There were probably few props and very little in the way of scenery. So whenever one of Shakespeare's plays was performed, 1 out of every 65 people in the city was at the Globe. At the time, London had a population of about 200,000. The theater held about 3,000 people, and it was usually full. They just stood on the ground for the entire performance, which usually lasted about 4 hours.Īnd yet it was the most popular form of entertainment in the city. The roof of the theater was open to the elements, and most of the audience didn't even have seats.
The plays were performed in the afternoons to take advantage of natural light. It was probably designed this way because most of the actors in Shakespeare's company got their start acting in the street, surrounded by a crowd. It was a theater in the round, with the audience in a circle around a platform for the actors. Among the plays that debuted there were As You Like It, Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Othello, All's Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure, King Lear, and Macbeth. It was the first theater ever built for a specific acting company, and the first to be financed by that same acting company. Shakespeare used his own money to pay for 12.5 percent of the cost. It had been built in 1599 by Shakespeare's own acting company Lord Chamberlain's Men. For more than 10 years, it had been the most popular theater in London, and it was the theater where many of Shakespeare's greatest plays had their premiere. It was on this day in 1613 that the Globe Theater burned to the ground.
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