About this Journal
Early Theatre is a peer-reviewed journal that publishes articles, reviews, and notes on medieval and early modern drama and theatre history, with a particular focus on records pertaining to actors, theatres, music, dance, and entertainment of all kinds. Our main emphasis is the performance history of art, entertainment, and festive occasions, primarily in England, but we also feature interpretive articles relating to the performances themselves. We also publish scholarship on subjects relating to early English drama as it impinges on or is influenced by other international practices. Overall, we aim to bring together the disciplines of history, art history, theatre history, music, politics, and economics so that these various scholarly concerns have a common forum in which to test theories about performance.
We publish full-length articles, shorter notes, and book reviews. Each year we also feature ‘Issues in Review’, a section of related, short essays that together highlight new research directions and shape the field for further work in areas such as commedia dell’arte’s influence on seventeenth-century drama (11.2); Islam and English drama (12.2); and dramatists, playing companies, and repertories (13.2). Early Theatre also publishes occasional special volumes with sustained attention to particular topics (see, for example, volume 15.1 on women and performance; volume 14.2 on drama and politics in the Midlands; volume 6 dedicated to performance, politics, and culture in southwest Britain; and volume 3 on the York cycle in performance).
In recognition of the excellence of our contributors, we issue biennial prizes in three categories. Please visit our Announcements page for details!
Early Theatre evolved out of the REED Newsletter, a biannual newsletter published by the Records of Early English Drama (REED). Early Theatre circulates online through Digital Commons, ITER, EBSCO, and Gale/Cengage, as well as in print. Our international readership includes individuals in North America, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and parts of Europe; our institutional subscribers include academic libraries worldwide. Issues of Early Theatre published in the last two years are available by subscription. Content that has been published for over two years is freely available on this website.
Editorial Board:
Editor
Helen Ostovich, McMaster University
ostovich@mcmaster.ca
Associate and Managing Editor
Melinda Gough, McMaster University
goughm@mcmaster.ca
Associate Editor
Erin E. Kelly, University of Victoria
ekelly@uvic.ca
Book Review Editor
Roberta Barker, Dalhousie University
barkerr@dal.ca
Book Review Editor
Peter Kirwan, University of Nottingham
Peter.Kirwan@nottingham.ac.uk
Board Members
Gloria J. Betcher, Iowa State University
Pamela A. Brown, University of Connecticut
Richard Cave, Royal Holloway, University of London
Lawrence Clopper, Indiana University
John Craig, Simon Fraser University
JoAnna Dutka, University of Toronto
Garrett Epp, University of Alberta
Vanessa Harding, Birkbeck, University of London
Alexandra Johnston, University of Toronto
M.A. Katritzky, The Open University
Anne Lancashire, University of Toronto
Marion F O'Connor, University of Kent
Suzanne Westfall, Lafayette College
Paul Yachnin, McGill University