I am so excited to be alongside these incredible scholars and chairing the roundtable on performance. And, who knows, you just might hear me talk about Ellen Terry and her stage debut as Mamillius in Charles Kean’s 1856 production of Winter’s Tale! 🐻
Be sure to join us for the @nvshakespeare.bsky.social conference on A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Winter’s Tale in February! ✨
Happy New Year, everyone! 🥂
For those heading to #shax2026 in April, be sure to check out the Digital Exhibits on Saturday, April 4! We’ll be there and would love to see you there too! ✨🎩
(And yes, we’ll have stickers!)
We're celebrating #OAWeek!
@awinkler90.bsky.social & @richardschoch.bsky.social 'Shakespeare in the Theatre: Sir William Davenant and the Duke’s Company' is available to read open access via Bloomsbury Collections: https://bit.ly/3C1PrrL
In February we will be hosting a major international symposium about the two plays we have recently published in variorum format online, ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ and ‘The Winter’s Tale’.
More details coming soon!
newvariorumshakespeare.org
*Available open access*
'Rethinking Theatrical Documents in Shakespeare’s England' (ed. Tiffany Stern) brings together 15 scholars to analyse & theorise the documents, lost and found, that produced a play at the time.
Read online this #OAWeek https://bit.ly/4qqB1qc
Today, 27 records were added for performances of As You Like It, Coriolanus, Henry IV Part I, Henry V, Julius Caesar, King John, King Lear, Macbeth, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Richard III, and The Tempest in Philadelphia from 1823-1900 to bring the record total to 8,304. ✨🎩
Thank you so much to the SSEMWG, and many congratulations to the winner, The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Early Modern Women's writing, and to our fellow Honorable Mention, The Four Books by Alice Thornton! ✨
Read about the other projects at the link below! ⤵️
www.ssemwg.org/2025
We have some very exciting news to share! ✨ We just learned that our database has been awarded an Honorable Mention for the 2025 Digital Scholarship, New Media, and Art Award from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender! 🎩
Today, 12 records were added for performances of Cymbeline, Henry IV Part I, Love’s Labor’s Lost, Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice, The Merry Wives of Windsor, and Romeo and Juliet in Philadelphia from 1819-1891 to bring the record total to 8,277. ✨🎩
This batch also helped us grow our number of records for performances in Philadelphia, while also helping us expand into St. Louis. You can see this growth on our interactive map of historic theatres. ✨🎩
In this performance, Ellen and Kate Bateman played Richard and Richmond, respectively, while Julia Jones played Prince Edward and Miss Schoolcraft played the Duke of York. The Bateman sisters were famous for playing these roles as young girls, with prints like these capturing their performances.
This batch included our first performances in St. Louis, Missouri, with one production even having four performances of genderfluidity at once! On October 15, 1850, the St. Louis Theatre had a production of Richard III, with Richard, Richmond, and the two princes all being played by girls or women.
Today, 93 records were added for performances of As You Like It, Coriolanus, Henry IV Part I, Julius Caesar, King John, Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice, Richard III, Romeo and Juliet, and Twelfth Night in Philadelphia and St. Louis from 1822-1878 to bring the record total to 8,265. ✨🎩
Throughout her doctoral work, @aelagrand.bsky.social has published in open-access journals, worked on several open-access DH sites and developed her own (PLAM!), and has been committed to teaching her classes with all open-access textbooks and materials. ✨
This award is open to all students, faculty, and staff, and celebrates efforts made towards embracing the value of open access at Texas A&M.
We are thrilled to share that our project director, @aelagrand.bsky.social, has been selected as one of two recipients of Texas A&M University Libraries' 2025 Open Access Award! ✨
Shakespeare's plays are filled with unforgettable women—but too often, their voices are cut short. On the podcast, acclaimed actor Dame Harriet Walter talks about her book, "She Speaks! What Shakespeare’s Women Might Have Said": www.folger.edu/podcasts/sha...
In this batch of records were our first breeches performances in Othello. In February 1863, an actress by the name of Miss Miller played a page in Othello at the Chestnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia. While other tragedies have often seen breeches performances, Othello almost never has.
Today, 88 records were added for performances of Coriolanus, Henry IV Part I, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, Richard III, and The Taming of the Shrew in Philadelphia from 1863-1865 to bring the record total to 8,172. ✨🎩
Among these performances was our first record for a performance in Love's Labor's Lost! ✨ On January 6, 1862, Mrs. Charles Henri played Moth (also known as Mote) in Love's Labor's Lost at the Arch Street Theatre in Philadelphia. 🎩
Today, 34 records were added for performances of As You Like It, Henry IV Part I, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Love’s Labor’s Lost, Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice, Richard III, Romeo and Juliet, and The Taming of the Shrew in Philadelphia from 1854-1864 to bring the record total to 8,084! ✨🎩
We are thrilled to be the cover story in the Texas A&M English Department’s student-designed and student-written newsletter:
newvariorumshakespeare.org/news
From this trip, she has been able to gather 237 records for performances in Philadelphia, and another 31 records for performances in Boston, Chicago, and Washington, DC! ✨
She is now in the process of cleaning up these records and getting them ready to add to our database site! 🎩
This summer, @aelagrand.bsky.social visited the Library Company of Philadelphia and UPenn's Kislak Center to consult playbills and collect records of women's breeches performances in Philadelphia! ✨🎩
Check it out! Our project director, @aelagrand.bsky.social won the @honeyandwaxbks.bsky.social Book Collecting Prize for her collection of materials related to Shakespearean breeches actresses! ✨🎩 Points Like A Man even gets a shout-out!
After a bit of a break, we are back to bring you some more records! ✨ Today, 17 records were added for performances of Romeo and Juliet in Dublin, Leeds, Liverpool, London, and Torquay from 1809-1830 to bring the record total to 8,050. 🎩
Celebrating reaching 8,000 performance records on my database today 🎉 Since @pointslikeaman.bsky.social launched in 2023, it has grown exponentially, reaching 8,033 performances by 1,090 actresses at 133 theatres, representing 90 roles across 25 Shakespearean plays in cities throughout the world.
Both of these bills are from The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, from the “Macbeth ephemera, 1840-1857” portfolio. See its catalog record below! ⤵️
legacycatalog.nypl.org/record=b1643...
These bills feature Rignold as Macbeth at the Theatre Royal, Birmingham, in 1842, and Bateman as Macbeth at the Theatre Royal, Dublin, in 1852 when she was just ten years old! ✨🎩
