Shakespeare's Globe: The new Globe

Objective & content

This Look Closer episode (Shakespeare's Globe mini-series, episode 241) is a short documentary about the new Globe, the theatre in London that copies the one of Shakespeare's time. It explains that the old Globe closed in 1642, when the government closed all the theatres in England, and was pulled down a few years later. About three hundred years later, the American actor Sam Wanamaker came to London, looked for the Globe and found only a small sign on a wall. He decided to build it again, spent more than twenty years collecting money and asking for permission, and died in 1993, before the theatre was finished. The builders followed the old ways: oak wood, wooden pegs instead of nails, and walls made with lime, sand and animal hair. The episode then looks closer at the roof, which is made of thatch, a covering of dry plants. It is the first thatched roof allowed in London since the Great Fire of 1666, because thatch burns very easily, so the plants are treated against fire and sprinklers are hidden on top. Finally, the new Globe is about 230 metres from the old one, part of the old shape is marked on the ground, and the plays still happen with no microphones in a yard open to the sky.

The narration is in the present simple, with passives (was pulled down, are treated) and the past simple for the history (closed, came, decided, died); no grammar point is taught. It is a listening comprehension episode: learners listen, then answer the 10 questions in the app: 7 on facts and 3 on vocabulary (thatch, disappointed, followed the old ways). The closing question (Why do you think Sam Wanamaker wanted to build the Globe again?) opens a short class discussion about why people rebuild lost buildings.

Materials & prerequisites

The folder holds the audio, the slideshow and the script; there is no lesson plan. The pupil pack and the teacher pack (answers highlighted) are one A4 page each, with the text, three photos (the Globe seen from the river, the bronze head of Sam Wanamaker, the thatched roof from inside), the key words and the 10 questions. The folder also holds a one-page pupil sheet with the 10 questions and a teacher sheet with the answer key. Learners should know the present simple and the past simple of common verbs. The script explains its new words as it goes (thatch, pegs, sprinklers, the yard).

Curriculum alignment

Tagged c4-languages-and-communication ("Langages") and c4-encountering-others ("Rencontres avec d'autres cultures"), Cycle 4. The episode targets CEFR level B1-.