Shakespeare on the road: tracking the tours with the REED web project.

Shakespeare on the road: tracking the tours with the REED web project. Our title refers to a desire that has flourished for at least 150years, to trace Shakespeare's activities as a theatre professional(actor, sharer, playwright) through the provincial boroughs andhouseholds that were visited by the companies to which he belonged. Thepioneer here was James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps, who spent parts oftwenty years, from the 1850s through the 1870s, visiting recordrepositories and muniment rooms throughout England. He collected a lotof valuable information, about 1,250 records of payments, etc. However,he didn't find what he was looking for (Shakespeare'ssignature in a record, or at least his name), so he laid aside hismaterials in disappointment. The Records of Early English Drama (REED)project doesn't share that urge for the name, but we are attemptinga complete and systematic survey, and at this point (about halfwaythrough) it has collected between 5,000 and 6,000 records that arepublished in what we call the "Red Army" (the collections ofrecords from counties and boroughs, published in the REED series). (1)Where does this get us, in fulfilling that desire to traceShakespeare's activities? Within those volumes the reader can tracethe travels of the king's men after a lot of effort, thumbingone's way through (so far) twenty--four collections of records: forexample, the king's players were paid 40s. at Coventry in 1603, and20s. at Shrewsbury in the same year (Ingram 1981, 362; Somerset 1994,288). But there's a better way, and its development is our subject. Beginning in 1984, working in a version of Basic, the indexing ofPatrons and Performances was begun. An activity begun on a very simplelevel has evolved over time into something much more complex. Mostproblematic, agility and stamina were required to negotiate these tablesand find information--the environment, latterly in dBASE IV and thenAccess, was not "user-friendly!" For the internet, thedata-records are being refined to enhance their usefulness; for example,the payments in "old money" ([pounds sterling]. s. d.) arebeing converted so they can be compared, totalled, or averaged, and anembedded Julian calendar will allow users to know the day of the weekfor records bearing specific dates. Second, a great deal of furtherresearch is being carried out to extend our information about"Perform" records (now renamed as "Events").We're researching, visiting, and photographing (where possible)every known or probable venue used by performers with the aim ofpresenting visual, architectural and bibliographical details relevantfor the study of early theatre in the provinces. Third, we'relinking all these places and activities with a detailed map of Englandand Wales before 1642, with which the user can focus on a desiredlocality and see details of topography, period roads, rivers andneighbouring places as well as the performance and patrons'biographical data linked with that site. The map is produced usingArcIMS, and we are grateful to Byron Moldofsky and his associates in theCartography Office, Department of Geography, University of Toronto fortheir cartographic skills in creating the interactive map. (2) Can we follow Shakespeare on the road yet? Not quite, although weare quite well-advanced towards that goal; it requires the completion ofthe REED data, which continues to be published volume by volume. So,instead of actually following Shakespeare on the road, we candemonstrate the architecture of the web site that will allow you totrace those travels, as soon as the data have all been uploaded.We've concentrated our efforts on design issues, using at first asmall and manageable subset of the data (Lancashire patrons, events andvenues), wanting to get the details right and launching a modest"pilot" as our first step, and proceeding to upload furtherdata in stages. The database-internet software interface that we'reusing is Macromedia's Coldfusion, interacting with the databasewhich is maintained in MySQL, an "open-source" databasesystem. We don't anticipate the level of traffic that wouldnecessitate a more robust architecture--this is not likely to be as busyas Amazon.com, but if it became so we might have to rethink. Coldfusionis a widely-used industry standard, installed where the web site ismaintained at the University of Toronto. We're happy to acknowledgethe assistance that we've been given with Coldfusion by SianMeikle, Digital Services Librarian, Robarts Library, who has done ourdatabase design and web application programming. The easiest way to showyou how it works is to demonstrate it. When we originally delivered thisessay as a conference paper, facilities were