ONLINE RESOURCES • early modern PLAYS on STAGE & PAGE

This is an evolving list of online databases, catalogues, projects, digital archives, videos, reference works, &c, that enrich the study of early modern English plays at the intersection of performance and print. The list also includes a category called ‘Vital Contexts’ featuring resources that help situate the drama of the period in its social, political, cultural, and economic circumstances.

Two caveats: (1) this list not exhaustive; and (2) it is meant to supplement—not replace—scholarship published in more traditional venues such as journals, edited collections, and monographs. On the second point, the need for this list in the first place should underscore that some of the most urgent scholarship is being published in open-access venues online. That said, several of the resources below are only accessible via an institutional subscription. These are noted, and I have provided the access link via PSU Libraries, my home research library. Please check your own institution’s database subscription list to see if you have access. Alternatively, some scholarly organizations now offer access to some databases with membership, which are usually listed on the member benefits page of the organization’s website.

Where possible, the names of principal investigators, or project leaders, are cited. Where no information about leadership is available, the home or funding institution is mentioned. Please consult the “About” pages on the linked websites for more information about the teams behind the projects.

Finally, thank you to colleagues have alerted me to new resources and updated me on changes to the resources they made and/or maintain. I would love to hear from you if you find this site useful for your own research or if you use it in your teaching.

You can contact me via this form with feedback, corrections, and new resources.

UPDATED: August 21, 2022

EARLY MODERN THEater HISTORY

Projects—some ongoing—that research, document, explore, and/or interpret early modern plays and their original theatrical contexts. 

Henslowe-Alleyn Digitization Project (Grace Ioppolo) — Essays about and images of manuscripts left to Dulwich College by the actor Edward Alleyn (1566-1626), including Philip Henslowe's "diary" and the "part" of Orlando Furioso.

REED Online — The recently launched and still developing online version of Records of Early English Drama (REED), which collects evidence of performance across England until 1642.

REED: Patrons & Performances — A range of resources for studying touring performers, as well as their patrons, playing places and travel routes, in England outside London before 1642.

Shakespearean London Theatres (ShaLT) — Maps, films, and recordings of lectures about the London theatres of Shakespeare's time.

Before Shakespeare: The Beginnings of London Commercial Theatre, 1565-1595 (Andy Kesson and Lucy Munro) — Lively repository of archival research and performance workshops examining the mid-sixteenth-century origins of London's commercial playhouses.

Rose Theatre Research Trust — Information about the Rose, including its early modern history and its excavation in 1989, as well as details about past, current, and future productions.

Recreation of the Rose Theatre, London (Ortelia) — A model of the Rose based on the excavated foundations of the theater and the work of theater historians and architects. A video simulates different weather and changing light conditions inside the structure.

Reconstructing the Rose (Roger Clegg) — An annotated 3D model of the Rose that walks users through the different architectural features of the building as well as providing information about the playhouse’s location and nearby structures.

The Theatre: Shakespeare's First Theatre — Images and information pertaining to the 2010 excavation of The Theatre. Includes 3D animation of what The Theatre looked like based on archaeological evidence.

The Curtain: Archaeology — Overview of the ongoing excavation of the Curtain Theatre in Shoreditch. See also these updates from the Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) and this early account of the news by Holger Syme.

Original Pronunciation (David Crystal et al) — Site dedicated to the study and performance of early modern plays and other early texts in OP.

Virtual Paul's Cross Project (NC State) — Explores the physical environment and acoustics St. Paul's Cathedral and churchyard, providing historical and multi-sensory contexts for the sermon John Donne preached there on the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot (November 5, 1622).

Biographical Index of English Drama Before 1660 (David J. Kathman) — Annotated list of all playwrights, actors, patrons, musicians, and others known to be active in the production and reception of English plays until 1660.

Compendium of Renaissance Drama (Brian Jay Corrigan) — Quirky digests of characters, sources, places (real & fictional), and historical people related to early modern plays.

