English Literature->Drama->By period->17th century/Restoration
English Literature->Drama->By period->18th century
English Literature->Drama->Theater&Film
General Resources->Cultural and Historical Contexts
English Literature->Theory & Studies->Theatre Studies
General Resources->Cultural and Historical Contexts

This website attempts to approach plays as not simply a printed text, but a dramatic performance that is seen and heard, as well as read—a “world” that exists in several dimensions. Various aspects of this “world” are looked into, and the division of sub-categories is as follows:

1. Timeline: A chronological timeline that shows the history (and development) of the London Theater, from Pre-1660 to 1800 and after.
2. Places: A map shows the streets of London in the year 1762, and various places, and their significance, are introduced in detail.
3. WWW: Electronic links to additional internet resources are given.
4. Bibliography: A bibliography of helpful written resources.
5. London Life: Quotes from texts which depict the contemporary life in London in the years 1660-1800, from topics such as the situation of women to the use of wigs.
6. People: An alphabetical list of people who influenced the London theater, either as actors/actresses, playwrights, producers, and critics, etc. Pictures are shown for visual aid.
7. Pictures: Pictures of people, costumes, theaters, advertisements, etc. Quality of pictures is not great.
8. Plays: A brief introduction of some Restoration and 18th-century plays, with links to critical discussions for some.
9. Casts: The year in which the respective plays were opened and the venue in which they were performed, along with the original cast is shown here.
10. Comments: Some comments on Wilmot, Earl of Rochester are provided.
11. Production Arts: Technical aspects, such as lighting and scenic design, that were used in the British theaters in the 18th-century are discussed here.
12. Reviews(Modern Productions): Reviews of contemporary productions and revivals can be read.

The website is generally very helpful and provides some very interesting facts and details. The user interface, however, is not exquisite, and much improvement could be made in the font, the layout, the quality of images, etc. Leaving such shortcomings aside, the website will prove to be useful for those studying the history of the British theater.

URL : http://www.nwe.ufl.edu/~pcraddoc/lonmen1.html

Keyword(s) : Theatre and drama , London theater , British Plays , London life

English Literature->Drama->Theater&Film
English Literature->Drama->By period->20th century

The Arthur Miller Society has been a member of the American Literature Association since 1996. This is an active and a well updated site, for international conferences have been held every year up until October 2006, and another one is being planned for 2007. The Arthur Miller Journal is published twice yearly.

Information on current productions, special events and releases in 2007 is listed. Teaching resources and guides for selected plays including articles, ideas for activities, brief synopses for major plays, fiction, non-fiction, and non-dramatic articles and other publications written by Miller himself are available as well. A neat chronological biography of Miller from his birth in 1915 to his death in 2005 is included in this site. The Arthur Miller Society Newsletter archive with abstracts, reviews, notes and queries, and teaching notes can be easily accessed just by clicking the hyper-links, and one can skim through the contents of each newsletter.

This is a very well-organized and user-friendly site.

URL : http://www.ibiblio.org/miller/

Keyword(s) : Arthur Miller, 20th century Drama, American Dramatist

General Resources->Anthologies/Collections
English Literature->Drama->By period->English renaissance(1500-1640)
English Literature->Poetry->By period->English Renaissance(1500-1640)

Absolute Shakespeare is one of the most essential resources for Shakespeare scholars. This site provides not only the full texts of Shakespeare's sonnets, poems, and plays, but also the most frequently referred quotes, biography of William Shakespeare, theatre history, and so on. Rather plain text images, but definitely easy to view with not many flashes or clickings. Content is thoroughly examined for the academic viewers. For example, in Summaries, this site serves the detailed summaries divided by act and ideal introduction commented.

This is useful for both studying and teaching materials including summaries, study guides, essays and quizzes. To be efficient, Shakespeare's the most famous 10 plays are separately listed on the right, providing a quick and easy guide with plot summary, commentary, character analysis and essays. All valuable contents are written by editors of the site, not linked to other cites.
Some pictures inspired by Shakespeare's works are interesting but there are only a few. The general but short introduction for Globe theatre is helpful. This site also lists all of the film adaptations of Shakespeare's works, over 250 movies up to the year 2000.

This site is especially recommendable for the students who want to find useful information on Shakespeare in one site. This is ABSOLUTE as it is called.

URL : http://absoluteshakespeare.com/

Keyword(s) : drama, shakespeare, plays, sonnets, quotes, biography, academic, summary

General Resources->Anthologies/Collections
English Literature->Literary History
English Literature->Drama->By period->English renaissance(1500-1640)
English Literature->Drama->Theater&Film

This is one of the best annotated guides to the scholarly Shakespeare resources on the Internet. Its contents are classified into Shakespeare's history, works, theatre, criticism, and other sources, added performance and festival information on a separate page. Furthermore, you can get as many site links as possible with a short annotation, and its range covers Renaissance literature and theatre, not only Shakespeare.

In the Works section, Study Guides will be very helpful for both teachers and students; providing various study materials such as SparkNotes and a larger series of lectures. In the Criticism section, you can access current lists of Journals and collections such as Early Modern literary Studies (EMLS), English Literary History and Renaissance Forum, and Historical Criticism throughout our literary history from Sir Philip Sidney, Ben Jonson, John Dryden, Dr. Johnson , Matthew Arnold to William Hazlitt. Introducing Criticism of The Sonnets, this site starts with a guide to the sonnet expanding their explanation further.

If you are in a hurry, you can go right to Best Sites, where all the best sites are shown in a sight mentioned other pages. They are categorized according to the main manu, so it is very convenient to find out useful information.

URL : http://shakespeare.palomar.edu/default.htm

Keyword(s) : drama, shakespeare, works, life, theatre, criticism, best sites, renaissance

General Resources->Cultural and Historical Contexts
English Literature->Drama->Theater&Film

The Voice of the Shuttle began in 1994 to introduce websites to humanists. The site aims to provide a brief and structured annotated guide to online resources, so that viewers can easily get access to the selected sites from a vast overflow of information on the Web.

This site has listed about 28 contents in alphabetical order. For example, Anthropology, Archaeology, Art, Cultural Studies, History, Literature, Philosophy, Religious Studies etc..
Another lists they have are the resources list, which have links to academies, museums and libraries, journals and conferences.

The contents linked here are Literature (in English). In Literature section, there are many other pages linked divided into centuries. This page is about the Renaissance and the 17th century.
This site has linked other important and useful sites that provide general information about the Renaissance and the 17th century period. They also have links to sites of major authors of that period, such as Sir Francis Bacon, John Donne, Ben Johnson, Christopher Marlowe, John Milton and William Shakespeare. There are many sites linked to Shakespeare in different categories.
Then they have links to cultural and historical contexts and criticism sites. One interesting link is the link to some course syllabi from Brown University. Their Women Writers project course was about women writers' texts in the Renaissance, which are unfamiliar to many of us.
The page also has links to journals (Renaissance Literature), listservs & newsgroups (Renaissance Literature), and conferences.

This site has one of the best set of links to the Renaissance and the 17th century. The design is simple and very well organized so that viewers can easily get what they want.

URL : http://vos.ucsb.edu/browse.asp?id=2749

Keyword(s) : drama, shakespeare, 17th century, renaissance