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Digital's the thing: 16th-century play archives go online
Louise Jury, Chief Arts Correspondent25.11.09
THE single most important archive on theatre in the age of Shakespeare goes live online today.
Two thousand documents including box office receipts, details of payments to playwrights, and the only surviving Elizabethan actor's script have been digitised to make them publicly accessible for the first time.
All relate to the lives of theatre impresario Philip Henslowe, who ran acting companies and the Fortune and Rose theatres until his death in 1616, and his actor son-in-law Edward Alleyn (1566-1626), who founded Dulwich College, which owns the papers. They have been digitised by experts from King's College and the University of Reading over the past three years.
Project director Professor Grace Ioppolo said: "Most of what historians know about the invention of the English professional theatre comes from the evidence in the Henslowe and Alleyn papers.
"Henslowe and Alleyn were appointed by King James I to stage such popular blood sports as bull and bear-baiting. In effect, Henslowe and Alleyn helped to invent professional theatre and professional sports in England."
Shakespeare belonged to acting companies for which Henslowe commissioned plays. The archive includes box office receipts for Titus Andronicus and Henry VI - the only surviving ones for any Shakespeare play.
There is also the 1587 deed of partnership for the Rose Theatre on the South Bank, notes of payments to playwrights including Ben Jonson and Thomas Middleton for performances at the court of Elizabeth I and King James, and Alleyn's own script for the title role of a play based on the Italian romantic epic Orlando Furioso.
All 476 pages from Henslowe's diary are going online - the most important record of 16th and 17th-century plays. It names more than 300, most of which have not survived.
Another curiosity is a backstage guide to remind actors of their entrances for The Seven Deadly Sins, Part II. It is one of four guides of the period known to survive in their entirety.
The archive team received £70,000 from charitable trusts with extra support from both universities.
