The first Elizabethan playhouse was built in Shoreditch, London in 1576. The playhouse was simply called "The Theatre", and was owned by James Burbage. James Burbage who had the twenty-one year lease on The Theatre, was an English entrepreneur who made his money by staging plays in Theatres. When the lease expired in 1597 for the ground on which Burbage built The Theatre Burbage was prepared to lengthen the lease. Unfortunately for Burbage the landlord, Giles Allen, disapproved of plays and disliked the idea of having public theatres and play houses. Allen purposely raised the lease to a very ridiculous rate. Failing to agree to the new price, Burbage was forced to look for another theatre. Just before he was about to give up his attempts at reclaiming The Theatre he found a clause in the contract he signed for the lease of The Theatre and he found that he could dismantle the theatre and he decided to take it apart and move the parts to a new location. They decided that the new location would be on Bankside in Southwark, London.

    The new theatre was called "the Globe" and was the most magnificent theatre the people had ever seen an and was instantly the most popular play house in London. It was located next to the Bear garden and shortly after the Globe opened the garden noticed a considerable decrease in attendance. The theatre quickly became a very large part of the culture in London and the rivalry between theatres was very large. Theatres often had spies to view other plays. Due to the fierce competition and the large demand for new plays, as soon as a play was written it was immediately produced and printed. When the theatre opened, the owner flew a flag depicting Hercules carrying the globe on his shoulders.

    The Globe stage and theatre allowed for very new effects to be added to the theatre experience, including smoke effects, fireworks, cannons, and "magical" flying scenes. The stage also had many extra features that had been unheard of at the time and are now quite common including trapdoors and music which are now commonly used. The overall theatre attendance in England only dropped when the bubonic plague broke out.

    In the 1570's the people  and the government grew a great disliking to the plays and the theatre in general. The people began to dislike the theatre for a number of reasons, the somewhat inappropriate nature of many of the plays and the rise in crime because of them. There were also dangers of having so many people in such a small space encouraging the spread of the plague.

 

" In December 1574 the Common Council of London, under the influences of puritanical factions, issued a statement describing:

' great disorder rampant in the city by the inordinate haunting of great multitudes of people, especially youth, to plays, interludes, namely occasion of frays and quarrels, evil practices of incontinency in great inns having chambers and secret places adjoning to their open stages and galleries, inveigling and alluring of maids, especially of orphans and good citizens' children under age, to privy and unmeet contracts, the publishing of unchaste, uncomely, and unshamefast speeches and doings . . . uttering of popular, busy, and seditious matters, and many other corruptions of youth and other enormities . . . [Thus] from henceforth no play, comedy, tragedy, interlude, not public show shall be openly played or showed within the liberties of the City . . . and that no innkeeper, tavernkeeper, nor other person whatsoever within the liberties of this City shall openly show or play . . . any interlude, comedy, tragedy, matter, or show which shall not be first perused and allowed . . . '

The outcry continued and grew so much that in 1596 London's authorities banned the public presentation of plays and all theaters within the city limits of London. All theaters located in the City were forced to move to the South side of the River Thames. ", (http://www.william-shakespeare.info/william-shakespeare-globe-theatre.htm).

    In the end, the Globe was closed and was destroyed along with several other playhouses in the area. However it has been reproduced according to an original sketch of the Swan theatre which was identical to the original Globe.

    You can discover more about the Globe Theatre and Shakespeare himself in the other websites linked on our home page.