Globes: The Making of 16th Century Maps of the World

That Shakespeare Life

It is a frequent misconception that people from Shakespeare's lifetime believed the world was flat. In fact, the publication of the world on a spherical globe was not only well established across Europe by Shakespeare’s lifetime, but there are numerous portraits from the 16-17th century showing individuals owning and displaying spherical globes. The first English person to create a spherical globe published it in 1592, just 7 years before William Shakespeare chose “The Globe” as the name for his newly relocated circular theater in Southwark. Here today to walk us through the history of displaying the Earth as a globe, the artisans who undertook this task, the materials they used, and where they got their data to map out the world on a giant physical ball, is our guest, Sylvia Sumira.

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