Reconstructions of the Globe: A Retrospective

Summary

I ought not to have suggested in The Stage of the Globe, 356, that the first Globe might have been rectangular.

The Globe playhouse occupies special places in the collective conscious and unconscious of Shakespeare studies and – where id was, there shall ego be – the Wanamaker reconstruction has brought important theoretical and practical conflicts into the open. The validity of historical methods and pursuit of authenticity have always been contentious issues, but the act of making a physical reconstruction focuses the minds of supporters and objectors in a way that no hypothetical model can. The Wanamaker project can be credited with the achievement of accelerating research into the design and operation of the Globe so that in the last thirty years the body of published work on the subject has more than doubled. Whether or not the reconstructed building itself aids scholarship, the research underlying its claim to authenticity represents a considerable return on the capital outlay.