News

February 12th, 1661: A WOMAN in The Scornful Lady?!

You may have woken up today, gotten out of bed, and thought to yourself: “looks like another average Thursday” in which case you would be completely and TOTALLY mistaken! It’s #theaterthursday ! We forgive your forgetful faux pas. It is, after all, only our second installment in the series. Many, many years ago, on a February 12th perhaps not all that different from this, theater goers flocked to watch actors (and actresses) tread the boards of the London Stage… One such patron was Samuel Pepys who attended a performance of The Scornful Lady on February 12th, 1661, the first theatrical season in London during which women were allowed to act on stage! Pepys described the experience of seeing a WOMAN act in The Scornful Lady for the first time in his diary. Samuel Pepys by John Hayls, oil on canvas, 1666. Licensed from National Portrait Gallery, London, under a a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND... Read More

February 5, 1704: Orange Attack at Drury Lane

We are so excited to announce the start of the London Stage blog’s newest series: #theaterthursdays, where we’ll be using the database to shout out what went down on the London Stage “on this day in history” every Thursday! Marco Ricci, 1676–1729, Rehearsal of an opera, ca. 1709, Oil on canvas, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, B1981.25.523. View original via YCBA So, without further ado, on this day in London Stage history… Opera singer Margherita de l’Épine was on stage on February 5th, 1704 when she found herself the victim of an unexpected attack! From the audience, a woman by the name of Ann Barwick had begun hissing, and throwing ORANGES at de l’Épine! Confused as to why Barwick launched her citrus attack on that fateful February 5th? Well, despite denying any involvement in Barwick’s actions, it is notable that Barwick’s employer was Kathrine Tofts: fellow soprano and rival of de... Read More

Meet the 2025-2026 Research Assistants

As we recently announced, the LSDB team is back up and running again thanks to an internal grant, which has allowed us to recruit two new Research Assistants: Ceilidh McCallum and Rose Ruhnke. You can find their professional bios on our main Team page, but here on the blog, we’re taking the opportunity to dive a little deeper into their academic backgrounds, research interests, and goals for their time on the project. Read on to get to know Ceilidh and Rose!  Ceilidh McCallum Hailing from the Portland-Metro area, Ceilidh transferred to the University of Oregon in Fall 2024 after receiving her GED in 2021. A junior in the Cultural Anthropology program, Ceilidh is also minoring in Digital Humanities and Game Studies; she is set to graduate in the Spring of 2027.  LSDB Research Assistant, Ceilidh McCallum. Photo by Ceilidh McCallum. Why Anthropology, Digital Humanities, and Game Studies? “I was raised by my great-grandparents who were... Read More

Funding news

After a devastating loss of funding and a period of great uncertainty, I am very pleased to share some good news: the London Stage Database team has been awarded an internal grant that will allow us to resume active development! Our proposal was selected by UO’s Research Resilience Initiative for a Grant Termination Support award, which provides the resources needed to continue our most critical operations: training student researchers, extending the dataset, improving the site interface, and keeping users up-to-date on our work through our blog and social media channels. We are incredibly fortunate to have the support and partnership of multiple units at UO working together to keep this project humming along for the next 18 months, including the Office of the Provost, the Office of the Vice Provost for Research and Innovation, the College of Arts and Science, the Department of English, UO Libraries, and Central Information Services. We... Read More

New feature: Print Witnesses

As telegraphed in a recent post, we are releasing an exciting new feature this week that will help users surface play texts for many performances in the database. For newcomers to the eighteenth-century theater, we hope that seeing the published scripts will help bring these dramatic works to life. Specialist researchers will benefit from the ability to combine performance-driven data discovery with text mining methods in innovative ways. Read on to learn more about how the new feature works and the many months of work that went into its design and implementation. From Works to Witnesses You may already be familiar with the “Related Works” feature, which identifies dramatic works that may have been acted at that specific performance event, as well as identified sources, adaptations, sequels, parodies, or abridgments. This feature has been part of the site since its launch in 2019, and it was largely the brainchild of research assistant Emma... Read More

Scheduled downtime this week

The London Stage Database will be down for about an hour this Thursday, September 25 while we publish a major feature update. The outage is planned for 3:30 p.m. Pacific time / 6:30 p.m. Eastern time. That’s 2:30 a.m. Friday for UK users. Curious what will be changing? Read our recent blog post on “how we spent our summer vacation” and watch this space — we’ll be publishing a detailed write-up about the new feature before it launches. As always, we apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience!