LETTER: Extravaganza at the Globe

I AM distressed to learn from Robert Butler's article ("Back to the Scene of the Rhyme", Review, 2 July) that in my book Theatres of Memory, I "dismissed" the new Globe Theatre as "a resurrectionary folly". That wasn't my intention. I was using "folly" in an 18th-century sense, to denote an architectural extravaganza. I was moved at the thought - discussed in my book - that the young Sam Wanamaker might have got his inspiration from the magnificent opening sequence of Laurence Olivier's Henry V, which shows the play being performed before Elizabethan groundlings.

The idea of re-creating that is one which will stir many Londoners. It certainly stirs me.

Raphael Samuel

London E1