WHAT YOU'LL LEARN
The Globe Theatre
The Globe Theatre, built on Bankside in Southwark in 1599, is the AQA GCSE History historic environment site for Elizabethan England (c1568–1603) in the 2026 exams. Home to William Shakespeare and the Lord Chamberlain's Men, the Globe was the most celebrated theatre of the Elizabethan age — a building that tells us as much about power, censorship, and social class in late Tudor England as it does about drama. This page covers the Globe's construction, design, cultural significance, and what it reveals about Elizabethan society.
Why does the Globe Theatre matter?
Ask yourself this: where did people in Elizabethan England go to hear ideas discussed, to see political power challenged or celebrated, to mix with people from every level of society — and to be entertained at the same time? Not church (you were told what to think), not parliament (you weren't invited), not the printing press (most people couldn't read). They went to the theatre. And the most famous theatre in England was the Globe.
The Globe Theatre was a purpose-built, open-air playhouse constructed in 1599 on the south bank of the River Thames in the district of Bankside, in Southwark. It was built by the Lord Chamberlain's Men — the playing company of which William Shakespeare was a shareholder, playwright, and occasional actor. The Globe became the home of Shakespeare's greatest plays and one of the most significant cultural buildings in English history.
For the AQA 2026 GCSE History exam, the Globe is the historic environment site for Elizabethan England. Examiners will ask you not just what the building looked like, but what it tells us about the culture, values, and politics of the age. This page prepares you for that analysis.
Why Bankside? Theatre, law, and location
The Globe was not built where it was by accident. To understand its location, you need to understand how Elizabethan authorities viewed theatre.
The City of London — the area within the old Roman and medieval walls — was governed by the Lord Mayor and the city's aldermen. By the 1570s, they had banned permanent theatres from the City, regarding them as disorderly, as gatherings of large crowds that spread disease, and as places where seditious or immoral ideas might circulate. The early theatres therefore had to be built outside the City's jurisdiction.
Bankside, on the south bank of the Thames, was outside both the City of London and the county of Middlesex. It was a district of entertainment and vice — bear-baiting arenas, taverns, brothels — that operated beyond the reach of the city's moral authorities. When the Lord Chamberlain's Men needed to build a new theatre in 1599, Bankside was the natural choice.
There was also a very practical reason. The company's previous home, The Theatre in Shoreditch, had stood on land whose lease had expired and whose landlord refused to renew it. Rather than lose their investment, the company's leading members — including Richard Burbage and his brother Cuthbert — dismantled the timber frame of The Theatre in December 1598, transported the materials across the Thames in a remarkable act of architectural salvage, and used them to build the Globe.
Key individual
Richard Burbage (c.1568-1619)
The leading actor of the Lord Chamberlain's Men and the first performer of many of Shakespeare's greatest roles, including Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Richard III. Burbage was the son of James Burbage, who had built The Theatre in Shoreditch in 1576 — the first permanent theatre building in London. Richard and his brother Cuthbert dismantled The Theatre and used its timbers to build the Globe. He was Shakespeare's closest professional partner and one of the most celebrated performers of the Elizabethan age.
The design of the Globe
The Globe was a polygonal open-air playhouse — approximately twenty sides, giving it a roughly circular appearance when seen from outside. Scholars estimate its external diameter at around 30 metres. It could hold an audience of approximately 3,000 people, making it one of the largest entertainment venues in Elizabethan London.
The key features of its design were:
The yard. The central open space in front of the stage, open to the sky. Audience members who paid one penny — the cheapest admission — stood here. They were called groundlings. Standing in the yard, exposed to English weather, they were nonetheless close to the stage and could participate actively in the performance — shouting, commenting, throwing things if displeased.
The galleries. Three tiers of covered seating ran around the inside of the building. These cost more — two or three pennies — and were preferred by wealthier audience members who wanted shelter and a seat. The galleries gave the Globe its distinctive internal shape: a roughly circular tiered auditorium focused on the stage.
The stage. A large rectangular platform that projected into the yard, so that groundlings stood on three sides of it. This "thrust stage" design meant that performers were physically surrounded by their audience — a very different relationship from a modern theatre where audience and performers face each other across a gap.
The tiring house. Behind the stage, a structure called the tiring house (from "attiring" — dressing) housed the actors' changing rooms and the machinery for special effects. Above it, the heavens — a canopied structure painted with stars and celestial imagery — covered part of the stage and contained winches for lowering characters from above.
