Julian Bowsher, and Pat Miller: The Rose and the Globe playhouses of Shakespeare’s Bankside, Southwark. Excavations 1988–90

• Dieter Mehl

This is a truly splendid publication, a fascinating record of our current documentary evidence of the two perhaps most famous and influential London theatres of Shakespeare’s time, superseding many earlier accounts of those intriguing remains. The most spectacular discovery was, of course, the unexpected survival of enough relics from Henslowe’s Rose Theatre to allow an at least partial imaginary reconstruction of that celebrated playhouse, where within a short period during the fifteen-nineties some of the great Elizabethan plays were first staged.