unavailable to allow a"live" demonstration from the web site. This is now possible,so we have revised this paper as a guide to an individual on-screenexploration of the capacities of the web site. Readers should thereforeread the remainder of this article while logged onto the web site tofollow the demonstration. Our Opening screen or Home Page can be seen (Figure 1, 76 presentsthe top part of the page). The Home Page is on the internet at this URL:http://link.library.utoronto.ca/reed/. The page is designed to welcomethe user to the web site and explain a little about its aims, so youshould take a moment to read it. Because we anticipate visitors to thesite who are not expert theatre historians (and may in fact be justcurious visitors) we have designed "Shakespeare Featured" as away of arousing their interest in looking at what the site has to offer.We will return to this later. The opening screen also presentsinformation that you can access by clicking on the various links under"About this Web Site"; these pages tell readers about thedevelopment team, the extent of the information presented and so on.(After you have finished reading any page on the web site, click on"REED" in the upper left corner of your current page to returnto the Home Page). Most important, this opening screen presents optionsunder "Search the Records" to look for information aboutPatrons, Events, Venues, or Troupes, as well as to search theBibliography for reference materials used to build the web site. [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] For the demonstration, here you should click on the "forPatron" option, which brings up a screen containing options tolimit your search. (Note that quotation marks, used here for clarity,should not be typed as part of a search "specification." Wewill look for troupes with which Shakespeare might have toured as ayoung man, so here we will choose to search by rank and look for personswith the rank of "Queen" by selecting that Rank on thepull-down "Rank type" box. We limit the search to QueensElizabeth by typing "Elizabeth" in the "Keyword of name,office or title" and then click "Search." The searchresults list four queens named Elizabeth; from the list you shouldchoose the second, "Tudor, Elizabeth, Queen of England" toclick on. This results in a screen of information about her, including abrief family tree. Here, and on all screens where textual information ispresented, a "Tag this record" button invites you to save theinformation on the screen for later review by clicking on "TaggedRecords" on the top line of the Home Page; this feature is stillunder development. Note that the family names in the family tree are hyperlinked(clickable, to bring up other pages) and that patrons of performers arespecified. We won't follow these links here, but rather you shouldselect the option at the right to look at "Events naming thispatron." 284 performance events are returned in the listing. Weplan that such listings will include calculations of totals, averages,etc, of the payments made in the records listed, so users will be ableto reach conclusions about the economics of touring. From among these284 events you should scroll down and choose number 181, the 1589performance at Lathom House in Lancashire. The web site returns a screenof information about this performance. Note that the date given (6-7July 1589) is very precise; the software will in time return the day ofthe week for such single dates. This screen includes the choice oflooking, under "Search Related Records" on the right side, atthe place where the performance occurred--Lathom House. Clicking on thatbrings a screen of information about Lathom House, which provides afirst sample of our intentions for the Performance Venues section of theweb site. Most of the research for the Venues is entirely new, not drawn fromthe editorial apparatus of REED volumes, but building upon theperformance spaces that can be identified in the Records texts. TheStanleys are known to have been in residence at one or another of theirthree Lancashire homes during the all-too-brief period covered by theirextant household book (1586-90; see George 1991, 179-84). One might hopethat at least one of these residences would survive, but such is not thecase. (3) The Overview page briefly summarizes essential informationabout Lathom from the limited knowledge available about this princelyhome of the Stanley lords of the north-west. A selection of thumbnailimages to the right of the text can be clicked on and enlarged forcloser exploration of their architectural details, and the curious canclick on "History" at the right to pursue the history of thehistory of the house, which was dismantled after a Civil War siege bythe parliamentarians. The earl of Derby was destined