Shakespearean Promptbooks of the Seventeenth Century (Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia) — Images and transcriptions of manuscript annotations in Folio texts marked up for performance. Online version of G. Blakemore Evans' 8-volume reference work of the same name.

Romeo & Juliet: Searchable Database for Prompt Books (Jill Levenson) — Database of information from ±170 prompt books for productions of Romeo & Juliet staged between the seventeenth century and the 1980s.

Performing Restoration Shakespeare (Queen’s University Belfast, Syracuse University, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Globe Theatre, and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust) — Multidisciplinary project that investigates how Shakespeare was performed during the Restoration as well as how this style of Shakespearean performance can be staged today.

The Diary of Samuel Pepys (Paul Gyford) — Full text of Pepys' diary (blogged in real time between January 2003 until May 2012 and again starting in January 2013), as well as letters sent and received by Pepys and entries about the people, places, and things in Pepys' daily life.

The London Stage Database, 1660-1800 — New searchable, online iteration of The London Stage, 1660-1800, a reference work documenting London performances from the long eighteenth century using playbills, newspapers, and theatrical diaries. The database is searchable by title, names of performers, date rages, and theaters.

Comédie-Française Registers Project (CFRP) (Christian Biet, Charlotte Bouteille, Renaud Bret-Vitoz, et al.) — An open-access digitized archive of the Comédie-Française acting troupe from its establishment in 1680, including records of performances, budgets, casting, daily receipts, and expenses. See also Databases, Revenues, Repertory: The French Stage Online, 1680-1793 (Sylvaine Guyot and Jeffrey S. Ravel), a collection of essays exploring the CFRP archive.

PERFORMANCE(s)

Resources to watch, study, and teach modern performances of early modern plays.

COMPANIES, FESTIVALS, & PERFORMANCE ARCHIVES

Global Shakespeares (MIT) — Open access video and performance archive of Shakespeare productions from around the world and related scholarly resources (essays, scripts, interviews, etc).

Digital Theatre — Subscription-based archive of theater productions (including of Shakespeare and early modern plays) from some of the world’s premiere performance venues. Rentals are also available. If you are affiliated with an institution, check if you have access to an institutional subscription.

Drama Online — Subscription-based archive of theater productions, including ones by the Royal Shakespeare Company and Shakespeare’s Globe. If you are affiliated with an institution, check if you have access to an institutional subscription.

Shakespeare’s Globe (London UK) — YouTube Channel (clips and interviews) plus Globe Player, which allows you to rent and buy Globe productions and also features some free content. A complete archive (through 2017) of the Globe’s “Read Not Dead” project is available here.

The Royal Shakespeare Company (Stratford-upon-Avon UK) [YouTube Channel] 

American Shakespeare Center (Staunton VA) — YouTube Channel (clips and interviews) plus BlkFrsTV, which allows you to stream recordings of ASC productions.

Stratford Shakespeare Festival (Stratford, Ontario) [YouTube Channel]

Oregon Shakespeare Festival (Ashland OR) [YouTube Channel]

The Public Theater, Shakespeare in the Park (New York NY) [YouTube Channel]

Red Bull Theater (New York NY) [Facebook Video Channel]

Passion in Practice (London UK) [Vimeo Channel]

Cheek by Jowl (London UK) — Includes a robust online company archive of materials relating to past productions.

Edward's Boys (Stratford-upon-Avon UK) — A boys’ theatre company from Shakespeare’s school in Stratford exploring the repertoire of the early modern boys’ playing companies.

Lazarus Theatre Company (London UK)

The Dolphin’s Back (London UK) — Archive of materials relating to past productions as well as a full recording of the company’s production of The Misfortunes of Arthur performed at Gray’s Inn Chapel (2019).

Brave Spirits Theatre (Washington DC) — Productions of early modern plays with an emphasis on female artists and feminist perspectives. [YouTube Channel]

Shakespeare on Librivox — Recordings (many of them amateur) of Shakespeare’s plays and poems.

Shakespeare & Early Modern Streams (Thea Buckley) — Clearing house of links for companies streaming productions of Shakespeare and early modern plays.

