The Chamberlain’s Men probably hoped to be able to move to the Globe by June, since Peter Street wouldn’t have to build the frame from scratch. They were still paying rent at the Curtain through late April (Simon Forman writes of going to the Curtain three times that month). Because its foundations could not have been dug much before April, it was increasingly clear that the Globe couldn’t open before late July. The reason for the delay was an extended cold spell. March, April, and May had been dry—which ordinarily would have accelerated the construction schedule—but, John Stow records, they had also been unseasonably cold, mocking the almanac’s forecast of the arrival of “goodly pleasant weather” by the first new moon in April.
Raising the Globe’s frame could take place only after the foundation work was completed. The late cold spell brought frost, and frost was the bane of laborers who had to break through the foot or so of frozen ground to excavate the foundation and prevent frost heave before sinking elm piles and filling the shallow trenches with limestone and pebbles for drainage. It was also the enemy of the bricklayers who then took over, constructing out of bricks and mortar the foundation plinth, a short, squat wall rising a foot above the ground level of each of the two roughly concentric rings of the multisided structure. The plinth was needed to keep the groundsills or bottom-most layer of timber from rotting. Because frost compromised the bond holding bricks and mortar together, it would have been foolhardy—and unsound Tudor building practice—to begin laying the brick foundation until the risk of freezing weather was safely past. Twenty-first-century builders faced with such conditions might pour antifreeze into the mix to prevent the bond holding the bricks together from disintegrating. Elizabethan builders simply had to wait for warmer temperatures if they wanted to ensure, in the words of a contemporary theater contract, that there be a “good sure and strong foundation of piles, brick, lime, and sand.”
Londoners learned firsthand of the dangers of shoddy construction in overcrowded playing spaces in August 1599. Thirty to forty people were injured and five killed—including, John Chamberlain reports, “two… good handsome whores”—when a crammed house on St. John Street in London’s northwest suburbs collapsed while a “puppet play” was being performed. There had been an earlier disaster in 1583 at the Paris Garden bearbaiting ring in Southwark, when too many spectators packed the amphitheater: the gallery that “compassed the yard round about was so shaken at the foundation that it fell as it were in a moment flat to the ground.” Eight people were crushed to death and many others injured. As far as those involved in raising the Globe were concerned, it was better to wait until the risk of frost was past, and the foundations of their future playhouse and prosperity could be secure.
William Shepherd, who was probably brought in by Street to lay the foundations of the Globe, couldn’t have waited too long to finish the work. While the weather so far had remained unseasonably dry, spring would bring rains and flooding—as it did in late May, when, John Stow reports, on Whitsunday, London was inundated with “great rain, and high waters, the like of long time had not been seen.” When the Thames overflowed its banks, it ran downhill toward the building site. Even thirty years later, when the Globe site was drained by ditches along its northern and southern boundaries, the land was still subject to flooding at spring tides. The window between frost and flood in which the Globe foundations could be built that spring was a narrow one.
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOW SHARERS FACED OTHER PROBLEMS THIS spring, including the ongoing legal battle with Giles Allen over the dismantling of the Theatre. One can only imagine how furious Allen must have been when he returned to where the Theatre had stood and found it gone, the grass trampled, his field littered with mounds of plaster and shattered tile. The first legal action had taken place at Westminster on January 20, when Allen, pursuing his case with “rigor and extremity,” sued Peter Street in the King’s Bench for trespassing and damages. Street didn’t need this kind of trouble, and it would have fallen to the Burbages and their partners to pay for the builder’s defense. And so began what both sides understood was a complicated game. Allen may have guessed that the Burbages would counter with a lawsuit in the Court of Requests, even as they may have anticipated that Allen would then respond with another lawsuit at the King’s Bench. Both sides knew that if all else failed, Allen could always cry foul and take things to the Star Chamber (which in fact he would). The last thing that the Chamberlain’s Men needed was for Allen to delay or halt Street’s progress. And even if they were to triumph sooner or later, legal costs were mounting.
The growing number of rival playing companies was another worry. The Admiral’s Men continued to play at the Rose. And there was no guarantee that the Swan would remain off limits to a permanent playing company. It wouldn’t be easy selling out the Globe with three active theaters (plus bearbaiting) on the Bankside. Meanwhile, the owners of the Boar’s Head Inn, just outside London’s western boundary, had invested heavily in transforming their playing space into a full-scale theatrical venue by summer. And as soon as the Chamberlain’s Men vacated the Curtain, some hungry itinerant company was sure to move in.
