Stephen Purcell is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Warwick. His research focuses on the performance of the work of Shakespeare and his contemporaries on the modern stage and screen, and his publications include the books Popular Shakespeare and Shakespeare and Audience in Practice. He also directs for the open-air theatre company The Pantaloons.

Invaluable to scholars of performance, adaptation, contemporary productions of Shakespeare, and twentieth- to twenty-first-century commercial theatrical culture … Purcell draws extensively on Rylance’s own archive of the period, and a long concluding interview opens a fascinating window into the impressions, memories, and ideas of this most creative of contemporary Shakespeareans.

• Introduction1 Experiment and Reaction: The 1995–1998Seasons2 Masters of Play: Directing at the Globe 3 Shared Experiences: The Actor/AudienceRelationship 4 The Politics of Performance at the Globe 5 An Interview with Mark Rylance Epilogue: Legacy and Return

Stephen Purcell is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Warwick. His research focuses on the performance of the work of Shakespeare and his contemporaries on the modern stage and screen, and his publications include the books Popular Shakespeare and Shakespeare and Audience in Practice. He also directs for the open-air theatre company The Pantaloons.

Invaluable to scholars of performance, adaptation, contemporary productions of Shakespeare, and twentieth- to twenty-first-century commercial theatrical culture … Purcell draws extensively on Rylance’s own archive of the period, and a long concluding interview opens a fascinating window into the impressions, memories, and ideas of this most creative of contemporary Shakespeareans.

• Introduction1 Experiment and Reaction: The 1995–1998Seasons2 Masters of Play: Directing at the Globe 3 Shared Experiences: The Actor/AudienceRelationship 4 The Politics of Performance at the Globe 5 An Interview with Mark Rylance Epilogue: Legacy and Return