What was it like to see a play at the Globe, with boys as queens and no lights?

It was a very different evening from a modern theatre. A play at the Globe, which Shakespeare's company built in 1599, took place outdoors, in the afternoon, in front of a crowd of up to 3,000 people, with almost no scenery and no women on stage.

Picture the building: a round, three-storey wooden amphitheatre about 100 feet across. A platform stage stuck out into the middle, and around it, for a penny, the groundlings stood in the open yard. Archaeologists digging there found a layer of nutshells pressed into the floor. Those who paid more sat in three levels of seats around the yard. There were no stage lights: the show used daylight, and candles were lit if it began to fade. The stage sat in the south-east corner so it would be in shade on summer afternoons.

Scenery came from words. Actors described the setting, and costume told you who was king or servant. And the women, from Juliet to Lady Macbeth, were played by boys and young men: scholar David Kathman found no significant evidence of adults in the big female parts and plenty for adolescents no older than about twenty-one. Women only appeared on the English stage from December 1661.