Plays
This guide shows you how to find print and electronic plays to read as well as streamed recordings and DVDs of performances to watch.
Finding plays and recorded performances using Library Search
Search for plays by title or playwrights by name, using the Advanced Search option in Library Search. This will help you:
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find plays in anthologies as well as those published separately
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find DVDs and streamed TV recordings to watch online
Use the format filter within Library Search to limit your results to printed plays (print book), electronic plays (eBook), online recorded performances (eVideo) and DVDs
Finding printed plays using Library Search
If the play you want to read does not have an electronic version, then you will need to request a print copy online using our Click and Collect service.
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Drama Online
Recommended for: Plays, Books, Film and documentaries, Images
Read plays and watch performances. Find stills of performances and information about acting, plays and playwrights
Drama Online is a high-quality online research tool for drama and literature students, researchers, and teachers. The Core Collection forms the heart of Drama Online. With over 1,775 playtexts and more added each year, this collection is truly the foundation of the platform and offers a diverse and rich catalogue of plays by the world’s leading dramatists
We have access to the following collections: Core Collection, most of Nick Hern Books Modern Plays, BBC Drama Films & Documentaries, Maxine Peake as Hamlet, most of the RSC Live collection, Shakespeare’s Globe on Screen 1 & 2, Stage on Screen, National Theatre Collection 1
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Digital Theatre Plus
Recommended for: Plays
Find plays and productions, theory and criticism, practice and practitioners, teaching resources.
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Historical plays online
Early English Books Online (EEBO)
Page images of almost every work printed in the British Isles and North America, as well as works in English printed elsewhere from 1470-1700.
Early English Books Online (EEBO) features page images of almost every work printed in the British Isles and North America, as well as works in English printed elsewhere from 1470-1700. Over 200 libraries worldwide have contributed to EEBO. From the first book printed in English through to the ages of Spenser, Shakespeare and of the English Civil War, EEBO’s content draws on authoritative and respected short-title catalogues of the period and features a substantial number of text transcriptions specially created for the product.
Beginning with the very first book published in English, EEBO draws from four authoritative bibliographical resources – both Pollard & Redgrave’s Short-Title Catalogue (1475-1640) and Wing’s Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700) in their revised versions, as well as the Thomason Tracts (1640-1661) and the Early English Books Tract Supplement – to present more than 146,000 titles and over 17 million scanned pages of content.
Transcribed texts – TCP I and TCP II – are now included on EEBO, adding transcriptions to approximately 50% of the texts featured. EEBO also covers texts in more than 30 languages, ranging from Algonquin to Welsh, and incorporates variant editions and multiple copies.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online
Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) is a fully text-searchable corpus of books, pamphlets and broadsides in all subjects printed between 1701 and 1800.
ECCO is a digitization of the eighteenth-century section of the works catalogued in the English Short-title Catalogue (ESTC). The ESTC project has been recording all works published or printed in Britain, Ireland, territories under British colonial rule, and the United States. It also catalogues material printed elsewhere which contains significant text in English, Welsh, Irish or Gaelic, as well as any book falsely claiming to have been printed in Britain or its territories.
In terms of languages, the vast majority are in English with several thousand in French or Latin, smaller numbers in Ancient Greek, German, Italian, Scots Gaelic, Spanish and Welsh, and a few in other languages.
It currently contains over 180,000 titles amounting to over 32 million fully searchable pages.
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Other sources of plays online
Project Gutenberg is the Internet’s oldest producer of free electronic books. Most of the Project Gutenberg eBooks are older literary works that are in the public domain in the United States. All may be freely downloaded and read, and redistributed for non-commercial use.
Search for names of playwrights, titles of plays or for the word “plays” in the book titles.
MIT Global Shakespeare Project
Established 1997, this site provides access to the complete set of Shakespeare’s plays and poetry.