Yates (Frances A.), 1899-1981

(21.5 cm), xiv, 218 pp., 25 plates. Publisher’s pictorial wrappers. - “The argument of Theatre of the World is that the design of the theater built by James Burbage, which influenced the later theater movement, including Shakespeare’s Globe, was based on classical theory on the design of the Roman theater as expounded in Vitruvius’s book on architecture. The arguments used in building up this theory emphasize the fact that Vitruvius was known among the artisan class in Elizabethan London through the teaching and writings of John Dee and could therefore have been known to Burbage. Since the geometry of the ground plan of the classical theater was based on cosmology, I further argue that cosmic associations would have been implicit in the Shakespearean theater, and that the ‘Idea’ or meaning of the Globe Theater would have been that of a ‘theater of the world’, expressive of harmonies between macrocosm and microcosm” (the author, writing in The New York Review of Books, 29 January 1970). ¶ Wrappers rubbed, occasional annotation in ink.