Use A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses...to find your performer listed alphabetically by last name. Information provided in each entry will vary--some entries are quite detailed while others are less so.
A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses...Before you start trying to find reviews of a play, you may find it helpful to determine on what nights the piece was performed. The London Stage, 1660-1800: A Calendar of Plays, Entertainments & Afterpieces, Together with Casts, Box-receipts and Contemporary Comment.
You'll find the volumes of The London Stage, 1660-1800 in the Reference Collection. Since you're looking for the first production of a play, you can go day by day in a particular season to find when your play was first produced. Once you know the performance date, you can use that information to focus your search for reviews of the performance.
The London Stage, 1660-1800After you've found out when a play was performed, you'll want to scan through various periodicals around the date the play was performed to see if a review was published. While we have some periodicals available online (through the 17th and 18th Century Burney Collection, for instance), the search functionality in those databases are not always foolproof. So you may need to search for a publication, find a date shortly after your play was performed, and then open up the publication for that date and skim through to see if you see your play mentioned.
The process--finding the date a play was performed, choosing a periodical, looking for dates shortly after the performance date, and then reading through the periodical for those dates--is the same whether you're using an online database or microfilm.
When searching 17th-18th Century Burney Collection, be sure to look for the periodicals below:
Other periodicals to search for and look through are listed below. Some may be available online in databases such as the Burney Collection, wihile others may only be available on microfilm. Check the Libraries' catalog to find out how to access these titles.
