About DEx

DEx: A Database of Dramatic Extracts is an online, searchable database of extracts from English plays found in seventeenth-century manuscripts. DEx aims to provide much-needed information to textual editors, literary scholars, and cultural historians interested in theater history, audience reception, early modern print and manuscript culture, and the history of reading.

Overview

Early modern readers and playgoers often kept commonplace books and miscellanies, where they would copy poems, aphorisms, letters, accounts, and any number of things—including selections from plays. DEx: A Database of Dramatic Extracts aids scholars in finding selections from plays copied into manuscripts. While contemporary readers often overlook lesser-known historical plays and playwrights, early modern readers did not make the same distinction.

Coverage

DEx catalogues extracts from plays written and published before the closure of theaters in 1642 and copied into manuscript before ca. 1700.

DEx is not, of course, comprehensive, as there are always new extracts being discovered (submit yours here). You can find a list of manuscripts indexed on our browse page or on our bibliography. Additional information about each manuscript is available in the bibliography.

DEx does not transcribe entire manuscripts: only those parts of a manuscript that are extracts from plays.

People

Editors

Laura Estill, St Francis Xavier University, Canada

Beatrice Montedoro, University of Zurich, Switzerland

 

Software Development, Past and Present

  • Craig Squires, ACENET
  • Luis Meneses, Electronic Textual Cultures Lab & Iter
  • Jon Martin, Electronic Textual Cultures Lab & Iter
  • Neal Audenaert, Texas Center for Applied Technology
  • Matthew Barry, Texas Center for Applied Technology
  • Shawn DeWolfe, Electronic Textual Cultures Lab & Iter

Research Assistants, Past and Present

  • Kate Beers
  • Chloe Walker
  • Steven Harrison
  • Andrea Rodriguez
  • Bethany Radcliff

With additional transcription and encoding contributions from

  • The students of the MA colloquium “From the Archives to Digital Database: Encoding Early Modern Manuscript Texts” (2021), University of Zurich, taught by Dr. Beatrice Montedoro
  • The students of ENGL303: How to Judge a Book by Its Cover (2017), Texas A&M University, taught by Dr. Laura Estill
  • The students of ENGL613: Early Modern English Literature (2017), Texas A&M University, taught by Dr. Laura Estill