A painting showing the crowded interior of the Globe theatre. At the centre, a special enclosure emblazoned with the royal coat of arms marks Queen Elizabeth I's seat: she sits in a red gown and elaborate ruff flanked by courtiers. On the stage, to the right hand side of the image, a man wearing antlers dances with two women. A group of musicians can be seen at the bottom right, including one with a double bass. The galleries are packed with more spectators, including portraits of various notable figures from the Elizabethan period. The seats directly opposite the stage are occupied by a group of early modern writers, including a standing man in a black coat with gold trim and blue and white striped sleeves, representing Shakespeare himself.
Image: A painting showing the crowded interior of the Globe theatre. At the centre, a special enclosure emblazoned with the royal coat of arms marks Queen Elizabeth I's seat: she sits in a red gown and elaborate ruff flanked by courtiers. On the stage, to the right hand side of the image, a man wearing antlers dances with two women. A group of musicians can be seen at the bottom right, including one with a double bass. The galleries are packed with more spectators, including portraits of various notable figures from the Elizabethan period. The seats directly opposite the stage are occupied by a group of early modern writers, including a standing man in a black coat with gold trim and blue and white striped sleeves, representing Shakespeare himself.

David Scott's painting alludes to the eighteenth-century tradition that The Merry Wives of Windsor had been a royal commission.

Elizabeth I watches the 'Herne's Oak' sequence from The Merry Wives of Windsor at Shakespeare's Globe. She is surrounded by famous historical figures - including Shakespeare himself, in lilac at the left-hand side.

Scott's painting is one of the earliest attempts to represent the Globe, but the theatre's architecture, with its gallery and historically nonsensical 'royal box', is distinctively nineteenth century. Exhibited three years into the reign of the theatre-loving Queen Victoria, it invites the comparison between the two royal women as patrons of English drama, uniting royals past and present via Shakespeare’s most firmly ‘English’ play.

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