Dates: 1737-1824
Document Types: Artwork; Correspondence; Diaries; Financial and Legal Documents; Interludes; Plays; Prologues and Epilogues; Interludes and Preludes; Playbills; Songs
Description: Archive of almost every play submitted for license between 1737 and 1824. Also includes hundreds of documents that provide social context for the plays.
Dates: 1971-2018
Document Types: Annual Reports; Architectural materials; Around the Globe Magazine; Globe Research; Artwork; Music; Oral Histories; Performance Photographs; Posters; Programmes; Prompt Books; Props; Show Reports; Wardrobe Notes and Jottings
Description: Documents related to the reconstructed Globe Theater. The resource covers over 200 performances through prompt books, wardrobe notes, programs, publicity material, annual reports, show reports, photographs and architectural plans.
Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre is a ‘best guess’ reconstruction based on modern scholarship of the 1599 theater of the same name that William Shakespeare part owned, wrote for and played in. The new theater stands not far from the original Globe on London's Southbank. The performance archive shows how productions at the reconstructed Globe and Sam Wanamaker Playhouse were conceived, rehearsed, dressed, marketed, sound tracked, how props were used, how the audiences behaved and the theater history and performance lessons that were observed and learned. The architectural archive contains material on how the reconstruction of the theater was designed and planned and some of the conversations and debates that informed construction decisions.
Dates: 1670-1970
Document Types: Production Design; Film Script; Prompt Book; Correspondence; Manuscript; Photographs; Play Bills; Printed Books; Music
Description: Provides digital access to prompt books from the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC.
The Folger Shakespeare Library has collected prompt books (scripts of the plays marked up for performance) of Shakespeare’s plays, as well as prompt books of other plays performed by influential Shakespearean actors, since the library’s founders, Henry and Emily Folger, purchased their first copy. Alongside these prompt books, the Folger has acquired other material related to performance, such as playbills, scrapbooks, newspaper clippings, theatrical account books, photographs, sketches, costumes, props, cue sheets, lighting plots, musical scores, and the correspondence and writings of Shakespearean actors, directors, and managers.
This resource features over 1,000 prompt books of 34 of Shakespeare’s plays, including editions owned by notable actors and directors such as Charles and John Philip Kemble, Henry Irving, Ellen Terry and Laurence Olivier. Of these 1,000 prompt books, approximately 10% are for Hamlet, and 6% are for Merchant of Venice and Macbeth, respectively. Seventeen performances of particular cultural importance have been selected as case studies, featuring additional archival material such as photographs, costume designs and music scores. These case studies include David Garrick’s revised 1772 production of Hamlet, Henry Irving’s famous 1879 production of The Merchant of Venice, and Laurence Olivier’s Academy Award-winning cinema release of Hamlet in 1948.