Cite Lost Plays Database

Rationale

The Lost Plays Database is dedicated to providing information about lost plays in England from 1570 to 1642. It is an open-access resource, which means we can link directly to the plays. You must credit the Lost Plays Database if you cite or mention the plays on their site.

Practice: How to Encode

Wrap the name of the Lost Plays Database in a <title> element with the @level attribute and the value "m". The database should be cited by its full title.
Wrap the lost play in a <title> element with the @level attribute and the value "u" if you are discussing the play as a play. We know the play existed but it may never have been published.
Note that the Lost Plays Database plays do not have identification numbers. We use the play’s URL in place of the identification numbers because it is just as unique. After wrapping the title of the play, you will wrap it in the <ref> element with a @target attribute that points to the URL.
If the name of the play is not mentioned in the sentence there are two options:
Work the title into the sentence. One way this can be done is by using parantheses: “The subject matter is harder to establish than one might expect from so distinctive a name (Black Bateman of the North, Parts 1 and 2). One possibility is that the plays were a kind of domestic tragedy that followed the storyline of the Young Bateman preserved in chapbook and ballad traditions (Lost Plays Database)”.
Add a parenthetical citation linking to BIBL and allow people to follow the thread themselves: “The subject matter is harder to establish than one might expect from so distinctive a name. One possibility is that the plays were a kind of domestic tragedy that followed the storyline of the Young Bateman preserved in chapbook and ballad traditions (Black Bateman of the North, Parts 1 and 2).”
If you are quoting from, paraphrasing, or acknowledging the wiki in the Lost Plays Database, the wiki page has the title of the play as its page title. Wrap the wiki page in a <title> element with the @level attribute and the value "a".

Examples

<p>From May to July 1598 the company was making preparations for <title level="u">
  <ref target="http://lostplays.org/index.php/Black_Bateman_of_the_North,_Parts_1_and_2">Black Bateman of the North, Parts 1 and 2</ref>
</title> (<ref type="bibl" target="bibl:LOST1">
  <title level="m">Lost Plays Database</title>
</ref>)</p>
If we are discussing the lost play:
<p>See also the <title level="m">Lost Plays Database</title> entry for <title level="u">
  <ref target="http://lostplays.org/index.php/Short_and_Sweet">Short and Sweet</ref>
</title> (<ref type="bibl" target="bibl:LOST1">
  <title level="m">Lost Plays Database</title>
</ref>).</p>
If we are discussing an article in Lost Plays Database:
<p>See also the <title level="m">Lost Plays Database</title> entry <title level="a">
  <ref target="http://lostplays.org/index.php/Short_and_Sweet">Short and Sweet</ref>
</title> (<ref type="bibl" target="bibl:LOST1">
  <title level="m">Lost Plays Database</title>
</ref>).</p>
If we are quoting the name of a play from Henslowe’s Diary:
<p>Between 30 March and 7 April, just after the entry for <quote>Earl Godwin</quote>, Wilson, Drayton, Dekker, and Chettle were paid £2 as partial payment for <title level="u">
  <ref target="http://lostplays.org/index.php/Pierce_of_Exton">Pierce of Exton</ref>
</title> (<ref type="bibl" target="bibl:FOAK2">Foakes 88 / f 45</ref>; <ref type="bibl" target="bibl:LOST1">
  <title level="m">Lost Plays Database</title>
</ref>).</p>

Prosopography

Illya

Illya has a BA in English and Sociocultural Anthropology and an MA in English. Prior to joining the HCMC, he was a PhD candidate in English and Book History at the University of Toronto and worked on Records of Early English Drama and on the Modernist Archives Publishing Project. His work at the HCMC focuses on creating web-based applications for research projects led by members of the faculty of Humanities at the University of Victoria. This involves creating schemas for new and existing datasets, writing XSLT and build files to transform datasets into structured TEI and HTML formats, implementing staticSearch, and ensuring that new projects are Endings Principles compliant.

Janelle Jenstad

Janelle Jenstad is a Professor of English at the University of Victoria, Director of The Map of Early Modern London, and Director of Linked Early Modern Drama Online. With Jennifer Roberts-Smith and Mark Beatrice Kaethler, she co-edited Shakespeare’s Language in Digital Media: Old Words, New Tools (Routledge). She has edited John Stow’s A Survey of London (1598 text) for MoEML and is currently editing The Merchant of Venice (with Stephen Wittek) and Heywood’s 2 If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody for DRE. Her articles have appeared in Digital Humanities Quarterly, Elizabethan Theatre, Early Modern Literary Studies, Shakespeare Bulletin, Renaissance and Reformation, and The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. She contributed chapters to Approaches to Teaching Othello (MLA); Teaching Early Modern Literature from the Archives (MLA); Institutional Culture in Early Modern England (Brill); Shakespeare, Language, and the Stage (Arden); Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate); New Directions in the Geohumanities (Routledge); Early Modern Studies and the Digital Turn (Iter); Placing Names: Enriching and Integrating Gazetteers (Indiana); Making Things and Drawing Boundaries (Minnesota); Rethinking Shakespeare Source Study: Audiences, Authors, and Digital Technologies (Routledge); and Civic Performance: Pageantry and Entertainments in Early Modern London (Routledge). For more details, see janellejenstad.com.