Shakespeare in Early Film (SHEAF) (Kendra Preston Leonard) — An online catalogue of Shakespeare film adaptations (and parodies)—and the materials/ephemera surrounding them) produced between 1895 and 1929. 

The Show Must Go Online (Robert Myles) — An archive of award-winning "made-for-digital" performances of Shakespeare's plays created in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Each production was rehearsed in less than a week and features professional and amateur actors from around the world, with an emphasis on inclusivity and gender-balanced casting. More information about the project is available here.

The Bardathon (Peter Kirwan) — Technically a blog, but actually an extensive, and frequently updated, archive of detailed theater reviews focused on (but not exclusively) productions of Shakespeare and early modern plays.

PERFORMANCE-AS-RESEARCH/LEARNING & RELATED EDITORIAL PROJECTS

Performing the Queen's Men (McMaster University) — Collection of materials, including video, from the "original practices" rehearsal and staging of three Queen's Men plays: The Famous Victories of Henry V, King Leir, and Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay.

The Three Ladies of London in Context (McMaster University, University of Waterloo, University of Toronto) — Collection of materials (videos, scripts, images, glossaries) relating to the performance-as-research staging of Robert Wilson's The Three Ladies of London and related conference proceedings in 2015. Also features materials from a comparative staging of 1 Henry VI .

The Dutch Courtesan (University of York) — Records relating to the preparations for and performances of John Marston's The Dutch Courtesan in 2013, including a film of the entire production.

The Dutch Courtesan 2019 (University of Toronto) — A website generated as part of the "Strangers and Aliens in London and Toronto: Sex, Religion, and Xenophobia in John Marston's The Dutch Courtesan" project (January to March 2019). The site includes production materials (including photographs and some videos), study resources, and notes from conference proceedings.

The Complete Works of John Marston (University of Leeds) — Supporting website for the forthcoming print edition of The Complete Works of John Marston. Includes clips and full performances of several Marston plays as well as short essays written by the plays' editors.

A Christian Turn'd Turk (University of Toronto) — An online repository for materials related to a production of Robert Daborne's play, staged as part of the conference Early Modern Migrations: Exiles, Expulsion, and Religious Refugees 1400-1700 in 2012. Resources include a video of the performance, as well as the program and modernized production script. 

The Thomas Nashe Project (Newcastle) — Supporting website for the forthcoming print edition of Nashe's works. Includes a range of resources to contextualize his life and writings. Features (among other performance-related resources) a full recording of the Edward’s Boys production of Summer’s Last Will.

Staging and Representing the Scottish Renaissance Court (Brunel University & University of Edinburgh) — Repository of multi-media documents relating to the Scottish Renaissance and Stewart courts, modern images of national identity, and the Scottish past. Includes a full-length recording of the project's 2013 production of A Satire of the Three Estates.

Staging the Henrician Court (Oxford Brookes University & University of Edinburgh) — Records of a research project examining Tudor court drama, including a full-length recording of the project's 2009 production of John Heywood's The Play of the Weather.

Playhouse Lab (José A. Pérez Díez and Jane Rickard) — A play-reading group based at the University of Leeds. The site features a list of past unrehearsed and semi-rehearsed readings (in-person and virtual) and an archive of photographs documenting these events.

Reading Early Plays (REP) (Martin Wiggins et al) — An ongoing, collaborative research project focused on better understanding early modern theater companies and their repertories. The REP website provides information for regular online play-readings that anyone can attend. The group is currently reading through the surviving repertory of the Lord Chamberlain’s (later, the King’s) Men. A small subscription fee helps support these events.

The Unnatural Tragedy (University of Vienna) — A video recording of Margaret Cavendish's The Unnatural Tragedy performed by a student drama society at the University of Vienna in January 2020.

Screening Shakespeare (Alexa Alice Joubin) — An open-access online film course that covers the basics of film-making (mise-en-scène, cinematography, sound design), instructions for how to analyze film, and overviews of theoretical approaches to film (with attention to formalism, social justice, and adaptation)—all in the context of Shakespeare.  

