Royal Shakespeare Company Archive

Content The archives of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), the most significant collections relating to theater history and Shakespeare, have been digitized for the first time, offering insights into the history of the performance of Shakespeare’s works and other important theater pieces.

AM’s Royal Shakespeare Company Archive provides as complete a record as possible of the RSC from 1889 to 2013, documenting hundreds of productions and thousands of performances. There are more than 1,400 complete prompt books, 13 costume bibles, 73 sets of production photographs, 123 sets of production records, and 82 programs. All records are fully searchable through extensive metadata, and any two items can be compared against one another.

Additionally, the RSC Archive offers production records relating to 53 groundbreaking and significant productions, selected in collaboration with the resource’s editorial board of academics and theater practitioners.

Usability The featured topics and dropdown menus on the landing page are thorough and comprehensive, leading to more meaningful explorations of the archive. The bulk of the records being prompt books, an essay of particular interest to users is “What Is a Prompt Book?,” written in 2023 by Toby Malone of Toronto Metropolitan University, which arms archive users with the insight necessary to dive headfirst into RSC prompt books and experience the most robust interaction possible with every documented RSC production.

Navigation of the archive’s contents from the “View All Documents” search page is impressively intuitive. Researchers can refine the search of 1,838 RSC records by date, 13 document types, 233 authors and playwrights, 401 plays, 214 directors, and 84 venues. Every search result appears in an identical format, allowing for speedy navigation. Each record includes a summary of the record’s details and an overview of its contents. Multipage records consist of one image file per page, which can be scrolled through page by page or by using shortcuts under the contents tab. Further information regarding each page can be found in tabs below it. Many of the documents can be downloaded as a single file for greater readability.

Pricing The database is available for perpetual access with pricing tailored for each institution. Contact Adam Matthew for custom price inquiries.

Verdict The Royal Shakespeare Company Archive is an extraordinary look inside the world’s premier producer of Shakespeare plays and other renowned theater productions outside of the Shakespearean canon. While the photographs, costume bibles, sheet music, and other production records are important to the history of RSC, the archive’s prompt books are the jewels in the crown, providing unprecedented insight into more than a century of RSC’s storied productions.