5 facts about Shakespeare’s Globe theatre

• The story of the Globe’s building is worthy of a drama in its own right: having fallen out with their landlord, who was attempting to repossess the Theatre, Shakespeare’s acting company the King’s Men armed themselves with cudgels and daggers, broke into the site over Christmas 1598 and dismantled it in secret, carrying the largest timbers across the Thames to Bankside to make their new home.

Read more:

• 7 things you (probably) didn’t know about William Shakespeare
• The Globe theatre fire of 1613: when Shakespeare’s playhouse burned down

• Heated controversy surrounds the Globe’s precise form, but most scholars agree that it was around 30m wide, in a roughly hexagonal shape, surrounding an open yard 25m across, where “groundlings” stood, and with a stage 12m wide.

• Legend has it that the Globe’s motto was totus mundus agit histrionem, paraphrased in As You Like It (first performed in 1599) as “all the world’s a stage.” Alas, there is no evidence – but Shakespeare does sneak in other references to the Globe. Henry V (1599) describes “this wooden O”, while in The Tempest (1611) the magus Prospero refers to “the great globe itself”.

• Having opened in 1614, the rebuilt Globe put in impressive service – it was still in operation in 1642, when it was closed by Cromwell’s puritans. Two years later, it was finally demolished to make room for tenement buildings, seemingly in 1644

Andrew Dickson is a broadcaster and author. His books include The Globe Guide to Shakespeare (2016) and Worlds Elsewhere: Journeys Around Shakespeare’s Globe (2015).