Fortune Theatre Records Prototype Digital Edition

CDH Collaborator: Jason Boyd

The Records of Early English Drama (REED) is an international humanities research project whose aim is to find, transcribe, and publish original records of English dramatic and other secular entertainment from earliest times to 1642. From the beginning, the principal product of the REED enterprise has been the conventional print volume, but in recent years REED has been working in deliberate steps towards the transition from a traditional editorial project producing a print series to a digital humanities-oriented project producing REED Online (external link) , a web-accessible repository of all REED’s resources.

The Fortune Theatre Records Prototype Digital Edition, a 2012 collaboration of REED, the Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London, and the Centre for Digital Humanities, Toronto Metropolitan University, and funded by grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, features a representative range of dramatic records that pertain to the Fortune theatre on Golding Lane, north of the London City wall. The Fortune was built in 1600 and operated until the mid-17th century. This set of records have served as a useful sample for development of a new online production environment, experimentation with TEI markup of complex texts, digital indexing of persons and places, and linking with related data in REED’s open access websites Patrons and Performances (external link)  and Early Modern London Theatres.

Fuller details of the project are provided in a White Paper (external link, opens in new window) .