to lose his headnot too long afterwards because of his royalist sympathies. Because Lathom does not survive, we must depend on earlier artisticimages for clues about its grandeur. One of these, an engraving of theartist G. Pickering's impression, shows Lathom House from adistance. This can be seen by clicking on "Lathom House from adistance." (Close this window to return.) The other, even moreintriguing, possible views come from an unlikely source which we learnedabout from correspondence with a Lathom archaeologist, Jennifer Lewis(1999, 150-51). Her article on the woodcarvings in the choir ofManchester Collegiate Church identifies three carvings on the south sideof the choir as early Tudor depictions of Lathom. One of the Stanleyswas warden of the collegiate church in the late fifteenth century whenthe work was done and so it may have been in part a compliment to himthat the central tower of Lathom and its curtain wall were chosen as themodel for the traditional elephant and castle motif on the misericord inthe bishop of Hulme's stall. This carving can be seen by clickingon "Tudor Latham." But where was this long-gone palace of the Stanleys? Clicking oneither "Map it" at the top or "See this Venue on aMap" at the right of the screen hyperlinks the Lathom venue sitewith the GIS map where a magenta dot highlights Lathom in its regionalcontext, in the south-west of the county. The neighbouring locationsidentified with crosses are those linked with patrons' offices; theothers are performance locations, blue squares helping us to spotprivate residences, purple squares, monastic hosts and red squares likeLiverpool's, the towns. Distances between locations can becalculated, either in kilometres or miles, and more dynamically, routemaps for individual troupes will soon be possible, customized andprinted out upon request. Pursuing more data on the Stanleys, return to the Home page andbegin another search "for Patron," this time on"Stanley": enter that surname in the "Keyword of name,office or title," choose "Earl" from the "Ranktype" pulldown, and click "Search." This returns sevennames. Henry Stanley, earl of Derby until his death in 1593, would haveplayed host to the queen's men in 1589 at Lathom. He is fourth inthe list; click on him to bring up his biographical overview page. Oneoption here is to click on "Details of offices" at the rightfor significant national and regionally held appointments that shed somelight on his status as a host and patron. Clicking on "Patronizedtroupes" at the right under "Search Related Records"pulls from the underlying database a grouped listing by Troupe type andTroupe name, which allows us to limit the search to his players, bothunder the name of "Lord Strange" before 1572 and the"Earl of Derby" after that date. During the period from 1576to 1583 Derby's players was one of the most active troupes in thecountry although they were seldom in the north. For some unexplainedreason Henry Stanley appears to have ceased acting as a patron ofplayers after 1583, but this was not untypical behaviour for patrons. By1589 his son and heir, Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange, had the activefamily troupe (called "Lord Strange's men") and there isevidence of their performance at home at Christmas and Shrovetide, butthat's the subject of another essay (MacLean 2003, 205-26). Return to the Home Page to start another search, this time byclicking on "For troupe." At the next screen we can pursue thepossibilities of Shakespeare in the provinces again, this time by keyingin "king" and limiting the search at the pull-down menu for"Type of Performer" by specifying "Players" for theking's players. From the resulting list of nineteen troupes, clickon number 10, the players of King James. The first nine of these recordsoccur within Shakespeare's lifetime, and could be pursued forevidence. For Lancashire, the county with which we began and from whichwe have gleaned much evidence about performance venues, there are norecords from Shakespeare's lifetime in the surviving records.However there are four for King James' troupe, all at Dunkenhalgh,two from 1620 and two from 1624. Click on the 1624 performance atDunkenhalgh (the last in the list), which returns a screen ofinformation. Note that again a precise date is returned, so again a dayof the week will appear when that programming is completed. Few peopleknow the location of this hall, but we can click on "Map it"under the thumbnail photo, to return a map of Lancashire that locatesthe hall. The map looks crowded, so use the "zoom" feature,drawing a box in the map area with your cursor to return an enlarged mapof the area selected, in which Dunkenhalgh can be more exactly located. Dunkenhalgh only exists now in its rebuilt Victorian