FOREWORD
By George Winchester Stone, Jr
J16 London Stage, 1660-1800 calendar of per-
0rmances in eleven volumes was thirty-five
years in the making, and has run to 8,026 pages.
•vided into five chronological parts, each vol-
UJTle was provided by its editors with an index
sorts, but from the beginning the five edi-
°rs envisioned the appearance ultimately of a
combined index to make accessible all the in-
ormation about plays, persons, and places as
ey appeared in each performance entry from
0 urne to volume and part to part. Such is the
^ex that appears here, in 506,014 references
1 , e calendar under twenty-five thousand
ties, and this has been seven years in the
making.
£ 'though the Index is not analytical in the
CS. .sense> the editors alive at the time of
it have provided identifiers for plays,
^.e,as, oratorios, songs, specialty acts, panto-
idtmes.’ hurlettas, and masques. They have also
the*111 'C<^ t*le Persons listed in the playbills and
extant theatre account books according to
dan"- Pr'rnary functions in the theatres (actor,
er fCr’ s'nger> musician, composer, box-keep-
and reasurer’ renter, and wardrobe-keeper),
then 01 ot*1ers’ prominent members of the au-
t0 and business men of London, according
stam eir occupations (from ambassador and
Print 01311 l° carpenter, chandler, rope-maker,
tavereri *awyer, coffee-house manager, and
p0inrn'XeePer)- Thus at a glance the Index
ran S *o the variety and richness of a broad
Pine 1 London life for 140 years as it im-
the °n’ suPP°rted, or drew sustenance from
atrinl K atres- Some ninety-six trades, for ex-
e> were described in R. Campbell’s The
Vll
London Tradesman in 1747, and the masters
who operated eighty-nine of them prove to
have maintained some profitable connection
with the theatres. The Index enables the curi¬
ous reader to follow through with ease the
span of time during which any company or
person was attached to a theatre.
It also provides direction for following the
careers of the hundreds of actors, actresses,
dancers, and musicians whose entertainment
cheered the London populace nightly. All in
all, the Index demonstrates what a wide-ranging
document for social, economic, legal, artistic,
and dramatic history The London Stage, 1660-
1800 is. The sheer bulk of the information
therein recommended to its editors the useful¬
ness of applying modern computer technology
to organizing the Index. This technology has
ultimately proved to be invaluable, but the
whole project, with its starts and stops, and
periods of experimentation could neither have
been undertaken nor brought to successful
conclusion without the financial support ac¬
corded to the compiler and his expert staff of
young editors by numerous foundations and
individuals.
It is a pleasure, therefore, to acknowledge
such aid from The National Endowment for
the Humanities (both for the pilot and the
completion phases), The American Council of
Learned Societies, The American Philosophi¬
cal Society, The Andrew Mellon Foundation,
The United States Steel Foundation, The Billy
Rose Foundation, Lawrence University, and
generous gifts from Mrs John A. Logan,
Charles Beecher Hogan, Miss Faith Bradford,