This site includes two fully-searchable databases containing information from approximately 170 prompt-books for productions of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. These productions range from the seventeenth century to the 1980s.

This data was assembled by Jill Levenson during the preparation of her Oxford Shakespeare edition of the play.

Introduction

These two databases (Staging and Cuts) contain 8 fields, in addition to boxes for each act/scene of the play. They can be searched either by particular acts and scenes or for the entire play.

Act and scene divisions and lineation correspond to the text of the play at an early stage in the preparation of the new Oxford edition, and not necessarily to the final version.

Number

The number assigned the prompt-book by Charles H. Shattuck in The Shakespeare Promptbooks: A Descriptive Catalogue (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1965). Any prompt-book not listed in Shattuck has been prefaced "x Shattuck".

Place/Date

Any information available pertaining to the location of the production and its date. Dates can also be searched using "<" or ">", or in partial form (i.e. 18 for any nineteenth-century production).

Auspices

The individual under whose control the production was mounted. In the case of modern productions, this will normally be the director.

Text

The edition used for the prompt-book.

Reference

The archive or library where the prompt-book is housed. If the prompt-book is included in the microfilm collections of prompt-books issued by the Research Libraries Group, this information is provided. If the prompt-book has been previously published, this is also indicated.

Data Class

There are two databases which can be accessed, either separately or together: one pertaining to staging; the other to lines cut from the text. Note that the act/scene divisions and the lineation do not necessarily correspond to the text of the new Oxford edition.

All Acts/Scenes

This field searches all of the act/scene fields for data.

The databases can be searched by individual or selected acts and scenes.

In all cases, fields can be searched by "*" to determine if they contain any data. This is particularly useful for searching by act and scene.