Globe Theatre

An engraving from the First Folio edition of 1623 shows the English dramatist William Shakespeare in a rare, almost contemporary portrait. Shakespeare left his birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon, for London, England, in the 1580s, but his debt to the English countryside is evident in his plays and poems.

A watercolour of the Globe Theatre, by artist G Shepherd in 1810, taken from an earlier engraving of 1638. The theatre, in which many of Shakespeare's plays were first performed, was built, like all theatres at the time, south of the River Thames in London.

17th-century London theatre, octagonal and open to the sky, near Bankside, Southwark, where many of Shakespeare's plays were performed by Richard Burbage and his company. It was burned down in 1613, rebuilt in 1614, and pulled down in 1644. The reconstructed Globe Theatre was opened to the public in August 1996, largely due to the campaigning efforts of actor Sam Wanamaker. Mark Rylance was appointed the first artistic director of the Globe in 1995.

The original theatre was built in 1599 by Cuthbert Burbage. It was burned down after a cannon, fired during a performance of Henry VIII, set light to the thatch. The site was rediscovered in October 1989 near the remains of the contemporaneous Rose Theatre. The new Globe Theatre opened to the public with a performance of Shakespeare's The Two Gentlemen of Verona, the first stage production to be held on the site of the Elizabethan theatre in more than 380 years.

The campaign to rebuild the theatre was begun by US film director Sam Wanamaker (1919-1993), who established the Globe Playhouse Trust site in 1949, just 183 m/200 yds from the first Globe site. A decades-long battle for funds followed, resolved finally by a British National Lottery grant.