We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2007
Of all the documents on which our knowledge of the Elizabethan stage is founded, none is more tantalizing than the Fortune contract. It is unique in giving precise dimensions for a public theatre, but it is in just these specifications that it is most likely to differ from its models, the other theatres of the age and especially the first Globe. Four times it mentions ‘the late erected Plaiehowse On the Banck in the saide pishe of Ste Saviors Called the Globe’, and on three of these occasions it is to avoid having to go into unnecessary detail when the model is so readily available and its building of such recent memory. It is hard to escape the conclusion that the contract goes into most detail when the proposals for the Fortune differ most from the example of the Globe, and in nothing is this truer than in the very dimensions which give the document its dangerous fascination. Some scholars, anxious to seize on any evidence that will lead towards an understanding of Shakespeare’s playhouse, have too hastily assumed that the stage at the Globe was 43 feet (13.11 m) across, simply because that is the figure given for the Fortune. Yet on this point the language of the contract is ambiguous, to say the least.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
