The English stage of Shakespeare's day was a place superbly fitted for the rhetorical drama of the times; by the Restoration it had been replaced by a kind of playhouse better suited to the 'Scenes and Machines' which dealt in spectacles. The seventeenth century was therefore a crucial one in the history of the stage, yet concrete evidence of the playhouses constructed during this time has been scarce and elusive. The best of it lies in the drawing which Inigo Jones, Surveyor of the King's Works, and his pupil, John Webb, made for a succession of playhouses and Court theatres. Jones was responsible for the visual aspects of the masques performed at the various royal palaces, and both he and Webb designed a number of regular theatres at Court. In this 1985 book, the author establishes Jones and Webb as the most effective London theatre builders and scene designers of the seventeenth century.

This book is about the size, the shape and the architectural nature of the Globe playhouse of Shakespeare's time, the most important theatre in English history. The design of the second Globe, and by extension the first, has been a subject of keen debate for many years, fostered by recurrent attempts to reconstruct the playhouse, both in London and Detroit. Professor Orrell here offers fresh ways of looking at some well-known documents and newer evidence. By using detailed diagrams and seventeenth-century panoramas, the author is able to establish the accuracy of Hollar's famous 'Long View' of London, and by reconstructing his methods arrives at an exact measurement of the diameter of the second Globe. These findings document many advances in our hard knowledge of the theatre buildings of Shakespeare's time, to the point where reconstructions may be undertaken with confidence.

The English stage of Shakespeare's day was a place superbly fitted for the rhetorical drama of the times; by the Restoration it had been replaced by a kind of playhouse better suited to the 'Scenes and Machines' which dealt in spectacles. The seventeenth century was therefore a crucial one in the history of the stage, yet concrete evidence of the playhouses constructed during this time has been scarce and elusive. The best of it lies in the drawing which Inigo Jones, Surveyor of the King's Works, and his pupil, John Webb, made for a succession of playhouses and Court theatres. Jones was responsible for the visual aspects of the masques performed at the various royal palaces, and both he and Webb designed a number of regular theatres at Court. In this 1985 book, the author establishes Jones and Webb as the most effective London theatre builders and scene designers of the seventeenth century.

This book describes the theatres of the time of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson in the light of the contemporary architectural thought and building design. John Orrell incorporates recent discoveries about the structure of theatres such as the Red Lion playhouse (1567), the Christ Church Theatre, Oxford (1605) and the Paved Court Theatre, Somerset House (1632) in a re-examination of old assumptions about their design and origins. Orrell shows that the first public theatres, exemplified by the Globe on the Bankside, were fully realised architectural ideas, not ad hoc improvisations. Indoor playhouses, such as the Blackfriars and the Cockpit, Drury Lane, show clear signs of having been influenced by the theatre scheme of Sebastiano Serlio, a scheme which is human in scale, methodical in development and Roman in plan. Serlio's scheme is identified as a common link between the great public theatres of Shakespeare's time, the major private theatres and the Court masques designed by Inigo Jones. The story of the early stages is thus more coherent and more interesting than has been supposed. The book is extensively illustrated with contemporary views of London, theatre plans and scene designs.