LibGuides: ENTH 3136: Shakespeare in Performance: Background

About this Guide

This guide highlights key resources for conducting effective information research in theatre, including the following:

Reference sources to find background information on your topic
Catalogs to search for books in print and online
Databases for locating scholarly journal articles
Databases for locating primary sources & historical news articles
Resources for locating and sourcing images
Resources for citing your sources and writing

If you need assistance identifying additional resources, search terms or strategies, please schedule a research consultation.

Image: Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library. "Actors Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and Gregory Hines in a rehearsal shot from the New York Shakespeare Festival production of the play "Twelfth Night" at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. (New York)" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1989. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/26aa3270-b781-0131-ad62-58d385a7b928

Reference Sources

These sources are the most helpful for background research or looking up facts

British Black and Asian Shakespeare Performance Database
A free database that contains searchable information about practitioners, plays, theatre companies, and the roles played by black and Asian performers in the UK from 1930 to 2015. It draws on performance archives, production reviews, documentary evidence and personal interviews with practitioners and other members of BAME communities.
Gale Biography in Context
A comprehensive database of biographical information on over 320,000 people from throughout history, around the world, and across all disciplines and subject areas. It combines nearly 415,000 biographies from more than 780 volumes of over 130 respected Gale Group sources such as Contemporary Authors, Encyclopedia of World Biography, Newsmakers, Contemporary Theatre, Film, and Television, Contemporary Musicians, Historic World Leaders, Notable Twentieth-Century Scientists, Contemporary Black Biography, Religious Leaders of America, International Dictionary of Art and Artists, Writers Directory, and many more, with over 2.5 million full-text articles from 250 magazines.
Internet Broadway Database
Created by the Research Department of The Broadway League, the national trade association for Broadway, IBDB provides a comprehensive database of shows produced on Broadway, including all "title page" information about each production. IBDB also offers historical information about theatres and various statistics and facts related to Broadway.
Internet Off-Broadway Database
The Lucille Lortel Archives produce the IOBDB. They contain complete Off-Broadway seasons dating back to 1958. As of March 2012, over 6,000 shows have been entered. For this archive, Off-Broadway refers to any production that has satisfied the following requirements: "Played at a Manhattan theatre with a seating capacity of 100-499, intended to run a closed-ended or open-ended schedule of performances of more than one week, and offered itself to critics and general audiences alike."
Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance
This encyclopedia provides authoritative and up-to-date information about theatre and performance from ancient Greek theatre to the latest developments in London, Paris, New York, and around the globe. In addition to performances in playhouses, it covers dance, opera, radio, film, television, and popular performance, including carnivals, circus, and public executions. Entries range from short definitions of terms to lengthy considerations of genres and movements, such as feminism and psychoanalytic criticism. Entries on cities and regions place performance in its local social and political context. Searches can be done by keyword or through a browsable A-Z list. Written in accessible language.
Play Index
Index to more than 30,000 plays written from Antiquity to the present and published from 1949 to the present; includes mysteries, pageants, plays in verse, puppet performances, radio and television plays, and classic drama. Unique search limits include gender and number of cast members, genre, document type, and grade interest level.
Theatre in Context Collection
The collection includes 40,000 pages of monumental reference works, encyclopedias, images, flyers, playbills, postcards, scrapbooks, and other resources.

Using Encyclopedias in your Research

Wikipedia

As the world's largest encyclopedia, Wikipedia's coverage is vast. You are more likely to find articles on obscure topics in Wikipedia than you would anywhere else. But is Wikipedia accurate? While Wikipedia can be edited by anyone in the world (including you!), scholarly encyclopedias like Encyclopedia Britannica are written and edited by experts in their fields. However, 2005 study in the journal Nature weighed the accuracy of science articles on Wikipedia against the more scholarly Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia was found to be nearly as accurate in the 42 articles investigated. Encyclopedia Britannica refuted these claims. When using Wikipedia, or any encyclopedia for that matter, it is wise to verify what you find.

Strengths of Wikipedia

Wikipedia is updated frequently. New information can be, and often is, added to the site within minutes. Due to editorial limitations, scholarly encyclopedias are usually updated annually.
Because Wikipedia crowd sourced, there is the potential for a broader authorship than is found in academic publications.
Citations in Wikipedia offer a wider array of materials, including articles and resources that are available for free and online.

Weaknesses of Wikipedia

Editors on Wikipedia are not necessarily experts. Authorship on Wikipedia is often anonymous or obscured.
Articles are always changing, making them difficult to cite in your research. An article you read today, may look quite different tomorrow.
Articles can be vandalized, providing wildly inaccurate information.

Ways to use Wikipedia

Use Wikipedia to get a general idea about a topic you are interested in.
Wikipedia is great for generating keywords for further searching in CLIO and elsewhere.
Check the citations, recommended resources and external links to guide you to more scholarly work.

Scholarly Encyclopedias

Similar to Wikipedia, these resources provide an overview on a given topic, but the authors are experts in the fields they are covering. Below you will find a few general encyclopedia collections with coverage across a wide variety of fields.

Credo
Credo is a database of background content. It's full-text and can help you learn the basics of any topic. Start your research here to focus your topic, find keywords and people, and discover more in-depth books and articles.
Gale Virtual Reference Library
Gale Virtual Reference Library is a database of encyclopedias and specialized reference sources for multidisciplinary research.
Oxford Reference Library
Brings together digitized entries from Oxford's Dictionaries, Companions and Encyclopedias, spanning multiple subject areas.

Sage Knowledge
A database of ebooks and reference books published by SAGE covering the social sciences and education, including such areas as African American Studies, Aged & Gerontology, Anthropology, Communication and Media Studies, Criminology and Criminal Justice, Economics, Education, Gender & Sexuality Studies, History, Politics, Psychology, Social Issues, Social Work & Social Policy, and Sociology.

[image] Suze Meyers, Feminist Wikipedia, 2016.

ENTH 3136: Shakespeare in Performance

Research Librarian

Free Subscription to the New York Times!

Free Digital Subscription to the New York Times!

Times Machine