style, butthere are other period venues that do survive in the same Ribble Valleyregion of northern Lancashire as part of a lively local touringcircuit--what we could call the alternative theatres of the north-west.Return to the Home Page, and search next on "for Venue." Atthe resulting screen type in "Gawthorpe" as the keyword. Youmay have earlier noticed Gawthorpe just along the road from Dunkenhalgh.The impatient need not specify the county--how many Gawthorpes are therelikely to be? Gawthorpe is a fine old Jacobean residence, now owned by theNational Trust. Here, and wherever possible, we are providing a web linkto the owner's official site, here given at the bottom of yourscreen. And as usual, we can explore a variety of views while trackingGawthorpe's architectural and performance history in the prose onscreen. Our web page offers five thumbnails of exteriors. Click on"Exterior view from the E side" to see the corner of the GreatHall bay window. A picture is worth a thousand words of course, but forthis web site we are keeping in mind issues of accessibility, so thebrief descriptions beside the images are intended primarily for thosewith visual impairment. Close the enlarged thumbnail. To dig deeper,click on "History" to learn about the building'sconstruction, later neglect, and eventual rebirth at the hands of thesometimes over-enthusiastic architect, Sir Charles Barry. NikolausPevsner called this restoration "drastic," but there are stillenough original features to get a glimpse of the performance space usedby Jacobean troupes (1969, 129). Click on "Great hall" under "PerformanceSpaces" to move to a wealth of details, visual and descriptive,about the original Great Hall, now a dining room with plenty ofVictorian elements, such as a simulated Jacobean ceiling and built-insideboards. The photos mostly come from site visits, but thearchitectural information draws upon historical research on the buildingas well as site exploration, measurements and notes made by Sally-BethMacLean. Many features of the room have related photos. For example,clicking on the "Minstrels' gallery" brings to the forethe original gallery--but be warned! Not all minstrels' galleriescan be trusted, although this one is authentic. We were not able to gainaccess to the gallery itself, so the measurements come from DavidGeorge's article, as cited on the screen (1983, 116). Floor planscan be very helpful--wherever possible we are including plans such asthe one for Gawthorpe, here taken from the Victoria County History forLancashire, helpfully out of copyright; close the "Minstrels'gallery" window and click on "Ground plan" to view it(1911, 465). We may be curious about all the troupes visiting thisdelightful home. Close the "Ground plan" window and Click on"Events at venue" under "Search Related Records" toretrieve seventeen records of entertainers from the early 17th century,each of which can be in turn clicked upon to pursue further information.Gawthorpe was only completed in 1606 so if we want to explore thefamily's earlier record of hosting entertainers we would have torelocate to another residence to the south which also survives,Smithills, not far north of Manchester. But again, that is matter foranother paper, another series of searches. To end, we return to the curiosity about Shakespeare which our website invites from prospective users. Let us look at the room whereShakespeare probably first saw a professional play performance. Returnto the Home Page, and click on the "Shakespeare Featured"arrow button; this results in four pages of information aboutShakespeare, with clickable links both external and internal to the website. Click on page 2, and on that page, under "Related links"click on "Guildhall, Stratford on Avon." The next pagepresents a great deal of information about the history of the Guildhalland its construction. We can select exterior photographs of theGuildhall on this page to enlarge for viewing. Click on "Hall"under "Performance Spaces" and this presents you with severalclickable images of the lower Guildhall, now used as the library of thegrammar school. We have a picture of the high end of the empty hall(taken when the space was cleared to install underfloor heating), whichgives an idea of its size as an empty performance space. This is verylikely the space in which Shakespeare first saw a professionalproduction, because the Stratford corporation regularly paid forperformances here in the 1570s and 80s. This account has barely scratched the surface of our web siteproject, but we hope that it has been able to show you something of theriches that will be available there. The principle lying behind thedesign is that the user should easily be able to progress in anydirection from screen to screen, as his or her curiosity