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Newsround’s Ricky Boleto and Leah Gooding explore Shakespeare’s theatre by visiting Shakespeare’s Globe, the reconstruction in London of the theatre Shakespeare himself helped to pay for when it was built in 1599.

They learn that, just like today, Elizabethan audiences wanted to be amazed by special effects and that ghosts and devils could appear from trapdoors hidden in the stage; or Titania, Queen of the Fairies, could descend magically from another door in the stage’s ceiling. They also find out about Shakespeare’s audience – from the groundlings or penny stinkards who had to stand in the area called the pit, to the rich who could sit in special decorated boxes.

We also find out that women didn’t act in Shakespeare’s time and that all the women’s parts had to be played by men – to find out how, Ricky is transformed into a Tudor woman!

Contributors include Michael Rosen, Farah Karim-Copper, Callum Coates and Patrick Spottiswoode, and the film includes engaging performance extracts from Globe Education’s Playing Shakespeare with Deutsche Bank.

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