Shakespeare's global appeal

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No one knows how William Shakespeare's Globe really looked.

The polygonal theater was constructed across the River Thames from central London in 1599 by a company of actors called the Lord Chamberlain's Men. It was destroyed by fire in 1613 and rebuilt to open the following year. After the Puritan-led Parliament closed down all public theaters in England, the Globe was demolished in 1644. No drawings survive to show the precise size and shape of the original theater or its subsequent reconstruction.

Despite this lack of documentation, "replicas" and reinterpretations of the Globe have been built all over the world. An engaging small exhibition at the National Building Museum, part of the Shakespeare festival being staged all around town, uses these speculative re-creations to challenge the myths that have sprung up around the Bard's building.

In tracing the development of Shakespearean theater from the 1600s to modern times, it asserts that "Globe-ness" -- particularly the intimate bond between actors and audience -- is not dependent on any historical model but can be achieved through even the most contemporary means. Five theater designs specially commissioned for this show make the point in movable structures that draw inspiration from the Elizabethan tradition of traveling troupes.

At the start, the exhibit makes it clear that the Globe wasn't the only performance hall to exist in the London area during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Three other venues, the Rose, the Swan and a bear-baiting ring, were built nearby, in a red-light district of brothels, gambling casinos and taverns on the Thames' south bank. A 1596 sketch of the Swan interior and a construction contract for another theater called the Fortune provide just scant information about how the Globe may have been designed.

Lack of evidence hasn't stopped generations of thespians, scholars and architects from re-creating the Globe, particularly over the past century, and insisting upon the authenticity of their visions. The first full-scale "replica" was designed by Edwin Lutyens, architect of the British Embassy in Washington, and built in the Earls Court area of London in 1912. American reproductions followedduring the 1930s, including Paul Cret's Elizabethan theater at the Folger Shakespeare Library on Capitol Hill.

One of the most appealing artifacts in the show is a big walnut building model from 1950 by John Cranford Adams, who established an annual Shakespeare festival at Hofstra University, where he was president. It shows, in 3-D, the Globe's likely configuration of a thrust stage extending into an open-air courtyard where the audience stood.

Around the perimeter, covered seating for better-paying patrons is arranged into three tiers under a roof. A tower over the stage provides room for scenery, though few sets and props were used during Elizabethan times.

The half-timbered, octagonal structure suggested by Mr. Adams' model, however, is pure conjecture. One of the greatest mysteries is the Globe's shape. Engravings of London made in the 1600s show it as round, hexagonal or octagonal, but recent archaeological excavations of the original site suggest that it may have had as many as 24 sides. Even the reconstructed Globe built near this London location, completed in 1997 and considered the most credible replica to date, is not wholly accurate.

The exhibit goes on to showcase modern Shakespearean theaters, many of them round to capture the immersive atmosphere of Elizabethan staging. Among the more unusual is an open-air venue in northern Sweden built entirely of ice.