A reader strikes back

After watching a production of Much Ado about Nothing at Shakespeare's Globe in the summer of 2011, theatre critic Michael Billington wrote in his review for The Guardian, ‘a carnivalesque evening would be better for a touch of self-restraint. In some theatres, actors play to the gallery. Here, they are in thrall to the groundlings’.Footnote ¹ Thus launched an online debate between a user named ‘mollfrith’ and the critic, among others, which featured mud-slinging from the anonymous user, such as, ‘It appears you think the Groundlings are some sort of underclass of illiterate morons, pissing in corners and drunkenly groping each other while grunting with proto-laughter at the funny people on stage’ and ‘the ground-level spectators are more likely to laugh, which carries with it an implication that they are less discerning that those seated’.Footnote ² Never one to back down from a fight, Billington responded as well, asserting that he was attacking not the groundlings so much as the ‘increasing tendency of actors to “milk” laughs and rely heavily on the ground-level spectators to respond’, and went on to summarize the methods employed by Globe actors to garner excessive laughs.Footnote ³ Among their techniques, he pointed out dramatic pauses, double-entendres, and even ‘orgy’ faces when reciting lines, all of which Billington found somewhat self-indulgent.

The exchange between Billington and whoever used the pseudonym of Middleton and Dekker's heroine from The Roaring Girl highlights an ongoing debate – or frustration, in Billington's case – about the Globe's ability to highlight the comedic in situations that are anything but amusing. In fact, this was not the first time Billington expressed his annoyance at the audience's riotous laughter at the Globe; he stated in another review that ‘you have to put up with a lot of distractions at the Globe: the mercurial weather, the officious ushers, the restless crowd’,Footnote ⁴ and later expressed bewilderment at the amount of humour in tragedies such as Macbeth.Footnote ⁵ Theatre-goers and readers familiar with Billington's reviews are certain that this will not be the last, either, as he seems to take particular offence at the Globe's uncontained laughter. Yet these reviews raise serious questions about the nature of comedy and laughter at the Globe Theatre. Why is laughter common (or over the top, according to Billington) at the Globe? Do the actors or directors encourage this laughter, or is it inherent to the performance space? Finally, if laughter is something that is repeatedly commented on in performance, what is the problem with laughing so much when watching a Shakespeare play?

The answers to these questions might reside in the gap between what Shakespeare plays are supposed to look like, and how we actually engage with them in the modern era. Indeed, Billington is not the only advocate for a less distracting theatre experience than the Globe offers, as Dennis Kennedy has labelled the Globe a ‘touristic’ site elsewhere.Footnote ⁶ There are, of course, varying opinions about how we ought to behave while at the theatre, none of which are the focus of my article. Instead, I wish to explore the function and cause of laughter at the Globe Theatre, by analysing responses to laughter from the early modern period, as well as modern actors’ take on the performance techniques and laughter at the reconstructed Globe. In this article, I show that laughter is a construct of the shared lighting, architecture and atmosphere of the space by exploring views on laughter from the actors, Shakespeare's contemporaries and anti-theatrical tracts. I begin by surveying the audience's response of laughter, before moving on to discuss the collective nature of the audience that occurs when they simultaneously laugh at any given scene or joke in a performance. Finally, I discuss the perceived dangers of laughing, from both an early modern perspective and a modern one. This article analyses audience performativity as a way of understanding the architecture and space of the original and reconstructed Globe Theatre, demonstrating how it imposes meaning.

Audience agency

Perhaps the issue with laughter at the Globe is the fact that it grants the audience a great deal of power and agency during the production of the play. As theatre scholar Christie Carson points out, ‘many critics now see it as a profoundly democratic theatre space that has caused actors and audiences alike to reconsider their ideas about the plays and about the nature of the theatrical event’.Footnote ⁷ Carson discusses the Globe's architecture, intellectual and financial accessibility, and the unpredictable nature of the weather, as well as the larger shift in audience expectations across theatrical venues; in this article, I focus on the immediacy of reactions from the audience in discussing the effect of laughter in the Globe. I am not merely interested in a sense of performing the past or discussing how the reconstructed Globe allows us to analyse the theatre-going experience when Shakespeare was initially writing his plays, as I also wish to discuss the implications and resonances for the modern theatre-goer as well. This destabilizing of current expectations of a Shakespearean performance is largely centred on the audience, and the amount of agency they have during a performance. In other words, as actor Peter Hamilton Dyer explains, the Globe is the most ‘egalitarian theatre to be in; there is still the notion that you are all equal’,Footnote ⁸ and the actors and audience are telling a story together. Actors performing at the Globe recognize the importance and influence of the audience as part of the ongoing production, yet when the audience is rendered too jovial, critics and academics point out their insubordinate nature. The paradox of the audience highlights the tension and debate that they incite, due in part to the shared lighting and architecture of the theatre itself.

