If you found yourself in 16th-century London with a bit of spare money and free time, you might have wedged yourself into an inn or a playhouse to see a performance. The space may have been a square, circle, or polygon, and it might have had a roof—thatched or tiled, and perhaps celestial in design, splashed with blue and spangled with stars. It might even have a trap door or two—one to welcome gods and goddesses to Earth, another to plunge sinners to Hell, says Farah Karim-Cooper, head of higher…
