The characteristic costume of Greek comic actors has been widely represented iconographically in statuettes and vase paintings from the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. Theatre historians instantly recognize the grotesquely distorted expressions on the masks, the rotund shapes formed by ill-concealed padding, and, most distinctively, the comic phallus. A “dangling leather symbol… red at the tip, swollen,” the comic phallus, of course, represents male genitalia.

In his first plays, Shakespeare exercised great freedom in devising his plots. The First Part of King Henry VI, it has been said, “darts about the period in a bewildering way.” It is “not so much a Chronicle play as a fantasia on historical themes.” Its two episodic sequels are equally or perhaps even more loosely plotted, while Richard III picks and chooses among events that took place in the decade and a half before 1485 and also seems to incorporate matter from earlier plays (Latin as well as English). In the The Comedy of Errors, Shakespeare began with a groundwork drawn from Plautus's Menæchmi but added the twin Dromios as well as some material from the Amphitruo. The Two Gentlemen of Verona integrates plot elements from a number of sources, including Montemayor's Diana, the well-circulated story of Titus and Giseppus, and the myth of Robin Hood. In making The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare combined elements from the oral tradition (the drunken peasant, the taming) with a literary subplot drawn from George Gascoigne's Supposes.

In the nineteenth century darkness became visible in the English theatre. To know how this is so, one must glimpse the word “darkness” in its own shadow, its dimmest connotations. “That which hides or is hidden” is the root sense of “darkness,” but it is cognate with words meaning “to trouble or disturb.” The scene (in both spellings) will draw heavily on the unseen for its effect, and the darkness of the theatre resides in its capacity to both hide and reveal that which disturbs, playing always with the paradox of light and darkness, trouble and freedom from trouble, in such a way that darkness itself can become entrancing, an attraction, while the light(ed) repels or pales into insignificance. The theatre both chases troubling reality away from the brightly illuminated stage and gives centrality to the darkness at the focal point of the spectacle—that internal, infernal essence that Milton, in his portrayal of Satan's realm, termed “darkness visible.” A combination of circumstances during the nineteenth century brought dark phenomena to the fore in theatrical representations, first within the marginal exhibition halls and later on the legitimate stage. This essay will trace out one network of historical associations within that development.

On 17 January 1816, a new semi-operatic adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream opened at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, the nineteenth century's first production of the play. Since Shakespeare's time, the play had been seen only in operatic adaptations. The libretto of the new one was by Frederick Reynolds, with music by Sir Henry Rowley Bishop, and it was built on the 1763 operatic version of David Garrick and George Colman the elder. But the more interesting and historically significant text of the 1816 production was in the staging and the new pictorial scenery, whose vocabulary must be read in the light of empire.

The founding of experimental ensembles dominates the history of Western theatre in the first half of the twentieth century. Groups of theatre artists, desperate to revive and resuscitate an art grown stale and lifeless, banded together, seeking common ground in the period's vast swirl of artistic and ideological sensibilities. These groups, from the Moscow Art Theatre to the Berliner Ensemble, produced a broad range of performances, yet all shared a common commitment to change and theatrical growth. Two of these, the Group Theatre and Jacques Copeau's Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier participated in and elevated this world-wide phenomenon. Since they share some common roots, an exploration of the relationship between the Vieux-Colombier and the Group yields some insights into the formation and maintenance of an acting ensemble.

The Grosses Schauspielhaus in Berlin was a theatrical showplace in several incarnations. The building itself was initially a great market situated near the Spree River in the center of Berlin. In the latter part of the nineteenth century it was converted to an enormous circus which drew crowds to see outstanding exhibitions of horsemanship and other circus acts. It also served as a great meeting hall for such events as Robert Koch's international congress dealing with tuberculosis in 1890. The large amphitheatre in the huge building was a symbol of the growing population of Berlin and its increasing prosperity. The history of the various uses to which the theatre was put in the twentieth century is an important reflection of the changes in German society in this period. During the time of the Third Reich it was an important element in culture and propaganda under the direction of Dr. Joseph Goebbels. This paper will analyze the unusual architecture of the theatre and the productions of several plays which were important during the Third Reich.

From the days of Thespis to the knighthood of Henry Irving, society in general censured those who trod the boards, and historians frowned upon the theatre as a discipline worthy of scholarly attention. The records of performance, past and present, were neglected, ignored, and uncataloged—either tossed into cartons and relegated to attics and basements for future generations to discard, or they were filed in the nearest wastebasket. Only the drama and the literature of the stage (commentaries and criticisms, histories and reviews) were considered to be of substantial interest.

When she asked me to join this panel, Catherine suggested three subjects she would like me to comment on. The first is how scholarship to date has benefited from theatre collections; the second is the need for theatre collections as separate entities; and the third is what kinds of material should be collected in the future, particularly to avoid oversights in previous collecting policies. At the risk of telling you what you already know, and without pretending to speak for most scholars, let me first make some generalizations about how scholars have benefited from existing collections.

No, I am not going to talk about the amazing techno-age to come, when all documents from a single performance are compiled together on a hypermedia disk and transmitted readily over the wires in cyberspace as a virtual theatre research document. Nor am I going to suggest a future in which the theatre collections are singular—most having closed, one after the next, from lack of support. Rather than predicting the future, I wish to explore present elements of the problems now facing the fields of theatre librarianship and theatre research, and to suggest some directions we might take to solve these problems.