Globe: Life In Shakespeare's London

The life of William Shakespeare is inextricably linked with the history of London; as Catharine Arnold tells the story, the great dramatist and the great city came of age together at the turn of the 17th century. Also the author of Necropolis, Bedlam, and Underworld London, Arnold introduces us here to James Burbage, founder of the original Theatre in Shoreditch, who carried timbers across the Thames to build the Globe Theatre among the bear-gardens and brothels of Bankside in 1559. She describes the night in 1613 when the theater caught fire during a performance of Henry VIII, how it was rebuilt as a monument to Shakespeare, and how it was shut down by Oliver Cromwell's Puritans in 1642—and built again three centuries later as Shakespeare's Globe.