More troubling still was word that after a decade’s hiatus, the boys of St. Paul’s would shortly resume playing for public audiences at the cathedral. And if he had not done so already, Henry Evans would soon approach the Burbage brothers to see if he could rent their indoors Blackfriars Theatre for another boys’ company. It had sat unused since adult playing had been banned there in 1596. Within a year the deal was done: the benefits of the steady rent for the heavily indebted Burbages outweighed the risk of losing customers to this second children’s company. Shakespeare’s subsequent complaint—in lines later added to Hamlet, that “children… are now the fashion” and that boy players so “carry it away” that they threaten the Globe, “Hercules and his load too”—suggests that Shakespeare himself was considerably less enthusiastic about this arrangement (2.2.341–62). As theaters popped up like mushrooms, new entrepreneurs tried to cash in on what must have been seen as a lucrative business. Shakespeare may have heard around this time that the printer John Wolfe had plans—as Middlesex court records for the following April indicate—“to erect and build a playhouse in Nightingale Lane near East Smithfield,” not far from the Tower of London.
In the face of all this unexpected competition, Shakespeare and his fellow investors must have wondered what had happened to the Privy Council’s year-old decree that only they and the Admiral’s Men would be allowed to perform in London. Like the council’s earlier threat to tear down London’s theaters, it looked to be more honored in the breach than the observance. The decision to invest in the Globe must have depended, in some measure, on this promise of a duopoly, and, as a result, the explosion in the number of competing playhouses must have been especially demoralizing. There simply weren’t enough spectators to go around. And now competition for new plays to supplement Shakespeare’s offerings would be even stiffer. Expansion also meant the potential dilution of quality in the fare offered. Innovation—from all-boy companies to aristocrats dabbling at playwriting—was a dangerous thing for a veteran, protected company like the Chamberlain’s Men. The sooner the Globe was up, the sooner Shakespeare could offer plays there that set a new standard and attracted a regular, charmed clientele.
There was greater pressure than ever, then, to distinguish the Chamberlain’s Men from their rivals. No other company could match their experience—so it’s not surprising that Shakespeare committed himself to writing plays that showcased his company’s depth. Julius Caesar is exemplary in this regard, requiring strong performances by four adult actors playing the parts of Brutus, Caesar, Cassius, and Antony. Throughout 1599, Shakespeare also seems to have gone out of his way to showcase a pair of leading boy actors in his company (whose names are unfortunately unknown). One of them seems to have specialized in playing romantic leads, the other both younger and older women. Consider the extraordinary pairs of roles Shakespeare wrote for them
in a little over a year, beginning with Beatrice and Hero in Much Ado and Katharine of France and Alice in Henry the Fifth. In Julius Caesar Shakespeare created for them another pair of sterling roles, Portia and Calpurnia. Most audiences remember Portia’s famous lines about showing proof of her constancy to Brutus, when she reveals how she gave herself “a voluntary wound / Here, in the thigh” (2.1.301–2). But it is her first and longer speech that reveals how much confidence Shakespeare must have had in one young actor in particular, and how this speech, whose difficult rhythms, wit, gestures, and shifts in tone, captures both Portia’s character and the story of her marriage:
You’ve ungently, Brutus,
Stole from my bed. And yesternight, at supper,
You suddenly arose, and walked about,
Musing and sighing, with your arms across,
And when I asked you what the matter was,
You stared upon me with ungentle looks.
I urged you further; then you scratched your head
And too impatiently stamped with your foot.
Yet I insisted, yet you answered not,
But with an angry wafture of your hand
Gave sign for me to leave you. So I did,
Fearing to strengthen that impatience
Which seemed too much enkindled, and withal
Hoping it was but an effect of humor,
Which sometime hath his hour with every man.
It will not let you eat, nor talk, nor sleep,
And could it work so much upon your shape
As it hath much prevailed on your condition,
I should not know you, Brutus. Dear my lord,
Make me acquainted with your cause of grief.
(2.1.238–57)
Shakespeare may have realized, watching the pair of boys handle such challenging roles, that they were capable of handling even more taxing ones, for he would next reward them with the extraordinary parts of Rosalind and Celia in As You Like It followed by those of Ophelia and Gertrude in Hamlet.
By early May the Globe was finally rising. Once the foundation work was finished, Street’s carpenters and sawyers took over the construction site for ten weeks or so. Shakespeare and his fellow investors had to reach deeper into their pockets, for these expensive laborers had to be paid weekly and fresh supplies were constantly required. Even as unused sand, bricks, and lime were hauled away, horse-drawn carts maneuvered down Maiden Lane or along paths leading down from docks along the nearby Thames, loaded with seasoned lumber for the rafters, joists, rakes, and floorboards as well as with fir poles for scaffolding. Sawyers would have already picked a convenient spot to set up a sawpit to cut these pieces to the carpenters’ specifications. And if any of the main oak pieces of the Theatre frame had been damaged when being dismantled and moved, now was the time for teams of sawyers to cut their replacements and finish them off with side ax and adze.