Since shared lighting allows the audience members to be seen and heard by everyone in the theatre, the audience at the Globe contributes to the meaning of any given scene as it takes place. The plethora of timber beams, and the size and shape of the Globe, create a ‘distinctive acoustic space’Footnote ⁹ that reverberates sounds throughout the theatre. Despite the lack of microphones and roof, the Globe provides ‘amazingly good acoustics, the sound reflecting and being absorbed by the timbers, plaster, people, and the open roof’.Footnote ¹⁰ Therefore the sound of laughter in the Globe bounces off the beams and creates a broad, percussive sound that resonates throughout the theatre. Theatre historian Andrew Gurr's assertion that ‘Elizabethan and early Stuart playgoers were raised to listen rather than watch’Footnote ¹¹ in the original Globe where Shakespeare worked only underscores this point, as the sound echoing from the audience and actors would be hard to miss. The Globe uses no artificial lighting to set the scene; consequently, the audience is largely in control of the tone and pace of any given performance. It is the excitement wrapped up in this ephemerality that in large part attracts audiences to performances in this highly varied and evolving space. Audiences are often filled with a sense of expectation, not knowing what will happen in the theatre throughout the production. For example, in King Lear's famous storm scene, the titular character yells out to the heavens, ‘Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! You cataracts and hurricanes, spout till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks!’ (III, ii: 1–3). In a black-box theatre with a sound and lighting board, this scene is aided by modern technology, but at the Globe the actors must rely on the bare stage, music and elements to create the desired effect. When it is raining, the audience is treated to a kind of unity with Lear and what he is experiencing on the heath, yet when it is sunny, the audience must simply pretend that rain is pouring down from the sky. This use of the audience's ‘imaginary forces’, as the Chorus labels it in Henry V, is by no means revolutionary, as other scholars have discussed its use in the theatre, yet it is significant to our discussion of how the audience has an impact on the meaning of a scene because they are in charge of how the scene will be interpreted that evening as it is performed (pro.: 18). Lear's request to the heavens has been taken as a moment of sorrow by the audience, wherein they wish to commiserate with him, or as a distinct time to laugh at or with him, depending on the weather and the audience's perception of his response to it. Since the actor playing Lear obviously has no control over whether it is actually raining or not, he allows the audience to interpret the scene as they wish, often finding laughter at the fact that there is no rain when the scene calls for a storm. The actors must rely on the elements, costumes and music, but most heavily on the audience to produce the tone and meaning in any given scene.

Furthermore, the audience controls the pace. Just as Billington complained in his review of Much Ado about Nothing, the audience was laughing so much that the actors paused before continuing their lines. Although the critic found this practice to be part of the ongoing problem of forcing too many laughs from the audience, it certainly can contribute to the duration of a scene, depending on the audience's reaction. When working on this production, actor Phil Cumbus declared that

His reliance on the audience for the timing and tone of the play makes plain the authority the audience is granted in this theatre space. It is not just that they are asked to watch the show, but instead they are encouraged to become active participants in creating the performance and generate the consequence behind it. According to the actors in this particular production, the audience allowed them to understand the play even more than in rehearsal. In fact, actors at the Globe Theatre stress that in the audience one must ‘engage with your whole body’Footnote ¹³ in order to fully immerse oneself in the Globe production. There is no sitting back, idly watching as the performance takes place in front of you; audience members must absorb themselves in the performance and become a part of it. While we might think this true of many immersive theatre experiences, the Globe enhances this aspect of performance by turning the reins of the production over to the audience, even in the eyes of the actors. In Shakespeare and the Authority of Performance, W. B. Worthen argues that ‘the modern stage becomes a site of interpretation, rather than a place of production, a place where “meanings” are found rather than made’.Footnote ¹⁴ The Globe models this aspect of meaning-production by allowing the audience command of how the play will be understood, which can vary from night to night. The elements and audience interaction in each performance dictate the understanding of each performance at the Globe Theatre as an individual event, not as one in a series of ongoing performances. What some have identified as ‘distractions’, actors and directors at the Globe often view as ‘possibilities’ for their performance to take on a different meaning each night, keeping the production fresh for the actors. Director Tim Carroll asserts, ‘if you are in a state of freedom and receptiveness, there is always the possibility, and again, I think that's all the audience require to feel a tingle – the sense that if something unexpected happened, the actors wouldn't be thrown by it’.Footnote ¹⁵ The allure of offering the actor something unexpected is indeed a possibility at the Globe Theatre, as the actors are never certain how each audience will react to the comments and laughter coming from the faces that they can see all around them. It also highlights the ephemeral nature of performance at the Globe Theatre, far more so than in other theatre venues, as the elements, shared lighting and circular architecture allow for variances from night to night to be perceived by the members of the audience and the acting company, as they are on full display. This variability has been hailed as part of the Globe's success, and one of the reasons it remains popular with tourists, academics and London theatre-goers.Footnote ¹⁶

