We'll Hear A Play

Contents: What is this? | Who is this for? | Why not just use Amazon or Google? | Are there other sites like this? | Where is the data from? | Tech

What is this?

This is a database of freely-accessible readings and performances of early modern plays online. It includes archival recordings of famous 20th-century actors, audio dramas, filmed performances by talented students, modern digital theatre performances via webcam, and more. I have limited the collection to full readings, no clips.

The plays represented here are all from the early modern period; they began to be published in the early 1500s, and the last one dates from 1660. The genres include comedies, histories, tragedies, interludes, and mystery and morality plays, among others; you can hear the works of playwrights like William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and Elizabethan Tanfield Cary; you can also hear early modern translations of classical plays, like John Studley’s version of the Senecan revenge drama Medea and Mary Sidney Herbert’s translation of the French tragedy Antonius (a probable inspiration for Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra).

I have especially tried to spotlight webcam performances by theatre troupes like The Show Must Go Online, JaYo Théâtre, and Beyond Shakespeare. All three initially emerged during the pandemic and have continued to flourish online; this new field of digital theatre offers many affordances for scholars and enthusiasts alike, both increasing accessibility (completely free and available from the comfort of your home!) and enabling audiences to discover more obscure plays.

Who is this for?

This database can be used as a resource for

• students hoping to make theater more enjoyable and accessible by listening to recordings as well as reading texts
• enthusiasts wanting to find readings of non-Shakespeare texts
• scholars interested in digital theater
• high school and undergraduate teachers offering students the opportunity to engage with multiple free performances
• reading groups looking for scripts and previous performances for inspiration

The database is intended to encourage casual use, play, and spontaneity. Try clicking around and see what you discover!

Why not just use Amazon or Google?

We live in a golden age for digital theatre, with the avid drama enthusiast being able to access remarkable filmed stage performances via subscription services like Digital Theatre, Drama Online, and Marquee TV as well as theater archives like the Globe Player and National Theatre at Home. Yet the prices for many of these performances may render them inaccessible for ordinary hobbyists or teachers hoping to introduce students to a variety of productions. It’s particularly challenging because high prices may require teachers to only show one performance and implicitly endorse a singular version of the play, even though seeing multiple interpretations allows students to achieve a broader understanding of the playful, multivarious nature of how actors bring drama to life.

The Youtube archive offers a remarkable source for free performances, but it can be difficult to navigate. A casual search will offer many clips or trailers rather than full performances, and since Youtube is largely dependent on search (and early modern plays are not favored by the algorithms), the would-be playwatcher can generally only find a play if they already know what they are looking for. There is less opportunity for the equivalent of “browsing” performances as one might browse through a library–seeing a wide variety of different options, exploring each one, and experimenting. More broadly, the playwatcher must awkwardly piece together a variety of disconnected sources–first struggling to find a free edition of the text, then trying to find a performance, etc.

I wanted an easy-to-use database that would allow me to quickly gather different performances of the same play; the ability to see plays organized by their publication year to get a sense of which time periods were best-represented online; and the ability to search by author to find, e.g., multiple readings of Marlowe. I hope that this database will fill these needs for others too.

Are there other sites like this?

I was inspired by MIT’s Global Shakespeares, which offers foreign-language performances of Shakespeare around the globe, as well as by Dr. Claire Bourne’s list of performances and by Shakespeare Streams . I also found myself thinking about articles like “Where to Watch Every Shakespeare Play” - individual performance sources inevitably can offer only a selection of plays, but I think there is a great sense of satisfaction in a more comprehensive, “completionist” archive.

Of course, no archive can offer performances for every early modern play, nor have I tried! But you can find every Shakespeare play here and a great many more.

Where is the data from?

For modern performances, I’ve gathered relevant metadata from Youtube, but in order to ensure consistent and reliable metadata for titles, authors, publication dates, and genres, I have matched each performance with data taken from the invaluable resource DEEP: Database of Early English Playbooks, created by Alan B. Farmer and Zachary Lesser. Check out the site and learn more about its underlying sources at https://deepplaybooks.org/.