Shakespearean Prompt-Books of the Seventeenth Century: Introduction

Shakespearean Prompt-Books of the Seventeenth Century

Edited by G. Blakemore Evans

Published by the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia

These works are studies of the stage texts used in various seventeenth-century performances of Shakespeare's plays. G. Blakemore Evans has identified the different manuscript hands that annotate the prompt-books and compared the cuttings with other eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Shakespearean stage texts. Thus, the collection provides an opportunity to examine Shakespearean performance traditions and innovations.

Many of the prompt-books and other stage texts are reproduced here in facsimile, and the University of Virginia Electronic Text Center has created a searchable database of the editor's Introduction and Collations for each play. The textual references in the Collations are linked to JPEG images of the corresponding prompt-book pages, when possible. Use the table of contents at left as a guide to the eight volumes in the series.

Other Shakespearean resources are also available from the Electronic Text Center.