From the actor's perspective, relinquishing this control of the scene to the audience could be quite daunting, but it also offers the instant feedback on the performance that is not provided in other theatres. Globe veteran actor Colin Hurley explains, ‘the audience definitely teach you a lot about the play and they teach you lots about what you're doing, instant feedback, not just in terms of laughter but – because you can see the vibes of their eyes, you know whether they're interested or not’.Footnote ¹⁷ If a play is successful, this can be something of a validation and a pat on the back, per se, for the actors; however, if it is not, the lack of response from the audience is publicized and evident since the audience is in full view due to the shared lighting. While it seems as though the audience is approving of whatever is taking place onstage when they respond with laughter, there is a complexity in laughter itself that is not always signifying the same emotion. Laughter, rather paradoxically, can show a range of emotions from joy to pity, or disdain to derision. In his book on audience response in early modern drama, Jeremy Lopez argues that laughter is ‘a sign of both approval and dismissal, mirth and scorn, laughter lurks just inside the space between the bare stage and the imagination, ready to burst forth with equal willingness when the one fails to connect with the other, and when it succeeds’.Footnote ¹⁸ Perhaps this multifaceted cause of laughter is part of the adverse reaction to its overwhelming presence in the Globe, as laughter could indicate a variety of responses to any given scene. If we understand laughter as stemming not just from joy or happiness, but also from ridicule and spite, we begin to understand some of the contemporary responses to laughter in the theatre, which I will touch on later in the article. Regardless of the emotion that laughter signifies, we can be certain that it always denotes a connection between the audience and the actors onstage. Whether this connection is out of collusion or dismissal, laughter demonstrates a shared moment between actor and audience through the performance of the text.

A united front

This connection not only fuses actor to audience, but unifies the audience members as well. Crowd psychology shows that watching a football game or sporting event as a collective, rather than an individual, offers more excitement and camaraderie among participants. In the same way, audience members at the Globe undergo a shift from individuals to a more cohesive unit in watching the production together. While this collectivity is, of course, not exclusive to the Globe, I believe that the sense of contagion among the theatre audience in terms of reaction is heightened in this theatre space because of the architecture of the building. Performance studies scholar Josephine Machon has discussed the multi-sensory experience present in modern theatres, ‘establishing a double-edged rendering of making-sense/sense-making’,Footnote ¹⁹ demonstrating how conscious thought alone is no longer targeted by theatre companies. Instead, audience members engage with the actors and with each other in an immersive theatre experience. Her exploration beautifully illustrates the immersion that audience members have come to expect; this interaction works overtime at the Globe due to the architecture and shared lighting, both of which invite audience members to view one another in addition to the drama onstage. The audience watches the actors and other audience members simultaneously, allowing both to impact their response to every line, exchange and scene.

Sharing a sense of unity when watching the performance allows the audience to encourage and influence one another's responses as well. Actor Ben Deery describes performing at the Globe

He is not alone in feeling as if the audience creates an ‘all-in-this-together’ mentality, especially when it comes to laughter. Laughter is contagious at the Globe because people can see others laughing right next to them. It is difficult to remain stoic when everyone else around you is laughing, which is perhaps one of the reasons why there is so much laughter during Globe performances, even at the smallest joke. Laughter moves through the theatre like a ripple effect, or the wave at a football game, spreading and gathering momentum from the audience itself. The circular architecture allows for a triangulation of laughing; that is to say, when audience members laugh at a particular joke told by the actors, other audience members are simultaneously responding to the comedy expressed in the joke and by the other audience members. This allows for the audience to perpetuate laughter far more so than in a black-box theatre, where the audience is merely facing forwards, in the direction of the stage, in a dark space. The fact that the Globe uses universal lighting in a space where audience members are facing one another incites laughter far more than in other theatrical spaces.

