Experimenting with the Globe

Reconstructing the peculiar kind of theatre for which Shakespeare wrote his plays, which was unique to his time, has been a matter of recurrent interest both to scholars and to directors and actors of the plays. More than thirty theatres with pretensions to being a replica of the Globe (with, of course, varying degrees of accuracy) have been built since 1820. All of these projects suffered from the inadequacy of the information about the original theatre. …

…Hamlet be squeezed into Romeo and Juliet's "two hours traffic of the stage" without major and unauthorised cutting? How will actors cope with an audience whose closest and most visible members are on their feet around the stage? The adaptations the actors have to introduce should reveal quite a few of the questions that we have not yet thought to ask. Questions, and experiments to test the questions, for the moment are our highest priority.