About EMBTA

The Early Modern British Theater: Access assembles and digitizes multimedia resources relating to the history of British theater and dramatic literature during the period 1500-1800.

A distinctive feature of EMBTA is that it treats the period 1500-1800 continuously, while most studies of English drama either begin or end with the mid-17th-century closure of theaters by Puritan officials during the Commonwealth. While Restoration-era theater was in many ways radically different from the theater of Shakespeare, this archive aims to make apparent both the continuities and innovations in British theater over these three centuries.

The scope of our materials captures the early modern theater as a multisensorial and collaborative art form.