In 1830, the Mulberry Club (a scholarly group formed in Stratford-upon-Avon, named after the destroyed New Place mulberry tree) began organising annual festivities on Shakespeare's birthday, which they referred to as the "Shakespeare Festival".
[3] According to Bowmer, the inspiration for Elizabethan staging of contemporary Shakespeare productions came from William Poel, an English director who organized the Elizabethan Stage Society in London in the early 20th century.
His concepts of Elizabethan staging were brought to North America by Ben Iden Payne.
Other early Shakespeare festivals in North America staged on replicas of the Globe Theatre include the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego (1937)[4] and the Hofstra Shakespeare Festival,[5] launched at Hofstra University in 1950.
The American Shakespeare Theatre operated on a festival stage in Stratford, Connecticut, United States from 1955 to the 1980s.