Globe Theatre Burns Down

400 years after the great fire 'groundlings’ enjoy a play at the reconstructed Globe Theatre on London’s South Bank

June 29, 1613 — They didn’t bother much with special effects at the theatre where William Shakespeare worked as a playwright and actor. If, for example, the sound of thunder was needed, a sheet of thin metal could be rippled to do the trick. Or a cannonball could be rolled along a wooden floor.

For a flash of lightning, a volatile powder could be thrown on to a lighted candle.

But it all got out of hand on this day at the Globe Theatre in London during a performance of Shakespeare’s play, Henry VIII. It was decided that the arrival of the king at a palace should be accompanied by dramatic sound effects, so a set of stage cannons were fired.

It was mid-afternoon and the Globe was packed, but hardly anyone noticed that a piece of flaming material from one of the cannons had floated up to the thatched roof.

One of those who did notice was Sir Henry Wotton, a diplomat and politician, who later noted that although no-one was hurt, the theatre was destroyed. One man, he recorded, used a bottle of ale to put out the flames when his trousers caught fire!

In a letter dated July 2, 1613, Sir Henry wrote:

"I will entertain you with what happened this week at the Banks side. The King's players had a new play representing some principal pieces of the reign of Henry the Eighth, which set forth with many extraordinary circumstances of pomp and majesty. . .

“Now King Henry making a Masque at the Cardinal Wolsey's house, and certain cannons being shot off at his entry, some of the paper or other stuff, wherewith one of the cannons was stopped, did light on the thatch, where being thought at first but idle smoak, and eyes more attentive to the show, it kindled inwardly, and ran round like a train, consuming within less than an hour the whole house to the very ground.

“This was the fatal period of that virtuous fabrick, wherein yet nothing did perish but wood and straw, and a few forsaken cloaks; only one man had his breeches set on fire, that would perhaps have broyled him, if he had not by the benefit of a provident wit, put it out with a bottle of ale.”

The theatre had opened in 1599. Actor Richard Burbage and his brother, Cuthbert, inherited a playhouse from their father located just outside the centre of London. When the owner of the land on which their theatre stood threatened to demolish it after the lease expired, the brothers and a team of workmen dismantled it piece by piece, transported the timbers across the River Thames and used them to construct the Globe on the South Bank.

It became the most magnificent theatre London had seen and could accommodate many hundreds of people. A good number of them were “groundlings”, sometimes known as “stinkards” or “penny-stinkers” as they paid only one penny to stand in a yard crowded together and pushed right up against the stage.

A groundling was actually the name of a small fish with a large, gaping mouth. These theatre groundlings would eat and drink throughout a performance while jeering or cheering the actors.

They would have a close-up view of apparitions such as a performer apparently involved in a gruesome death with blood pouring from a wound. In fact, actors filled bladders from pigs, sheep, or cows with a red liquid and hid them beneath their costumes. They had only to pound a fist against the bladder for “blood” to spread.

After the Globe burned down, a second one was built with a non-flammable tile roof. But it lasted only until 1644 when a new Puritan law closed all theatres and it was demolished. Today’s Globe Theatre – reproduced as faithfully as possible – stands a short distance from the site of the original.

Published: May 19, 2022
Updated: June 29, 2022