Acoustic measurement of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, London

Abstract

In the late 1960’s, Sam Wanamaker initiated the reconstruction in London of the theatre built for William Shakespeare’s company of players in the late 16th century. The theatre was built in the traditional manner to be as faithful to the original as surviving documentation allows, and has a circular auditorium with an open roof. The theatre was opened for performances in the summer of 1997. An acoustic survey of the theatre has been carried out. Measurements have been made of reverberation time (RT), early decay time (EDT), clarity index (C50), definition (D50), and rapid speech transmission index (RASTI) within the theatre’s auditorium. Various source positions were chosen on the stage after consultation with voice coaches and actors at the theatre, and receiver positions were chosen to provide uniform coverage of all the major audience areas. The results of these measurements indicate that, despite the theatre’s open-air construction, the amount of early energy provided to most audience areas results in reasonable levels of speech intelligibility, although achieving an adequate speech sound level is more of a problem. This is clearly exacerbated by the theatre’s open-air design, and its position in central London under the main flight path to London’s Heathrow Airport. The reverberant characteristics of the auditorium are generally within acceptable limits for modern theatres.