The papers of Edward Alleyn, the Elizabethan actor-manager, are now available online in a digital edition. Most of what we know about the London theatre in the age of Shakespeare comes from this archive; highlights include the only surviving example of a 'part' or script written out for an actor in an Elizabethan play (image) and the contract for building the Fortune playhouse in 1600, just a year after the building of the Globe. Sadly, the archive doesn't include any manuscripts relating to Shakespeare, because Alleyn worked for the Admiral's Men, one of the two main theatre companies in London, whereas Shakespeare worked for the competition (the Lord Chamberlain's Men), though that didn't stop the nineteenth-century forger John Payne Collier from faking a few documents of his own to fill the gap.
posted by verstegan on Dec 11, 2009 - 6 comments

Room 26 Cabinet of Curiosities features strange and surprising things from the rare book and manuscript collections of the Beinecke Library in Yale, including death masks, the philosophy of origami, the real adventures of Tintin, famous people and their pets, and American transvestite magazines from the 1960s.
posted by verstegan on Apr 11, 2008 - 12 comments

Cambridge Illuminations claims to be the largest exhibition of medieval illuminated manuscripts since 1908. To see all 200 exhibits, you'll have to visit the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge; but 65 of the best, including the sixth-century Gospels of St Augustine and the recently discovered Macclesfield Psalter, can be viewed online.
posted by verstegan on Jul 27, 2005 - 8 comments