All the world's a stage..but which one?

Swan theatre, London

Shakespeare in London. Shakespeare at the Globe.
 Right now, a replica of the Globe sits near the Tate Modern in London, the original lost to history. No photographs remain (what with the technology having not been invented yet), so how do we know what the Globe looked like?
 In 1596, whilst visiting the Swan theatre in London Johannes De Witt (a Dutchman) made a crude sketch of the Swans interior from the point of view of the upper galleries - a large stage,and an area behind the stage where the actors changed (the 'tiring', short for 'attiring'. It was multileveled so it was also used for balcony scenes), and a partial roof. The original of this has been lost, but a friend made a copy, and this is what's been passed down to us. This is the only known record of an Elizabethan London theatre interior, and in its defence it's probably similar to how the Globe looked.
 Then, a Bohemian called Wenceslas Hollar (in either the 1630s or 1640s) drew an illustration of London that showed London, but the perspective is from one that he couldn't have ever seen - diagonally above the tower of Southwark Cathedral. The only way he could have been there is if:

a) A building had existed there at the time. It didn't.

b) He'd been suspended by a crane.

c) He'd been levitating.

c would have violated the witchcraft laws of the time (when the law came down hard on you for it), and b is just silly, so he probably drew it from imagination. It suffers, though, from showing the second Globe, not the first, and Shakespeare had died in 1616, so it couldn't have been the one that premiered Hamlet. There was another illustration, an engraving by a Dutchman Claes Jan Visscher that clearly shows the original Globe theatre - the one that we all think of when we think of the Globe, a crude 'O' shape made of wood - and it's been the basis for what we've thought the Globe looked like to this day.
 Except that he'd never visited London. He'd done his engraving based on an earlier engraving from 1572, before the Globe had been built. So, probably what it was that the 'O' shape was a common design. Or there had been an earlier theatre that got burned down, rebuilt, and renamed by its owners. It's hard to say, like everything else about Shakespeare it's maddeningly elusive. All we have, apart from a few signatures, are speculations and reasonable predictions. Oh, and conspiracy theories.

Shakespeare day

 Today was St Georges day, the national day of England. It was also supposedly the birthday and deathday of William Shakespeare.
 I must admit, I am sceptical of this idea. It just sounds too neat. Englands national poet born and died on its national day. As with much of Shakespeares life, there is sufficient uncertainty as to allow speculation. Whilst we know when he died, when he was born is uncertain. All we know for definite is that he was baptized on April 26th, which his local church documented. At the time, convention dictated that a child was baptized on the first Sunday or holy day following birth as it was believed that if not and if the infant died then they were going straight to hell. So, the error bars for his birth-date could be as high as a week before. If he had been born April 23rd 1564, a Sunday, then this presents a problem. St Marks day was April 25th. However, some people thought this to be unlucky, so maybe they delayed until April 26th.
 Believe it or not, to have this amount of data is quite lucky. Stratford had only started to keep records from 1558, even though they had been ordered to in 1538 (it was viewed with suspicion as a way to increase tax collection). Unfortunately, this wasn't in time for Anne Hathaway, who was older by eight years, so no record of her birth exists.
 Shakespeares life is 5% fact and 95% speculation, and surprisingly many speculative ideas have been worked into the publics knowledge of the man. I am going to write a series of articles about this and about Elizabethan England, because it's quite instructive on the limits of how much we can know history.