Joey Takeda

Joey Takeda is LEMDO’s Consulting Programmer and Designer, a role he assumed in 2020 after three years as the Lead Developer on LEMDO.

Mahayla Galliford

Project manager, 2025-present; research assistant, 2021-present. Mahayla Galliford (she/her) graduated with a BA (Hons with distinction) from the University of Victoria in 2024. Mahayla’s undergraduate research explored early modern stage directions and civic water pageantry. Mahayla continues her studies through UVic’s English MA program and her SSHRC-funded thesis project focuses on editing and encoding girls’ manuscripts, specifically Lady Rachel Fane’s dramatic entertainments, in collaboration with LEMDO.

Martin Holmes

Martin Holmes has worked as a developer in the UVic’s Humanities Computing and Media Centre for over two decades, and has been involved with dozens of Digital Humanities projects. He has served on the TEI Technical Council and as Managing Editor of the Journal of the TEI. He took over from Joey Takeda as lead developer on LEMDO in 2020. He is a collaborator on the SSHRC Partnership Grant led by Janelle Jenstad.

Navarra Houldin

Training and Documentation Lead 2025–present. LEMDO project manager 2022–2025. Textual remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA with a major in history and minor in Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. Their primary research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America. They are continuing their education through an MA program in Gender and Social Justice Studies at the University of Alberta where they will specialize in Digital Humanities.

Oluwaseun Akintola

Oluwaseun Akintola is a student pursuing an English major and Psychology minor at the University of Victoria. She has had the opportunity of working for LEMDO as the recipient of the Undergraduate Student Research Award (USRA) from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) for the summers of 2024 and 2025. Her research primarily focuses on premodern critical race theory in early modern drama, researching racial representation, and constructions of identity in Shakespeare’s plays Othello and The Merchant of Venice.

Samuel Seaberg

Samuel Seaberg, a University of Victoria English undergrad, enjoys riding his bike. During the summer of 2025, he began working with LEMDO as a recipient of the Valerie Kuehne Undergraduate Research Award (VKURA). Unfortunately, due to his summer being spent primarily in working to establish an edition of Thomas Heywood’s If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody, Part 2 and consequently working out how to represent multi-text works in a digital space, his bike has suffered severely of sheltered seclusion from the sun. Note: Samuel now works for LEMDO as the Assistant Project Manager, much to his bike’s chagrin.

Tracey El Hajj

Junior Programmer 2019–2020. Research Associate 2020–2021. Tracey received her PhD from the Department of English at the University of Victoria in the field of Science and Technology Studies. Her research focuses on the algorhythmics of networked communications. She was a 2019–2020 President’s Fellow in Research-Enriched Teaching at UVic, where she taught an advanced course on Artificial Intelligence and Everyday Life. Tracey was also a member of the Map of Early Modern London team, between 2018 and 2021. Between 2020 and 2021, she was a fellow in residence at the Praxis Studio for Comparative Media Studies, where she investigated the relationships between artificial intelligence, creativity, health, and justice. As of July 2021, Tracey has moved into the alt-ac world for a term position, while also teaching in the English Department at the University of Victoria.

Bibliography

Foakes, R.A., ed. Henslowe’s Diary, 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press, 2002. WSB aah397.
Lost Plays Database. Edited by Roslyn L. Knutson, David McInnis, Matthew Steggle, and Misha Teramura. Folger Shakespeare Library. https://lostplays.folger.edu.

Orgography

LEMDO Team (LEMD1)

The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators, encoders, and remediating editors.

Metadata

Authority title Cite Lost Plays Database
Type of text Documentation
Publisher University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform
Series Linked Early Modern Drama Online
Source
TEI Customization created by Martin Holmes, Joey Takeda, and Janelle Jenstad; documentation written by members of the LEMDO Team
Editorial declaration n/a
Edition Released with Linked Early Modern Drama Online 1.0
Encoding description Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines
Document status prgGenerated
Funder(s) Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
License/availability
This file is licensed under a CC BY-NC_ND 4.0 license, which means that it is freely downloadable without permission under the following conditions: (1) credit must be given to the author and LEMDO in any subsequent use of the files and/or data; (2) the content cannot be adapted or repurposed (except in quotations for the purposes of academic review and citation); and (3) commercial uses are not permitted without the knowledge and consent of the editor and LEMDO. This license allows for pedagogical use of the documentation in the classroom.