The difference between one section of the audience laughing and the entire theatre laughing is not lost on the actors either. This distinction is something that actor James Garnon considers important during a performance, as he describes:

Garnon points out that the audience has a kind of power over the actors, to convince them to ‘remain honest’, as he terms it, or to portray the text to the best of their ability. Scholars often discuss the relationship between the actor, text and performance space, but it is important to note that the audience contributes to the production of meaning in large part at the Globe Theatre. Here, we can see that the laughter coming from the audience resonates with the actors and offers them satisfaction during the performance, as if it were the goal of their lines. Tellingly, Garnon desires everyone in the theatre to laugh, not merely one section over another. His comment also characterizes the audience as a single entity, working together when laughing to punctuate the performance, especially when everyone is involved. While the groundlings are the closest and most accessible to the actors, it is clear that the audience seated in the galleries contributes to ensuring the success of a performance as well. As the theatre responds to the performance together, it forms a collective that also helps create a sense of excitement and originality in watching the performance. Audiences are aware that the laughter coming from the crowd is not merely a pre-ordered or anticipated laugh-track cueing them, but something distinct to that particular performance. The idea that the entire theatre laughed together during a specific moment at a certain joke allows for the kind of variability from night to night, as discussed earlier. Indeed, the laughter coming from the audience only underscores the ephemerality of the production for the audience, allowing them to contribute in an impactful and distinctive way to the manufacturing of meaning.

Anti-theatricalists on audience

Audience members colluding with one another and behaving as one are exactly what troubled writers of early modern anti-theatrical tracts. Billington's unease with laughter at the Globe is reminiscent of the anti-theatrical tracts warning against the dangers of laughing. By analysing their commentary on laughter in this context, I hope to provide a window into the past to further elucidate the nature of laughter in the Globe's theatrical space as we understand it today. In A Short Treatise against Stage Plays, the author asserts,

It is not merely the actors whom the authors of these anti-theatrical tracts are concerned about, but also the audience members. The treatise makes plain that the audience's participation in the play also corrupts their minds, connecting them to the players onstage through sin. This censure of the actors and audiences seems extreme by modern standards, but it certainly was not the first treatise to speak out against the plays or theatre-goers during this time. My focus, in this quotation, is not as much on the attack on immorality in the theatres, as it is on the characterization of the audience. The author stipulates that play-goers are just as culpable as actors, most likely in order to guilt them into staying away from theatres, but he does so by calling them communal with the actors. For the audience, the danger is not simply in watching sin unfold before them, but that, in observing this sin, they are stimulated by and contribute to the sin itself by partaking in the performance. The assumption here is that the audience is participating in the performance itself, not merely acting as spectators, otherwise they would not be to blame for the content onstage. Condemnation of the audience is predicated on the notion that they are actively participating in and responsible for the performance in the theatre.

Stephen Gosson takes this one step further in calling the laughter of the audience the ‘monster of many heads’,Footnote ²³ and Dekker declaims the ‘Plaudits and the Breath of the great Beast, which (like the threatenings of two Cowards) vanish all into air’.Footnote ²⁴ The fear that the audience is acting as a single entity – or in this case, beast – stems from the association of laughter with savagery. Shakespeare's contemporaries held that laughter turned humans into beasts because of its involuntary nature, wherein the brain and the body succumb to irrational emotion. Authors of anti-theatrical tracts were not the only ones to speak out against the dangers of laughter at this time. Early modern pamphlets warned of the way that laughter makes humans act like animals, because laughter is a reflex that takes over the mental faculties of the body. Many writers followed Aristotle in thinking that laughter ‘so disturbs the mental action as to occasion movements that are independent of the will’.Footnote ²⁵ The fear that people could be controlled by laughter or be compelled to laugh seemed the product of the demonic, as other writers warned early modern people to stay away from laughter, or places that generated abundant laughter. Paradoxically, laughter also separated humans from animals, as Plato and others pointed out that animals did not have the capacity to laugh, therefore laughter became one of the distinguishing factors between man and beast. However, early modern writers began discriminating between different types or intensities of laughter. The early modern proverb, ‘a fool when he laugheth lifts up his voice, but the wise man is scares heard’,Footnote ²⁶ is symptomatic of this. Richard Greenham's argument about laughter seen here is not that all laughter is negative, but that when laughter is too hearty, it can be foolish and unnecessary. We find the same notion in The Schoole of Manners, which points out that ‘some laugh so unreasonably that therewith they set out their teeth like grinning dogs’.Footnote ²⁷ As we can see, the volume of the laugh itself becomes tantamount to the reasoning of the human expressing the laugh. While this view on laughter is multifaceted, it is clear that laughter was a source of ongoing discourse because it produced anxiety among pamphlet writers in particular.

