On Reconstructing a Practicable Elizabethan Public Playhouse

Summary

The following is an attempt to estimate how far our present knowledge allows us to reconstruct a 'typical' Elizabethan public playhouse sufficiently authentic to permit practical study of production.

The Shape and Size

It is clear that all Elizabethan theatres were not built on the same-shaped plan, since the Fortune was square while to most others the adjective 'round' is applied. But what does 'round 'mean? Both a circular building and a polygonal building may reasonably be said to be 'round'.

The problem is reviewed by I. A. Shapiro in Shakespeare Survey I (1948), 25, and 2, 21 ff., and his final decision is in favour of a circular building. But there is a qualification, made by Shapiro himself, which must not be overlooked; he is perfectly ready to state on p. 22 of the second article “it does not follow that because the outer walls were circular the inner walls were necessarily circular also”. Indeed a playhouse frame incorporating curved timbers so as to give a circular interior is something that an investigator may find himself regarding with increasing scepticism as he works on it, because there is so obviously a cheaper and more practical solution which (as it seems to me) meets the evidence all round. It is that straight timbers were used but that the frame was built with sixteen (or maybe more) sides (Pl. II).