What have we learned from the first experiments performed at the reconstructed Globe on Bankside? What light have recent productions shed on the way Shakespeare intended his plays to be seen? Written by the Leverhulme Fellow appointed to study and record actor use of this new-old playhouse, here is the first analytical account of the discoveries that have been made in its important first years, in workshops, rehearsals and performances. It shows how actors, directors and playgoers have responded to the demands of 'historical' constraints (and unexpected freedoms) to provide valuable new insights into the dynamics of Elizabethan theatre.

PAULINE KIERNAN taught at University College, Oxford before being appointed, in 1995, the Leverhulme Research Fellow to study Shakespeare in Performance at Shakespeare's Globe, Bankside. She is author of Shakespeare's Theory of Drama, Shakespeare chapters in Year's Work in English Studies and several articles on Shakespeare. She is currently working on a new edition of Middleton's Chaste Maid in Cheapside, and essays on Shakespeare and Ovid. She is also a playwright and was winner of a Special Prize in the prestigious 1994 Mobil/Royal Exchange Theatre Playwriting Competition for her play on politics and the theatre at the Elizabethan court called Actors.