In the playhouse, however, all laughing is subject to criticism from the Puritan writers, who warn their parishioners about what they will endure while there: ‘to see Plays and Interludes, where such wanton gestures, such bawdy speeches: such laughing and fleering: such kissing and bussing: such clipping and culling’.Footnote ²⁸ Yet Philip Stubbes goes on to advise theatre-goers that they will learn to ‘deceive’, ‘play the Hypocrite’, and ‘murder, slay, kill, pick, steal, rob and rove’ at the playhouse.Footnote ²⁹ Laughter, then, is among the numerous negative traits one could potentially pick up while at the theatre, and certainly not the most toxic of the bunch. In terms of our understanding of play-going, it is significant to draw attention to the fact that laughter was a staple at early modern playhouses such as the Globe. As these anti-theatrical tracts make clear, laughter was to be expected from the audience, and the act of laughing transformed the audience members from individuals to a collective, a worrying thought for these writers.

Playwrights on audience

However, authors of anti-theatrical tracts were not the only ones voicing concerns against laughter. Playwright Ben Jonson comments that ‘the words or sense of an author, or in the language or actions of men, is awry, or depraved does strangely stir mean affections, and provoke for the most part to laughter’.Footnote ³⁰ His use of the word ‘provoke’ denotes a sense of automatic response, as though the audience is constrained to laugh simply at hearing the author's words. This reflexive exchange between the actors and audience is precisely the concern about laughter; due to its involuntary nature, people were no longer in control of their own bodies and minds, which anti-theatricalists cautioned was especially perilous in the theatre, where so much immoral activity was shown. In his The Defence of Poesie, Phillip Sidney comments on the practice of laughing at plays and other entertainment:

His chastisement of theatre-goers demonstrates the type of laughter that is frowned upon: laughter of derision or scorn. Here, Sidney shows a sensitive side, arguing on behalf of the subject who is ridiculed onstage, informing us that the audience should not find these moments as funny as they do. The fear that this statement evokes shows us how crucial the purpose behind laughter is to writers such as Sidney, because the sentiment of the audience is as significant as the laughter itself. However, playwrights usually express a desire to make the audience laugh in the prologue of the play, as they are aware it is a form of positive feedback and jovial atmosphere if the crowd is engaged and laughing.

The prologue of The Roaring Girl informs us that the audience ‘shall fill with laughter our vast theatre, that's all which I dare promise’ (pro.: 11–12); whereas Thomas Middleton's prologue of The Widow is straightforward, with a simple, ‘I hope ’twill make you laugh’ (pro.: 6). Jonson takes it a step further with Volpone, where the prologue guarantees that ‘he’ll rub your cheeks till, red with laughter, they shall look fresh a week after’ (pro.: 35–6). The laughter the audience is sure to enjoy at this performance offers a healthy medicine for any partakers, unlike the disastrous effects of laughter that the anti-theatricalists discuss. Beaumont and Fletcher's The Captain claims the play is not a tragedy, comedy, or history, ‘yet those that love to laugh, and those that think twelve-pence goes farther this way then in drink or damsels, if they mark the matter through, may stumble on a foolish toy or two will make ’em show their teeth’ (pro.: 9). It seems as though laughter from the audience is the goal of playwrights, yet too much laughter can be repellent. Hamlet warns the players that ‘there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too’ (III, ii: 39–40). Even in this warning we are made aware of laughter rippling through the crowd whether the playwright and actors want it or not. Hamlet's advice stems from Shakespeare himself, giving us a glimpse into the practice of early modern theatre-goers. Thomas Jordan's comedy The Walks of Islington and Hogsdon voices the same concern about laughter operating outside the control of the actors, when it asks, ‘We heard you laugh, but pray. Was it at us, the Poet, or the Play?’Footnote ³² The playwright is unaware of whom or what the audience is laughing at specifically, and therefore this becomes a moment of uncertainty rather than positive reinforcement. It is not my contention that all early modern theatre-goers laughed too much at the plays, but I do find it fascinating that these concerns are what precipitated the modern reluctance to enjoy performances at the reconstructed Globe. This article began with the ongoing debate between Billington and another theatre-goer, and through the anti-theatrical tracts and comments from Hamlet, we hear echoes of Billington's own concerns. It seems as though the real question behind these anxieties is, can there be too much comedy, or displaced comedy, and does the Globe encourage it? This question guides the remainder of my article, as I discuss the comedic effect of the Globe performances and how we might respond to this criticism.