prompts. Thereare now over 3569 events records and 600 patrons included in thedatabase (the size of our present incomplete data set). There is more,much more to come, and to demonstrate that we have included twophotographs (Figures 2 and 3) of venues that are not yet on the site,because their associated records have yet to be completed and loaded.The first of these has a certain Shakespeare connection: the Guildhallat Leicester (Figure 2, 76). This fine medieval hall, built about 1390,was purchased by the city of Leicester in 1548, and it has regularlybeen used since that time for performances of all kinds. The King'sMen played there several times, their earliest date being 1606. Whenthis photograph was taken (in 2002, by Alan Somerset) the hall was beingreadied for a rock concert that evening. The second is not a publicvenue but a private home in Cheshire that belonged to the Earls of Derby(Figure 3, 76). Bidston Hall is a fascinating survival from the latesixteenth century, still in private hands but no longer connected withthe Stanley family. This photo, taken by Sally-Beth MacLean, shows theHall from the rear. Because Ferdinando Stanley, known as Lord Strangefrom 1572 until 25 September 1593, may have welcomed his acting troupeto this venue, it is possible that Shakespeare, as a member ofStrange's Men, may have paid a visit though family records from1590 to 1642 don't survive. It is even more likely that a latertroupe, Derby's Men, patronized by Ferdinando's brotherWilliam, would have known Bidston, one of their patron's favouritehomes. We hope that users will stay tuned, will return frequently to seeupdates and refinements, and will in fact find the opportunities to beendless on the REED Patrons and Performances Web Site. [FIGURE 2 OMITTED] [FIGURE 3 OMITTED] Notes (1) The list of nineteen published REED volumes, containingtwenty-four collections of records, can be seen on the REED web site:http://www.reed.utoronto.ca/publist.html#reed. (2) The historical evidence for the medieval and renaissance roadnetwork will be briefly explained on the site and hyperlinked withrelated bibliography. The principal routes and sources have beenresearched and detailed by Sally-Beth MacLean in an article, "TourRoutes: 'Provincial Wanderings' or Traditional Circuits?"(1992, 1-14). (3) There is still a residence at Knowsley which remains the seatof the Stanley earls of Derby, but later rebuilding has swept away allbut a few vestiges of the original. Works Cited George, David. 1983. "Jacobean Actors and the Great Hall atGawthorpe, Lancashire." Theatre Notebook 37: 109-21. George, David, ed. 1991. Lancashire. REED. Toronto: University ofToronto Press. Ingram, R. W., ed. 1981. Coventry. REED. Toronto: University ofToronto Press. Lewis, Jennifer. 1999. "Lathom House: The NorthernCourt." Journal of the British Archaeological Association 152:150-71. MacLean, Sally-Beth. 1992. "Tour Routes: 'ProvincialWanderings' or Traditional Circuits?" Medieval and RenaissanceDrama in England 6:1--14. --. 2003. "A Family Tradition: Dramatic Patronage by the Earlsof Derby." In Lancastrian Shakespeare--Religion, Patronage andRegion, ed. Richard Dutton, Alison Findlay and Richard Wilson.Manchester. Pevsner, Nikolaus. 1969. North Lancashire, The Buildings ofEngland. Harmondsworth, Midd: Penguin Books. Somerset, J. Alan B. 1994. Shropshire. Vol. 1. REED. Toronto:University of Toronto Press. Victoria History of the County of Lancaster. 1911. Vol. 6. London:Archibald Constable. Sally-Beth MacLean is professor of English at the University ofToronto and executive editor/associate director of the Records of EarlyEnglish Drama (REED). Alan Somerset is emeritus professor of English atthe University of Western Ontario and editor of Shropshire (1994).Professors MacLean and Somerset are co-editors of the REED Patrons andPerfomances Web Site. This article briefly outlines the history of the Records of EarlyEnglish Drama (REED) Patrons and Performances website project. Its aimis to enable users to gain access to the complete picture ofprofessional performance activities (drama, music, dance, acrobatics,animal acts, and what have you?) outside London before 1642. The articleis designed as a guide to individual on-screen exploration of some ofthe capacities of the website; readers can follow step-by-step the guideto the site by reading the paper while logged onto the site andfollowing one or another of the four major search paths offered on thehome page, to search for information about Patrons, Events, Venues orTroupes. Readers can access the GIS map on-line to investigate playingroutes, venues and other geographical details. As well one can searchthe Bibliography, carefully compiled to reveal the information sourcesused to assemble the data presented on the site.