Groundlings at the mercy of hot wax and bad backs (Authentic Globe experience, 7 February)? Audiences at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse should be grateful for relatively limited authenticity. Back in the day, they had to brave more than warm liquid running down their legs. The preamble to an act of 1574 warned that “sundry slaughters and mayhemings of the Queen’s subjects have happened by ruins of scaffolds, frames and stages and by engines, weapons and gunpowder used in plays”. One of the Admiral’s Men discharged a musket on stage [in 1587], killing a child and a pregnant woman, and inflicting a head wound on another playgoer. Not to mention the magistrate’s son stabbed to death at the Fortune theatre [1613], or the collapse of the puppet theatre in St John’s Street, which left 30-40 injured, with five dead, including two reputably “good handsome whores”. Not the sort of experiences ameliorated by a dry-cleaning voucher.
Austen Lynch
Garstang, Lancashire