Of course, much of the issue that critics take with laughter at the Globe is when it appears in tragedies. The prologue of Henry VIII tells us, ‘I come no more to make you laugh’ as we are about to witness a more serious play that will evidently involve no laughing (pro.: 1). Yet even in a play that promises no jokes, there still are moments of amusement that involve mocking French fashions or an Old Lady gently chiding Anne for claiming that nothing could convince her to become queen, only to see her coronation before the play is up. It seems that in every Shakespeare play, there are fleeting moments of comedy, regardless of the genre. Unsurprisingly, Jonson makes little distinction between the genres, claiming, ‘the parts of a comedy are the same with a tragedy, and the end is partly the same, for they both delight and teach’.Footnote ³³ Our notion of comedy and tragedy today relies heavily on the audience's response. If the audience is laughing, it must be a comedy; but a tearful or sombre audience is certainly watching a tragedy. Shakespeare continuously blurs these definitions by providing several jokes and double entendres in even his darkest tragedies. It is difficult to imagine the Bard desiring for us to watch in silent contemplation when he offers us witty banter and festive comedy complete with fools, especially when he often encourages laughter in his prologues, as his contemporaries also do. While critics and academics seem comfortable with the notion of a dark comedy such as Twelfth Night or The Merchant of Venice, they are more reluctant to accept laughter in a tragedy. After noticing that audiences laugh during the tragedies at the Globe, actor Phil Cumbus stated, ‘the feeling of responsiveness and that quality being alive is there in tragedy and comedy and I think the tragedies are always funny as well, you should always tap into that, you shouldn't be afraid of that element of leading into the tragedy’.Footnote ³⁴ For the actors, comedy is an essential part of comedy and tragedy, regardless of how serious or grave the play is supposed to be. After all, the blending of tragic and comic elements more closely mimics real life that the theatre is attempting to portray. Furthermore, by including comedy in the tragedy, the playwright heightens the tragic conclusion by including the possibility of comic resolution and then undermining it by the end of the play. This convention seems to bother critics in their critiques of the Globe Theatre practice as a whole, even if the actors take no issue with it, perhaps because the blending of genres defies our notions of categorization and of what the play should look like, rather than what is offered in the text. Undoubtedly, the house style at the Globe Theatre involves more than just the actor's performance preference, and is deeply influenced by the architecture and shared lighting as well.

The architecture of the playhouse also allows for the possibility of a blending of genres. Melpomene and Thalia (Muses of tragedy and comedy, respectively) flank the doors of the stage; the playing space is governed by these entities as a reminder to the audience of the comic and tragic potential of these muses’ involvement in all productions, not merely those labelled with a specific genre. In addition to the iconography on the frons scaenae, the lighting also aids in the creation of comedy. Lighting plays a much larger role in creating laughter at the Globe than has previously been discussed. In fact, there is even a change in comic effect between matinee and evening performances, according to the actors who work there. Colin Hurley explained that even though the audience and theatre are universally lit during evening performances to give the effect of sunlight, the actors are at a disadvantage with how well they can see the audience in front of them. He comments,

Even though he assumed he would enjoy the evening performances more, he found after performing at the Globe that the opposite was true. His remark demonstrates that the actors and audience are deeply aware of one another's presence, whether consciously or not. In addition, it indicates that, for the actors, there is a distinct comedy that derives from the audience and the actors being able to see one another's reactions to the material presented before them. Even a variation of the light offered in the theatre changes the success of the jokes, as the actors are not as aware of the audience's changes in facial expressions or shifts in perception. For the actors, the architecture and lighting are central to creating comic effect.