What followed would be by far the most challenging stage of construction. The pressure now was on the master carpenter, Peter Street, who, in determining how the parts of the reassembled frame would fit together, somehow had to keep in mind the relationship of the floor sills (which rested on the foundations) to the wall plates (the topmost part of the frame on which the roofing sat) thirty feet above. Measurements were especially tricky because no two pieces of hand-cut timber were alike, and yet each one had to dovetail perfectly with all those connected to it. Each one of the towering back posts, for example, was fitted to twenty-six other timbers on three of its four sides. Getting the sequence right—and all the workers in place to execute it—required the skill of a chess master who could play out in his mind dozens of moves ahead.
It helped that Street had been responsible for dismantling the Theatre. And it’s likely that the dozen or so carpenters who had worked under his direction at that time were now employed at the Globe. Street may also have brought down from Windsor the same crew of carpenters that he employed a year later at this stage at the Fortune. “Erecting,” as this stage of construction was called in the trade, was not to be left to inexperienced hands. Even illiterate carpenters could easily identify the familiar set of long and ornate slashes that were gouged in the wood, still to be found on Tudor frame buildings (and even on timber frame buildings raised in North America by their descendants), marks that all of them had learned early on in their apprenticeship indicating where sections were to be joined.
Sections of the extremely heavy preassembled outer wall frames were hoisted into place first, and then, as they were held in place, cross frames and curved braces added for stability. Once the inner wall frames and floor frames were slotted into position, joined just as they had been at the Theatre, the carpenters were able to move the scaffolding and repeat the procedure at each of the twenty or so bays. If the timber had arrived in good enough condition, and not too many new pieces had to be hewn from scratch in the sawpits, this stage of construction would have gone very quickly. The rising skeletal frame of the Globe was a new addition to the silhouette of the Bankside and let Londoners know that playing there would begin in the summer. Henslowe, who had to pass the Globe every day on his walk to the aging Rose, knew that his theater’s days were numbered.
Time lost to frost would also have to be made up in the next and most laborious stage of construction: “setting up.” New joists, floorboards, rafters, partitions, and seating all had to be measured, cut, and fitted. The staircases, the tiring house, and the five-foot-high stage itself had to be knocked together as well. Fresh loads of seasoned lumber continually arrived as Street pressed his regular suppliers. The torrential rains and flooding at the end of May were a setback, but the work must have gone on after that at a torrid pace.
The Globe was the first London theater built by actors for actors, and Shakespeare and his fellow player-sharers would have worked with Street closely during the setting up, especially on last-minute decisions about the tiring house and stage. Heminges was probably responsible for handling the finances, while the Burbage brothers, who had watched their father, a joiner by profession, supervise the building of the Theatre (and more recently the indoor stage at Blackfriars), no doubt drew on their experience to ensure that Street built exactly the kind of stage they and their fellow investors wanted. They brought a good deal of practical experience to the task—and they knew the strengths and weaknesses of each of London’s playhouses, having performed in all of them. Only a playwright who knew something about construction problems and cost overruns could have recently written:
When we mean to build,
We first survey the plot, then draw the model;
And when we see the figure of the house,
Then must we rate the cost of the erection,
Which if we find outweighs ability,
What do we then but draw anew the model
In fewer offices, or at least desist
To build at all?
(The Second Part of Henry the Fourth 1.3.41–48)
Once the setting up was completed, new teams of skilled workers began to appear on the site: glaziers (for the tiring house windows), plumbers (for a lead gutter), smiths (for doors and windows), thatchers and plasterers (for the roof and exterior), and painters (for interior details). Specialists also had to be brought in to handle the marbling of the pair of wooden columns onstage, a skill that took years to master. The exterior had to be plastered with “lathe, lime and hair”—completely covering the timber frame, so that from a distance the building looked like it was made of stone, perhaps calling to mind a Roman theater—a fitting touch for a play about Julius Caesar. And, as unhappy as the idea might seem to us, the Chamberlain’s Men may also have asked Street to fence the lower gallery (as he would at the Fortune) with “strong iron pikes” in order to prevent those who only paid to stand from slipping over the railing into the more expensive seating in the galleries. As Street’s workmen struggled to make up for lost time, London’s fickle weather finally cooperated: June and July were for the most part hot and dry�
�perfect for painting and plastering. If the Chamberlain’s Men’s luck held, it now looked like playing could begin, even if all the detail work wasn’t completed, sometime in late July. As it happens, when Street contracted with Henslowe the following January to build the Fortune, he promised to finish the job by July 25; there’s a strong chance that they agreed on this date based on Street’s recent experience at the Globe. Shakespeare, eager to have a new play in hand to inaugurate the theater, had probably begun writing Julius Caesar around March and may have been ready to hand the play over to the master of the Revels for official approval by May. Julius Caesar would certainly be among the earliest of the offerings at the Globe, if not the first.
– 7 –
Book Burning
While Shakespeare could count on his fellow investors to share the headaches of construction delays and Allen’s lawsuits, the burden of opening the Globe with a brilliant play was his alone. His decision about what kind of play to write after Henry the Fifth was shaped by countless factors, prominent among them an unfolding political drama in the publishing world.
A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare Page 14
