Playscripts and Promptbooks Collection:

An Inventory of the Collection at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center

Scope and Contents

The Playscripts and Promptbooks Collection, 1795-1978 (bulk 1870-1915), contains promptbooks, stage managers' workbooks, preparation and rehearsal copies, and unused scripts for 100 dramas, comedies, musical comedies, and other dramatic works, many of which were staged in New York or London. The majority of the items in this collection are marked copies that appear to have been used in the production process. Among the prominent authors and theatrical managers represented are John Philip Kemble, Charles Frohman, Arthur Wing Pinero, Lillian Hellman, and Dion Boucicault. Items document stagings at Covent Garden, Drury Lane, and the Adelphi and Portsmouth Theatres in England, and at the Empire Theatre in New York. Organized alphabetically by author, the collection can also be accessed via the Index of Authors and Production Personnel following the folder list.

Many of the materials in this collection can be linked to the stage of production at which they were created or used. Cuts and alterations to the text are found in preparation copies, which record the director's ideas before any further work has been done, and in rehearsal copies. Promptbooks and stage managers' workbooks contain notes for cues, calls, scene shifts, effects, and other warnings necessary to coordinate a stage performance. Some of the promptbooks are probably final or souvenir promptbooks, made up afterward as a record of the production. Also included are unused typescripts, often with plots and ground plans, in which the stage directions are underlined in red but which lack warnings, cues, or other features of full promptbooks.

The collection is dominated by material associated with a handful of managers and producers. Two promptbooks marked in John Philip Kemble's hand record his Covent Garden stagings of A Cure for the Heartache (1805) and Guy Mannering (1816). The office of the American producer Charles Frohman was the source of typescripts, mostly unmarked, for eighteen plays, many of which were produced at the Empire Theatre in New York or in London between 1901 and 1913. It seems likely that a few other scripts in the collection passed through Frohman's office, though they are not marked with his stamp. Also included are promptbooks and preparation copies for Arthur Collins' productions at Drury Lane, piano scores and promptbooks owned by the British theater manager Frank Hiam, and scripts linked to stagings by Wilson Barrett, Annie E. F. Horniman, and R. H. Burnside.

Other noteworthy material relates to playwrights and theaters. Arthur Wing Pinero is represented by a heavily revised copy of The Profligate; Lillian Hellman, by a souvenir promptbook for The Children's Hour; Dion Boucicault, by an incomplete holograph manuscript for Janet Pride; and Lord Edward Bulwer-Lytton by a promptbook for Money. Other authors include Augustin Daly, W. Somerset Maugham, J. M. Barrie, Cecil Raleigh, Benjamin Webster, and Richard Rodgers. In addition to the John Philip Kemble and Arthur Collins promptbooks for Covent Garden and Drury Lane, the collection holds an 1803 promptbook for Delays and Blunders that is marked for both Covent Garden and the Portsmouth Theatre, and two Adelphi Theatre promptbooks for The Enchanted Isle and Belphegor the Mountebank.

Concluding this finding aid is an Index of Authors and Production Personnel that lists authors, adaptors, translators, managers, producers, directors, stage managers, and actors. The index does not include persons whose role in a specific production is unknown.

Promptbooks can also be found in the Department of Manuscripts and Archives, in the Promptbooks Collection. Published playscripts, some annotated, are located in the Theater Arts Library.

Note on the Folder List

Because many of the marked copies in this collection are linked to a specific production, it is sometimes possible to identify who actually used them. More often, there is a rehearsal copy, for example, but the particulars of the staging, or even whether an actual performance occurred, are not known. The fullest possible identification is necessarily based on a blend of evidence and inference such as that employed by Charles Shattuck in The Shakespeare Promptbooks: A Descriptive Catalog. The Format/Description part of the folder list is modeled after Shattuck and organized as follows: (a) format, including the presence of ground plans, plots, and other productional material included in the script; (b) when discernable, what sort of document it appears to be, the specific production to which it is linked, and the name of the previous owner; (c) materials pasted or laid in, such as playbills, letters, sketches, and working papers.

Restrictions

Access:

Open for research. Due to the fragile condition of the original, a preservation photocopy of the promptbook for The Children's Hour must be used unless permission to use the original is obtained from the Research Librarian.

Administrative Information

Acquisition:

Assembled from various Performing Arts collections, including the Albert Davis and Messmore Kendall Collections and others

Provenance

The Playscripts and Promptbooks Collection was assembled by Performing Arts staff from a variety of sources, chiefly the Albert Davis and Messmore Kendall Collections. Other sources were W. H. Crain, Benjamin Blom, Lester Sweyd, and the University of Texas drama professors Coleman A. Jennings and Ellsworth P. Conkle. The Covent Garden promptbooks belonged to an Arthur Williams.

Processed by:

Helen Baer, 2000-2001

Playscripts and Promptbooks Collection--Folder List

 Playscripts and Promptbooks Collection--Index of Authors and Production Personnel 

Names in bold appear in the RLIN record.

Material from the Addition is not included in this index.