Key term
Groundlings
The audience members who paid one penny to stand in the yard (the open central space in front of the stage). Groundlings were typically from lower social classes — apprentices, labourers, servants — though the term covered anyone who chose the cheapest option. Their presence at the Globe is historically significant: it shows that Elizabethan theatre was not an elite activity but a genuinely mass entertainment that crossed social boundaries, bringing dukes and servants into the same building for the same performance.
Shakespeare and the Globe: culture, politics, and censorship
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was a shareholder in the Lord Chamberlain's Men and the Globe's primary playwright. The plays he wrote for the Globe between 1599 and 1613 include some of the most celebrated works in the English language: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Twelfth Night, and The Tempest, among many others.
But the Globe was not simply a place of entertainment. Its plays engaged directly with the political and social concerns of the age. Drama in Elizabethan England was simultaneously celebrated and suspected — celebrated because Elizabeth I herself attended performances and the theatre was recognised as a national cultural achievement; suspected because plays could convey dangerous ideas, challenge authority, and comment on current events in ways that were harder to censor than printed pamphlets.
All plays performed in public in Elizabethan England had to be approved by the Master of the Revels, an officer of the royal household who read scripts and could demand cuts or refuse permission to perform. This system of censorship shaped what could be said on stage — though playwrights, including Shakespeare, became skilled at saying dangerous things obliquely.
Key individual
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Playwright, poet, and shareholder in the Lord Chamberlain's Men. Born in Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare came to London in the late 1580s and became the most successful playwright of his age. He was a part-owner of the Globe, which meant he profited directly from its success. His plays written for the Globe — Hamlet (1600-1601), Macbeth (1606), King Lear (1606) — explore themes of power, legitimacy, and human nature that were deeply relevant to Elizabethan political life. He retired to Stratford around 1613, shortly before the Globe burned down.
Key concept
Theatre and Elizabethan society
The Globe crossed class boundaries in a way that few Elizabethan institutions did. Lords sat in the galleries; servants stood in the yard; all watched the same play. Theatre was used by Elizabeth I as a tool of national identity — plays celebrated English history and English victories. But it was also watched nervously by authorities: plays about kings who were deposed or murdered made nervous reading for officials in an age of plots against the queen. The tension between theatre as cultural asset and theatre as political risk runs through the entire Elizabethan period.
The Globe burns and is rebuilt
In June 1613, during a performance of Henry VIII, a theatrical cannon misfired and ignited the thatched roof of the Globe. The building burned to the ground in under two hours. No one was killed, though one account records that a man's breeches caught fire and had to be doused with ale.
The Globe was rebuilt on the same site the following year, in 1614, this time with a tiled rather than thatched roof. This second Globe continued to operate until 1642, when the Puritan Parliament ordered all theatres closed. It was demolished in 1644.
The Globe we know today — the reconstructed Shakespeare's Globe, which opened in 1997 close to the original site — is a modern recreation based on historical research.
What does the Globe tell us about Elizabethan England?
Popular culture as a mass phenomenon. The Globe could hold 3,000 people. London's population in 1600 was approximately 200,000. On a busy day, one in sixty-seven Londoners was in the Globe. Theatre was not a minority interest — it was a central feature of urban life, crossing class and gender lines in ways unusual for the period.
The geography of control. The Globe had to be built outside the City of London precisely because the city's authorities distrusted it. This tells us about the tensions between different centres of power in Elizabethan England — the Crown (which patronised theatre), the City (which feared it), and the church (which often condemned it). Where the Globe was built is as revealing as what was performed in it.
Culture as political tool and political risk. Elizabeth I used the theatre to project images of national strength and cultural achievement. But the same plays that celebrated English greatness could also ask uncomfortable questions about power. The Globe is evidence that Elizabethan culture was not simply propaganda — it was a contested space.
Return to the question at the start: where did people go in Elizabethan England to hear ideas discussed, to mix across social class, to see power examined? They came here — to a circular, open-air building on the south bank of the Thames, smelling of the river and the crowd, where the greatest playwright who ever lived worked out what it meant to be human.
Revision checklist
Before moving on, make sure you can answer:
1. Why was the Globe Theatre built on Bankside rather than within the City of London? 2. What was the connection between the Globe and The Theatre in Shoreditch? 3. Describe the key features of the Globe's design, including the yard, the galleries, and the stage. 4. Who were the groundlings, and what does their presence at the Globe tell us about Elizabethan society? 5. What was the role of the Master of the Revels, and how did censorship affect Elizabethan theatre? 6. What happened to the Globe in 1613, and how was it rebuilt? 7. Explain how the Globe Theatre was both a cultural asset and a political concern for Elizabethan authorities. 8. What does the Globe tell us about class, power, and popular culture in Elizabethan England?