Restoration Theatre Song Archive: data

This archive contains a close to complete record of the words of songs performed on the London stage between 1600 and 1702/3 and a substantial proportion of the surviving music. Songs are indexed by authors, composers, title of play, first line of the song, or by year, and the archive is of interest to scholars, musicians, and theatre performers. The aim of the project was to assemble material for a projected study by Harold Love of the Restoration theatre song as a performed work, to be conducted through a combination of stage-historical, musicological and dramaturgical understandings. Verbal texts (lyrics of the songs and relevant surrounding dialogue and stage directions) were located through searches of the LION and ECCO databases and proofread against the reproductions in the UMI, STC and Wing microfilm series or their electronic counterpart, the EEBO database, or the Readex microcard edition. Music texts are offered as NoteWorthy Composer files that allow a transcription to be both heard and followed on screen. The archive was prepared by Anthony Butler under an Australian Research Council Discovery grant (DP0208641) awarded to Harold Love. Support was also given by Tracey Caulfield, Peter Groves, Felicity Henderson, Carlin Payne, Chris Worth and Philip Wheatland.