SITES TO GENERATE CUE SCRIPTS, &c

Anteloquy (Tara L. Lyons) — Offers instructions for how to make cue scripts as well as guidance for how to run a cue script workshop and other ideas for teaching with cue scripts.

Folger Digital Texts API — The Folger Shakespeare Library API tool allows you to generate cue scripts for any scene. The site also has functionality to isolate all the lines spoken by individual characters in a play, determine which characters are on stage and when, list the words spoken in a given text and their frequency, and more.

FUN & GAMES

Play the Knave (University of California, Davis) — Site for a motion-capture video game that lets players perform scenes from Shakespeare's plays.

Elsinore —  “A time-looping adventure game set in the world of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Elsinore combines strong social simulation elements, a dynamic story that reacts immediately to player decisions, and a world full of diverse characters with secrets to uncover.” The game unfolds from Ophelia’s perspective.

Good Tickle Brain: A Shakespeare Web Comic — (Mostly) Shakespeare-related comics by Mya Gosling.

PRINTED BOOKS, THE BOOK TRADE, & THE HISTORY OF READING

Databases and digitized reference works that help track the publication, circulation, and reception of plays in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Database of Early English Playbooks (DEEP) (Zachary Lesser & Alan Farmer) — User-friendly and customizable database of information (from a variety of key print and online reference works) about every playbook produced in England, Scotland, and Ireland before 1660. Designed to facilitate research on the publication, printing, and marketing of early modern plays.

Literary Print Culture: The Stationers' Company Archive, 1554-2007 [PSU login required] — Subscription-based database of primary documents connected to the Stationers' Company. Features downloadable, high-res digital images of the Entry Books of Copies, membership records, court records, and English Stock Company records. Also includes text-searchable copies of the Arber and Eyre transcripts (see below for open-access copies of these books). An invaluable resource for studying the early English book trade. [If the link above does not work, navigate to the database via the link on here.]

British Book Trade Index (BBTI) — Catalogue of people known to have worked in the English and Welsh book trades before 1851. Aggregates brief biographical and trade details for each.

Scottish Book Trade Index (SBTI) — Names, trades, and addresses of all known figures working in Scottish book production before 1850.

London Book Trades (LBT) — A wiki-style database containing biographical information on more than 30,000 individuals (printers, booksellers, bookbinders, stationers, and those in associated trades) who worked in the book trade in and around London before 1830.

Women and the Book Trade (Oxford Bibliographies) [PSU login required] — Paywalled but extensive annotated bibliography by Helen Smith of scholarship and reference works pertaining to women in the early modern European book trade. A terrific starting point for any research on the subject.

Early Printed Books (Sarah Werner) — An open-access website companion to Werner’s book Studying Early Printed Books, 1450-1800: A Practical Guide (Wiley 2019) that can be used in conjunction with the book or on its own. Includes a variety of images designed to illustrate and explain the features of early printed books as well as resources for teaching about early printed books.

The Memory of Paper (The Bernstein Consortium) — A clearing house for resources about paper, paper study, and the history of paper in Europe, including 49 databases of watermarks.

Ornamento (Alexander Wilkinson) — A pilot repository of ornaments and illustrations found in early printed European books. It currently contains about “a quarter of a million ornate letters, ornaments, borders, musical notation, diagrams, and illustrations drawn from Iberian print before 1700.

BibSite (Bibliographical Society of America) — An open-access, crowdsourced digital repository for bibliographical research (including unpublished reference works) and pedagogical materials related to “bibliography, in the broadest sense of the term.”

Book Owners Online (The Bibliographical Society [UK], UCL Centre for Lives & Letters, and David Pearson): An expanding open-access directory of British book owners who lived between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, as well as information about their books and libraries.

Reading Experience Database (UK RED) (The Open University): An open-access database of more than 30,000 records that document the history of reading in Britain (and by British people abroad) from 1450 to 1945. Sources include both print and manuscript documentation such as diaries, commonplace books, memoirs, criminal court and prison records, and sociological surveys.

