TAUNTON is in for a treat this July when The Brewhouse plays host to Shakespeare’s Globe.

We are one of six UK tour dates chosen to present a trio of Shakespeare’s plays this summer. Staged authentically by the Shakespeare’s Globe’s Touring Company a versatile troupe of actors bring three of the Bard’s best plays up-to-date. Here are a few interesting facts about The Globe, you may not know.

The Globe was owned by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, a company of actors (including Shakespeare) who were also its shareholders. The Globe Theatre was built in 1599 during the Elizabethan era. It has over time become synonymous with The Bard of Avon, William Shakespeare.

The original Globe was constructed using timber from an earlier theatre, built by James Burbage, in Shoreditch in 1576. The Burbages, owned the theatre outright and held a 21-year lease of the site on which it was built. Their landlord, Giles Allen, claimed the building had become his when the lease expired.

The Burbages and their fellow thespians dismantled the theatre beam by beam, while Allen was celebrating Christmas at his country home, later ferrying it across the Thames to reconstruct it as The Globe on marshy gardens in Southwark. Records suggest the inaugural performance was Jonson’s Every Man out of His Humour, its first scene welcoming the “gracious and kind spectators”.

In June 1613, the Globe Theatre caught fire during a performance of Henry VIII. A theatrical cannon misfired, igniting the wooden beams and thatching. An account from the incident states ‘no one was hurt except a man whose burning breeches were put out with a bottle of ale’.

It was rebuilt the following year, but fell foul of the Puritans who closed all theatres in London in 1642. It was demolished in 1644 to make way for tenements for London’s growing population.

The Globe is derived from Latin ‘tag totus mundus agit histrionem’, loosely meaning ‘because all the world is a playground’ which bears striking resemblance to one of Shakespeare’s most famous lines spoken by Melancholy Jacques in As You Like It ‘All the world’s a stage.’

Today’s Shakespeare’s Globe, opened in 1997 and was named in the playwright’s honour, rests metres from the original site. The Shakespeare’s Globe on Tour will perform The Comedy of Errors, Pericles and Twelfth Night between 1-2 July at The Brewhouse.

By VANESSA LEFRANCOIS Chief Executive of The Brewhouse