British Library Additional MS 27962 is a transcript of the diplomatic dispatches sent from London to Florence by Tuscan agents in the seventeenth century. Among the mass of contemporary political comment are regular notices of the Court drama of the period of much the same kind as those which can be found in the Calendar of State Papers (Venetian), and of nearly equal, though complementary, value as a source of information about masques, Court plays, tilts and other entertainments.

On Monday, June 10, at the Public House of the above Inn, will be Delivered a Series of MORAL DIALOGUES, IN FIVE PARTS, depicting the evil effects of jealousy and other bad passions, and proving that happiness can only spring from the pursuit of virtue.

MR. DOUGLAS will represent a noble and magnanimous Moor named Othello, who loves a young lady named Desdemona, and after he has married her, harbors (as in too many cases) the dreadful passion of jealousy.

In his recent overview of the staging of medieval religious drama, A. M. Nagler concludes his commentary on the twelfth-century Adam play with a statement made by Karl Grass in 1928: “As far as the question of structure of the stage is concerned, the stage directions leave us in the lurch. … A reconstruction of the stage, as it was intended for the play, is scarcely possible on the basis of these particulars.” Since the 1920s, when scholars such as Grass, Paul Studer, and Gustave Cohen examined the possible staging of the Anglo-Norman drama, attention has remained almost exclusively on the didascalia, the Latin stage directions interspersed throughout the text. Despite the more recent work of Grace Frank, Michel Mathieu, Uda Ebel, and Wolfgang Greisenegger, Grass's comment about the stage directions leaving us in the lurch is still true. There are other sources of evidence, however, which have been used insufficiently or not at all in reconstructing the staging of the Mystère d'Adam. Not all clues in the dialogue having to do with the position or movement of actors have been examined by theatre historians.

On 1 September 1797, both the John Street Theatre and the New Theatre, Greenwich-Street advertised Sheridan's The School for Scandal. Although the company at the John Street Theatre subsequently postponed its performance, this confrontation was typical of what G.C.D. Odell referred to as the “Battle Royal of 1797,” New York City's first competitive theatre season. While most scholars of the American theatre are familiar with the history of the John Street Theatre, very little has been written about New York City's first “regular opposition theatre,” the Greenwich Street Theatre. Lack of information combined with scholarly bias has left us with only impressionistic images of this theatre's place in history.

The Bancrofts' work, first at the Prince of Wales's (1865–1879), then, briefly, at the Haymarket (1880–1885), played a crucial role in the evolution of the Victorian “idea” of theatre, providing a model for their contemporaries, a “symbol of innovation” and a focal point for debate concerning the “new” realism. Their collaboration with T. W. Robertson formed the core of this work, but attention has recently shifted from a concern with the dramatic value (or lack of it) of Robertson's six Prince of Wales's comedies to an appreciation of the playwright's role in this larger, more complex theatrical achievement—one which also included management and public relations, as well as production and acting style. The precise nature of this achievement is only now coming into focus, and while much remains to be done and said on the subject, at this point one facet seems to require special attention; the important dramatic, scenic and managerial aspects of the Bancrofts' work should not be allowed to obscure the fact that their theatre was also fundamentally an actors' theatre.

In the National Library of Scotland under R.283.C. (bound volumes) and pressmrk Mus.Box.250 (boxes of loose materials) are collections of long-neglected playbills—a mine for detailed study of many aspects of theatre in Edinburgh. No printed catalogue of these ephemerae exists, though they provide valuable information that J. C. Dibdin chose to omit from The Annals of the Edinburgh Stage. The collections of Edinburgh playbills are uneven. Sixteen of forty-two Theatre Royal seasons between 1810 and 1851 are not represented by any bills.

In researching my dissertation topic, “Arthur McKee Rankin's Touring Production of The Danites by Joaquin Miller (1877–1881),” I became convinced that the casual use of the term “manager” in nineteenth-century press releases requires some clarification. Indeed, journalists often cited, without distinction, several individuals as “managers” of Rankin's traveling company.

The recorded history of the Spanish theatre has been, in large measure, a history of the Madrid stage. Madrid, like London and Paris, was not only the political center of its nation, but also its cultural capital. Performers and playwrights may have served enforced periods of apprenticeship in the provinces (the example of Molière comes to mind), but success in the capital remained a constant goal. Historians of the theatre in Spain have tended to follow the lead of the actors in fixing their attention almost exclusively on Madrid. N. D. Shergold's A History of the Spanish Stage becomes primarily a history of the Madrid stage after his chronicle moves from medieval times to the establishment of the first public theatres in late sixteenth-century Madrid. René Andioc's study of the eighteenth-century Spanish theatre, Sur la querelle du théâtre au temps de Leandro Fernández de Moratín (Theatrical Polemics in the Time of Moratin), is almost entirely about the theatre in Madrid, a fact recognized in the title of the Spanish version, Teatro y sociedad en el Madrid del siglo XVIII (Theatre and Society in Eighteenth-Century Madrid). Many additional examples could be cited from the Golden Age to the present of historians purporting to study the Spanish theatre, but in reality considering only the Madrid theatre.

The continued interest in the theatrical innovations of the Bancrofts and T. W. Robertson has led to numerous recent scholarly reevaluations. William Kleb, in his excellent “Marie Wilton (Lady Bancroft) as an Actress,” notes that “the important dramatic, scenic, and managerial aspects of the Bancrofts' work should not be allowed to obscure the fact that their theatre was also fundamentally an actors' theatre.” T. W. Robertson's dramaturgical innovations, however, have also obscured the fact that he began his theatrical career as an actor. In this note, I would like to trace his acting career as a preliminary step in documenting this pivotal period in Robertson's development.