groundling would pay one penny to see a 2-hour performance without intervals. In 1999, you would pay 5 pounds and most performances have 1 or 2 intervals.