� WHO'S THERE? by Mark Rylance. (from the Globe's Festival of Firsts programme, 1997).

There is a wonderful balance of art and nature in the architecture of the Globe, which seems to have Shakespeare's distinct genius. "I would by contraries execute all things", he writes in the first play of the First Folio. When I look around the Globe, I see Shakespeare playing with many spaces between two contrary forces; most obviously, the actors' space between the pillars of Hercules, which in turn separate, in a mighty gesture of acrchitecture, the heavens from the earth, revealing, in the space between, the musicians' gallery, where Juliet first appeared, above the veiled discovery space, itself, the space between the outer doors of entrance and exit. Looking up from the yard, or stage, one is struck by the contrary art and nature of the "majestical roof fretted with golden fire", and the elemental sky itself with its rain, clouds and jumbo jets, which share in equal proportion the cover of the circular yard.

"O heavy lightness, serious vanity...feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health", word by word, scene by scene, character by character, Shakespeare employs the relationship of opposites to create life. But the really unique relationship, or space, between two seemingly opposite beings in the Globe, is the one in which an actor once walked and said "Who's there?" It is of course the space to which Shakespeare entrusted nearly all his love and wisdom, the space between the audience and anactor.

The space between the audience and actor in the Globe is unique, because the audience are so empowered, and entrusted, with the shared creation of the play. Of course there is much for the moderjn acting community to learn in playing in a space like the Globe, but perhaps there is even more for modern audiences to rediscover about actively imagining, working their thoughts, "minding true things by what their mockeries be".

Theatre is born and exists only in this relationship between the artist and his or her community. London was Shakespeare's community as a theatre artist. The Boar's Head, Eastcheap, The Palace of Westminster, Gadshill, the Tower, the Thames, the Temple - he drew from all environs of the city and peopled his classical stories with characters so natural that they must have been hard to separate from the groundlings when looking down from the balconies in the Globe. And yet, they were characters so archetypal that their actions were suitably framed by the mythical Gods and Goddesses and archetypal, patterned sky, against which the groundlings, standing in the yard, viewed them for a penny.

It is this electric mixture of the Mythic and the real, Saint George and Harry, Titania and Bottom, which we actors and audience will discover and share within the Globe, and I believe it is this imaginative play, in between what is above and below in each of us, which gives our lives soul. Is this the 'authentic Globe'? Are we presenting 'authentic Shakespeare'? The only place 'authentic' Shakespeare exists is somewhere between each individual's heart and mind, in the intutive marriage of their thoughts and desires and actions.