Shakespeare Launches Ambitious Record Label

Shakespeare's Global Theatre has launched an in-house record label which it hopes will attract more people to historical and spoken word music.

Globe Editions' first release,  Elizabethan Street Songs – 'From The Alehouse To The Whorehouse', features a mixture of period instruments and songs from the 16th and 17th centuries.

The label, which is based at the London theatre, is being launched by Bill Gray, a former marketing director at Tower Records.

He told Music week that it will bring “a fresh approach in the way spoken word and early music has been hitherto presented and performed”.

The label is expected to announce another release before the end of 2008.