There was a holiday atmosphere outside the theatre, with crowds of people – not only theatregoers – buying goods and refreshments from the market stalls around the building. It was a particularly popular place with young people, many of whom had taken the day off work to go there. Then, when the play was about to start, a trumpet was blown and people took their places inside the theatre. The actors did not prepare their parts. Instead, a person backstage whispered the lines to the actor just before he was going to say them (female parts were played by young boys, as acting was not seen as a ‘respectable’ job for women). Sometimes a complete scene was not explained to the actor until he was actually performing in it, although it is believed that Shakespeare acted in a number of his own plays there. There was a lot of rivalry between playhouses. Theatres stole plays by sending someone to a performance to copy down all the lines! These stolen plays were called ‘Quarto’ texts, which meant that alternative, inferior versions of Shakespeare’s plays were produced. There was no law of copyright in those days.

In 1613, the original Globe Theatre burned down when a cannon set fire to its roof during a performance of Shakespeare’s Henry VIII. The Globe was rebuilt, but in 1642 the Puritans closed it down together with all other places of entertainment. In 1644, it was demolished. A replica of the original, called Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, opened in London in 1997. The first performance in the new theatre was Shakespeare’s Henry V. There are also Globe replicas in Italy, the US, and Japan, and an ice replica of the theatre was in Sweden!