We tend to categorise theatres as “new” or “old” but there is also a third category that might be called “new-old”, in which the Globe Theatre specialises. Having opened, in 1997, a reconstruction of Shakespeare’s open-air theatre, beside the Thames in London, the venue has now added, as an annexe, the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. This new indoor space, though less modelled on a single period playhouse than the Globe was, draws on what is known about a number of covered Jacobean theatres, including the Blackfriars.Dominic Dromgoole, the energetic artistic director of the Globe, has chosen to open the Wanamaker with John Webster’s 1614 blood-bath masterpiece The Duchess of Malfi, which was performed both outside at the Globe and inside at the Bla