Spaces of Performance: Shakespeare’s Playhouse Inside Out

It is a truism that plays were written for the space in which they were to be performed: and that therefore to understand Shakespeare, one should understand his playhouses. But though much important work has been done on the physical aspects of Shakespeare’s playing spaces —how big they were, how many people they held, how their sightlines and acoustics worked— much less has been written about the way they were interpreted. This article sets out to explain how discrete bits of Shakespeare’s indoor and outdoor theatres were understood metaphorically. It argues that the interpretation of the physical structure for which a play was written was as important to audience as the structure itself. Considering five different aspects of the theatre space, I ‘On’; II ‘Along’; III ‘Above and below’; IV ‘Around’; and V ‘Outside’, the article posits that the spacial division of the theatre was as interpretatively important as the five acts in a play. Its conclusions about English performance space raises questions about Spanish golden age theatre too. How were the five geographical ‘acts’ of Spanish performance, on, along, above and below, around and outside, defined literally and metatheatrically? How do they complicate, refine or rethink the story told here?