Saturday, July 2, 2016

Shakespeare's Globe Theatre

- is the complex housing a reconstruction of the Globe Theatre, an Elizabethan playhouse in the London Borough of Southwark, on the south bank of the River Thames that was originally built in 1599, destroyed by fire in 1613, rebuilt in 1614, and then demolished in 1644.
The name of the Globe supposedly alludes to the Latin tag totus mundus agit histrionem, in turn derived from quod fere totus mundus exerceat histrionem—"because all the world is a playground"—from Petronius, which had wide circulation in England in the Burbages' time. Totus mundus agit histrionem was, according to this explanation, therefore adopted as the theatre's motto. Another allusion, familiar to the contemporary theatre-goer, would have been to Teatrum Mundi, a meditation by the twelfth-century classicist and philosopher John of Salisbury, in his Policraticus, book three. In either case, there would have been a familiar understanding of the classical derivation without the adoption of a formal motto.
It seems likely that the link between the supposed motto and the Globe was made only later, originating with the industrious early Shakespeare biographer William Oldys, who claimed as his source a private manuscript to which he once had access. This was repeated in good faith by his literary executor George Steevens, but the tale is now thought "suspicious".
The Globe operates without any public subsidy and generates £21 million in revenue per year.

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