The Archaeology of Reading in Early Modern Europe (AOR) (Earle Havens, Matthew Symonds, Lisa Jardine) — A digitized, browsable, and searchable corpus of three dozen books heavily annotated by John Dee and Gabriel Harvey. Users can view page images alongside full transcriptions and English translations of manuscript marginalia and easily locate annotations, underlined passages, manuscript symbols and marks, and references to the people, places, and books mentioned in the notes.

The Collation (The Folger Institute) — A record of insights and observations from staff and researchers at the Folger Shakespeare Library, with a focus on the Folger’s wide-ranging collections and how to use them.

SELECT DIGITIZED PRINT REFERENCE WORKS

Transcript of the Stationers’ Register (1554-1640) (Penn State University Libraries via HathiTrust)

Transcript of the Stationers’ Register (1640-1708) (UPenn Libraries linking to Internet Archive and Hathi Trust) (University of Michigan Libraries via HathiTrust)

Dictionaries of Printers and Booksellers in England, Scotland, and Ireland, and of Foreign Printers of English Books, 1557-1640 (McKerrow) (University of Michigan Libraries via HathiTrust)

Dictionary of the Booksellers who were at Work in England, Scotland, and Ireland, 1641-1667 (University of Michigan Libraries via Internet Archive) & 1668-1725 (University of California Libraries via Internet Archive)

Printers & Publishers' Devices in England & Scotland, 1485-1640 (McKerrow) (Royal College of Physicians, London, via Internet Archive)

A Census of Shakespeare's Plays in Quarto, 1594-1709 (Bartlett & Pollard) (University of California Libraries via Internet Archive)

Mr William Shakespeare Original And Early Editions Of His Quartos And Folios His Source Books And Those Containing Contemporary Notices (Bartlett) (via Internet Archive)

digital texts & IMAGES

Sites that feature full texts—whether facsimiles, transcriptions, or high-resolution images—of early modern plays. (See Sarah Werner's helpful post about reuse policies for digital image collections, in particular.) 

Digital Anthology of Early Modern English Drama (EMED) (Folger) — Full texts of 29 plays not attributed to Shakespeare (downloadable in a variety of formats) plus metadata for all 403 non-Shakespearean plays associated with the commercial theater between 1576 and 1642. Users have the option to read full texts in original or conservatively regularized spelling.

Linked Early Modern Drama Online (LEMDO) (UVic) — Soon-to-be host to several existing online editorial projects (see below) as well as new digital editions and anthologies.

Digital Renaissance Editions (DRE) (UVic) — Electronic scholarly editions of early English plays and texts of related interest. Annotated and collated.

Internet Shakespeare Editions (ISE) (UVic) — Open-access site providing peer reviewed online editions of Shakespeare's plays and poems, a range of related critical and reference materials, a database of Shakespeare in performance (on stage and screen), and theater reviews.

Queen's Men Editions (QME) (UVic) — Peer-reviewed original- and modern-spelling editions of Queen's Men plays with theatrical, historical, and scholarly contexts. Affiliated with Performing the Queen's Men and Internet Shakespeare Editions.

Lost Plays Database (LPD) — A searchable, wiki-style database of information about and images relating to plays written and/or performed between 1570 and 1642 but that do not survive in a full text.

Co-Authored Drama in Renaissance England (CADRE) (Rory Loughnane and Brett Greatley-Hirsch) — A crowd-sourced wiki-style forum for where scholars can share information about co-authorship (including collaboration, revision, and adaptation) of early modern plays.

Early English Books Online (EEBO) [PSU login required] — Subscription-based database of digital facsimile page images of almost every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and British North America (as well as works in English printed elsewhere) between 1473 and 1700. Based on the Early English Books collection of microfilm facsimile images of actual books.

Early English Books Online-Text Creation Partnership (EEBO-TCP)  — XML/SGML encoded electronic text editions of early print books based on page images in EEBO.  The first 25,000 transcriptions have been available in the public domain as EEBO-TCP, Phase I, since January 2015, with an additional 20,000 to enter the public domain in 2020.

Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) [PSU login required] — Subscription-based database of facsimile images of over 180,000 (primarily) English titles published during the 18th century in the UK and elsewhere. About 2,300 have undergone optical character recognition (OCR) and are fully searchable here. For information about locating ECCO-TCP texts in the public domain, see Stephen H. Gregg's helpful finding aid.

Early English Playbooks, 1594-1799 (Boston Public Library) — Open-access images of more than 1,500 individual editions of early English plays, including public stage plays, masques, pageants, and other dramatic entertainments.

Digital Collections: Rare Books (Harry Ransom Center) — Open-access images of many of the HRC’s pre-modern rare book holdings including early modern playbooks.

Schoenberg Center for Electronic Text and Image (SCETI), Furness Shakespeare Library (UPenn Libraries) — A searchable online repository of select texts and images from the Horace Howard Furness Shakespeare Library.

Furness Theatrical Image Collection (UPenn Libraries) — Digital images of more than 2,000 prints and photographs relating to the performance of Shakespeare, mostly in the 19th century.

LUNA: Folger Shakespeare Library Digital Image Collection — Over 100,000 high-res images from the Folger's collection, including books, theater memorabilia, manuscripts, art, and more. Updates to the database are noted here.

Early Modern English Books (Fondation Martin Bodmer, Université de Genève) — Digitized copies of all the books at the Fondation Bodmer printed in England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and British America, and English books printed elsewhere, between the 1470s and 1700, including 37 Shakespeare volumes as well as editions of plays by other dramatists from the period.

An Online Reader of John Cotgrave's The English Treasury of Wit & Language (Joshua McEvilla) — Site dedicated to illuminating the earliest printed miscellany consisting exclusively of extracts from British print and manuscript plays. Provides a variety of ways to study the 58 dramatists and 240 plays represented in Cotgrave's Treasury.

English Broadside Ballads Archive (EBBA) (University of California, Santa Barbara) — An easily navigable online repository that makes broadside ballads from many different holdings easily and fully accessible in a number of forms: ballad sheet facsimiles, facsimile transcriptions, text transcriptions, and recordings.

Broadside Ballads Online (Bodleian Library, Oxford) — Digital collection of English printed ballad-sheets from the Bodleian's extensive holdings. Includes links to other resources for the study of the English ballad tradition.

Digital.Bodleian — More than 700,000 digital images from the Bodleian Library's collections, including many relating to the print and performance histories of early modern plays.

Annotated Books Online — A archive of digital images of early modern annotated books drawn from a range of special collections libraries.

Luminarium: Anthology of English Literature — Links to full texts of early modern plays and other literary texts, organized by author.

Romeo & Juliet (Rebecca Olson and students) — A student-generated online edition of Romeo & Juliet published by Open Oregon State.

Digital Restoration Drama (Lauren Liebe) — An open-access database of playtexts from the Restoration period currently featuring a limited selection of plays performed, printed, or written between 1660 and 1685.

HamletWorks (Bernice W. Kliman, Frank Nicholas Clary, Hardin Aasand, Eric Rasmussen, Laury Magnus, Marvin Hunt) — A gathering of linked-to resources (texts, performances, scholarship) about Hamlet containing “deep levels of information on Hamlet and related works for scholars, students, theater practitioners, and fans.” 

HyperHamlet (Lukas Rosenthaler, Regula Hohl Trillini, Sixta Quassdorf, Balz Engler, Annelies Häcki-Buhofer) — A database of references to Hamlet designed as a hypertext of the play. Provides access to thousands of extracts from later texts that quote particular lines and allows users to search these extracts by character or scene.

Digital Book History (Whitney Trettien) — A digital edition of Susanna Collet’s commonplace book (1635) and the downloadable Manicule software package for building digital editions of material books.

ANALYZING TEXTS

Digital projects designed to analyze large corpora of early modern texts, including plays and related texts.