TDGR 289: Intro to Doctoral Studies: Digital Texts

Digital Texts: Plays

The libraries at UCSD, UCI, and often the UC Library system as a whole have acquired a large number of full-text databases that are devoted to, or include, texts of plays. Some open access websites are also included in this list. .  

American Drama of the Modernist Period 1899-1945 * 

American Drama of the Postwar Period 1945-1999 *

American and Canadian Drama of the Postwar Period 1945-1999 * 

American Drama 1714-1915 * 

American Variety Stage

Asian American Drama (Alexander Street Press)

Ben Jonson Online (Cambridge University Press). In addition to the texts, there are scholarly essays on the stage history of each of Jonson's plays, and a performance calendar listing every known performance of his plays and masquest through the year 2010. Not available at UCI.

Black Drama: 1850 to the Present (Alexander Street Press)

British Drama of the Modernist Period 1899-1945 * 

British Drama of the Neoclassical Period *  

British Drama of the Postwar Period 1945-1999 * 

British Drama of the Romantic Period 1780-1837 *

British Drama of the Victorian Period 1837-1910 * 

Complete Works of William Shakespeare *

Drama from Australia 1955-Present *

Drama from Scotland 1503-Present *

Drama from South Asia 1922-Present *

Drama of the American Colonial Period *

Drama of the American Romantic and Realistic Periods *

Drama of the Revolutionary and Early American Periods *

Early English Books Online EEBO (1475-1700) Includes all known editions of separately published and collected editions of plays, including verse drama and closet drama, by Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Restoration playwrights as well as texts about theater, including the evils of attending theater.

Eighteenth Century Collections Online ECCO  Includes 18th-century editions of plays by dramatists since the beginning of English theater, as well as books about the theater, memoirs of actors, etc..

Folger Digital Texts. "Meticulously accurate texts" of the plays and poems from editions in the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. Under a Creative Commons license, access is free as is downloading of the source code for non-profit projects.

Irish Drama 1611 to Present *

Latino Literature: Poetry, Drama, Fiction  (Alexander Street Press)

North American Indian Drama (Alexander Street Press)

North American Women’s Drama (Alexander Street Press)

Renaissance English Drama *

ScriptCircle 

The Shakespeare Quartos Archive

Twentieth Century Drama *

 * Part of LiON (Literature Online). As of October 2011, it includes 7932 volumes of drama by 1616 authors.

 

 

 

Digital Texts: Scholarly Books

In addition to purchasing more and more E-books on a title-by-title basis and providing records for patron-driven ebook purchases in our online catalogs, both UCSD and UCI Libraries and the UC Library system as a whole have purchased access to large packages of ebooks that can be either searched as if in a database or browsed within the catalog. Go here for a description of the largest Ebook packages available at UCSD.

In addition to the ones listed there, several other packages have been acquired that have content related to drama, theater, and performance studies.

Palgrave Macmillan is a major publisher of scholarly monographs in performance studies and theater and film history. In late 2011, UCSD acquired over 850 of these monographs in digital format. Again, there is no central database for searching them and they cannot be browsed in Roger by subject. They can be browsed alphabetically by title by typing "Palgrave Online Monographs" in Roger.

The UCSD Library acquires all scholarly monographs published since 2012 by Harvard University Press that are available in ebook format on the De Gruyter Online platform. They can be browsed by typing the title "Harvard University Press Online Monographs" in Roger. HUP isn't very strong in the performing arts--much more so in literary criticism, history, and area studies.

A smaller collection of performance-related books is avaialble from University of Pittsburgh Press Backlist in the Performing Arts.

Both the UCSD and UCI online catalogs have a feature that allows you to limit your searches to electronic resources only. In Roger, before beginning to type a keyword, subject, title, or author search, click on the blue link above the search box that says "Electronic Materials." In Antpac, type your search and then change the drop-down menu from "Entire Collection" to "Online/Internet Resources."