The Globe’s structure was of timber, made up of prefabricated oak posts (some of them over 30 feet long) infilled with wattle-and-daub and with a finished exterior of white plaster; its roof was thatched. It is possible that the plaster was designed to resemble stone, so that the building of the theatre was itself theatrical. The playhouse was 100 feet in diameter, and is supposed to have held some 3,300 people. Each of the two lower galleries could hold one thousand people. It was in other words very tightly packed with Elizabethan bodies, accommodating audiences two or three times the size of those in a modern London theatre. Indeed the atmosphere would have been more like that of a football stadium than a playhouse. It also had some elements of the funfair.
It has been supposed that the Globe had a “sign” for ready identification above the stage or perhaps above the principal entrance. That would be quite usual in Elizabethan London and, if it existed at all, stray references suggest that it was an image of Hercules holding a globe upon his shoulders. The Shakespearian scholar, Edmond Malone, has stated that the playhouse also displayed a motto above its entrance or within its interior—” Totus mundus agit hlurionem,” which may be translated as “The whole world plays the actor.” The interior would have been colourful if not gaudy, with classical motifs and statuary prominent among the paintings and decorations. We know well enough from other interiors, with their satyrs and herms, their paintings of gods and goddesses, that the Elizabethans loved bright patterning and intricate carving. Nothing was too extravagant or too elaborate. At the Globe the wood was painted to resemble marble or jasper, and there were various hangings or tapestries to add to the impression of pseudo-classical luxury. The colours were vivid, with much gilt and gold, and the general effect was one of elaborate splendour. The theatre, after all, was a world of artifice in what was already a highly scenic and ritualistic culture. It vied with the court as the central point of ritual and display. It was the very fulcrum of art as demonstration.
The stage itself was just under 50 feet in width. It was so placed that it stayed out of direct sunlight, and remained in shadow for the duration of the afternoon’s performances. When an actor stepped forward to the front of the stage, however, his face would have been significantly lightened. It had two exits/entrances, one on either side; between them was the curtained “discovery” space in which characters might be found asleep, dead, or privately employed; it could be used, for example, as a tomb or a study. Jutting out upon the stage itself was a canopy held up by two wooden pillars. This was also known as the “heavens,” and was decorated with stars and planets against a celestial blue background; the pillars are also supposed to have defined “front stage” and “rear stage.” It was an exceedingly simple arrangement, taken from classical stagecraft, and was designed to emphasise the bodily presence of the actor. On the level above the stage was a balcony employed by the musicians, and hired sometimes by the most privileged of the audience; but it could also be used as part of the theatrical stage. When a general appeared on the ramparts of a city, or when a lover climbed up to his mistress’s bedchamber, this was the space that was used. Beneath the stage was the area known as “hell.” A trap-door allowed personages magically to ascend or descend, but it was also the area where the “props” were kept. There does not seem to have been any machinery in the Globe, however, for tricks of “flying” or descending upon the stage. This would not become available to Shakespeare, and the players, until they began to use an indoors playhouse at Blackfriars.
On the stage of the Globe an actor would enter at one door and exit at another. When a character or characters left the stage, they would not be the first to appear in the subsequent scene. These were important principles, designed to lend the impression of a dramatic world in process; theatrical life continued, as it were, “behind the scene.” There was an illusion of a flowing imaginative world, of which the actors on the stage were the visible token. It is also an indication of the formal fluency of Elizabethan drama, depending as it does upon contrast and symmetry, balance and opposition, of finely poised forces. The wide space allowed for speed and flexibility of plot. It is possible that the words were spoken much more quickly than in any modern performance. There were no acts, only scenes signalled by the various exits and entrances of the actors themselves. Act breaks were not introduced until approximately 1607. After a general exit, for example, a stage-property might be carried on by stagehands (wearing their blue livery) before other characters entered. The Elizabethan stage was not self-conscious about its procedures, the mechanics of stage “business,” and of course neither were the plays themselves. There was no appetite for realism, or naturalism, in any of its current senses.
The drama of the Globe, then, was largely built upon a succession of scenes. The sequence of scenes conforms to the English love of interdependent units, a series of variations upon a theme that encourages variety rather than concentration and heterogeneity rather than intensity. That is why a new entrance was always significant, and why it is heavily emphasised in the stage-directions. “Enter Cassandra with her hair aboute her eares … Enter a Troian in his night-gowne all vnready … Enter Godfrey as newly landed & halfe naked … Enter Charles all wet with his sword … Enter Er-cole with a letter …” These were defining moments in the creation of a scene. They represented purpose and character, setting in motion the subsequent action. The presence of the actor, what was known as “the ability of body,” was the paramount element of the dramatic entertainment. It is also possible that the player sometimes made his entry from the yard, perhaps from one of the entrances to the theatre, and then vaulted onto the stage.
The actor would come forward, and then deliver his lines to the audience. He did not enter a particular location; he entered in order to address or confront another actor. Speakers were also separated from non-speakers in the dramatic space. There were set patterns for scenes of greeting and of parting; there were stage conventions for kneeling and embracing. There were no doubt also accepted theatrical codes for asides and soliloquies, perhaps a particular placing of the body on stage. At the close of the performance the highest-ranking character left on stage delivered the final lines. The audience loved processions and marches and dumb-shows; it loved colour and display. There is a large element of ceremony or ritual about this theatre, in other words, which remained an important part in its staging.
It was a general setting, a blank space that actor and playwright could manipulate with perfect imaginative freedom. It has been suggested by some theatrical historians that place cards were set up to inform the audience of a particular setting, but this is perhaps too prescriptive. It was enough for the actor to announce his location. And of course the nature of the costumes also determined the nature of place. The green garment of a forester would signify a wood, a set of gaoler’s keys a prison. Costume was a most important theatrical device. In a visual culture it was the key to all levels of society and all forms of occupation. Elizabethan actors, and audiences, also delighted in disguise as a plot device. More was spent on costumes than on texts or actors’ salaries, and the inventory of the company wardrobe includes robes, cloaks, jerkins, doublets, breeches, tunics and nightshirts. And of course there was always a need for armour. In one of his inventories Henslowe also lists a range of more exotic costumes — a suit for a ghost and a senator’s gown, a coat for Herod as well as apparel for a devil and a witch. A good wardrobe master kept cast-offs and oddments of clothes, and there is reason to believe that the companies were sometimes given the remnants of a nobleman’s wardrobe of worn-out clothes and garments that had gone out of fashion. Clothing also determined the identity of the character. There were conventional costumes for the Jew and the Italian, the doctor and the merchant. A canvas suit indicated a sailor, and a blue coat was the token of a servant. Virgins wore white, and doctors were dressed in scarlet gowns. The female characters sometimes wore masks, as an overtly theatrical way of disguising their fundamentally male identity. In that sense the Elizabethan theatre has affiliations with classical Greek and Japanese drama.