Introduction to the Site Intro Author QME Anthology Leads Conversion and Remediation LEMDO Team Queen’s Men EditionsQME

The Queen’s Men Editions anthology is led by Helen Ostovich, General Editor; Peter Cockett, General Editor (Performance); Andrew Griffin, General Editor (Text; until 2026); and Janelle Jenstad, General Editor (Text; 2026–)

 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada McMaster University Poculi Ludique Societas University of Waterloo University of Toronto Centre for Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies University of Victoria Friends of the ISE

Released with Queen’s Men Editions 2.0

 University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform

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, Queen’s Men Editions, 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 Queen’s Men Editions, the editor, and LEMDO. This license allows for pedagogical use of the critical paratexts in the classroom. Neither the content nor the code in this file is licensed for training large language models (LLMs), ingestion into an LLM, or any use in any artificial intelligence applications; such uses are considered to be commercial uses and are strictly prohibited.

Production photographs and videos on this site may not be downloaded. They appear freely on this site with the permission of the actors and the ACTRA union. They may be used within the context of university courses, within the classroom, and for reference within research contexts, including conferences, when credit is given to the producing company and to the actors. Commercial use of videos and photographs is forbidden.

Queen’s Men Editions

Page written by the QME Anthology Leads. First published in the QME 1.0 anthology on the ISE platform. Converted to TEI-XML and remediated by the LEMDO Team for republication in the QME 2.0 anthology on the LEMDO platform.

Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines

This document follows Canadian spelling conventions.

 Published file. Standardized spelling of theater to theatre (the predominant spelling in this file and LEMDO’s preference). Changed other spellings to Canadian. Changed hi tags to title. Corrected encoding of lists. Corrected typos. Gave xml:ids to paragraphs. Waiting for OSTO1 to proof and approve before we change status to IML-TEI_proofed. Updated metadata Added text from homepage to first section, added sentence to PAR and a link Removed front element from born-digital documents that should not have one. Removed hi elements. Change path of links. Tidied metadata. Copyedited file. Changed xml:id of document. Moved it to a new directory in the repo. Added catRef to indicate it’s a QME file. Updated xml:ids of divs. Converted document. Peer review arranged by QME Editorial Board.
Queen’s Men Editions

Queen’s Men Editions is a collaborative site, created by an international body of scholars, theatre practitioners, and digital developers, all working to achieve the same goals: to inspire a love of early theatre beyond Shakespeare; to recover the plays associated with the Queen’s Men in particular as enjoyable, teachable, and performable theatrical texts; and to present those texts in a richly linked, open-access, online environment.

The Queen’s Men

The Queen’s Men were the foremost theatrical company of the 1580s, an all-star troupe formed in the Queen’s name by her chief advisor Sir Francis Walsingham, and her close ally the Earl of Leicester. From 1583 through to Elizabeth’s death in 1603, they toured the provinces of England performing plays that celebrated national and Protestant virtues. The Queen’s Men Editions (QME) publishes the plays associated with the company in performance editions that incorporate textual scholarship with production records of modern performances of the plays.

Performance Editions

QME gives the user two primary ways to access the work of the Queen’s Men: through visual records of modern performances of their plays, and through performance editions of their play texts in both original and modern spelling. The two avenues of access are interrelated through linked annotations embedded in the play texts that discuss the texts themselves, their historical contexts, and the creative choices behind the modern productions. Our User Guide, demonstrates the navigational possibilities of the site for the purposes of study and research. See also our History and Vision page.

Performance as Research

QME is a product of a larger research enterprise that began with the Shakespeare and the Queen’s Men project (SQM) in 2006, led by Alexandra Johnston and Helen Ostovich and inspired by Scott McMillan and Sally-Beth MacLean’s book, The Queen’s Men and their Plays. The project emerged from University of Toronto’s Poculi Ludique Societas and Centre for Performance Studies in Early Theatre. The ongoing research project places the production and performance of plays at the centre of the research endeavour as an important and dynamic complement to library research on surviving texts and theatre documents from the period. The methodology behind these editions was developed further at our 2015 conference Performance as Research in Early English Theatre Studies: <title level="m">The Three Ladies of London in Context. The QME performance editions integrate the Performance as Research (PaR) productions with traditional textual scholarship.

Contexts

In addition to the contextual information embedded in the performance editions, QME provides an overview of the history of the company with a timeline of the documentary evidence and biographies of the actors. It also has expanding sections on pedagogy, associated with the PaR productions of the plays.

Contributors to the Site

QME is a collaborative site, created by an international body of scholars, theatre practitioners, and digital developers. For information on our contributors and collaborators, see: Editorial Board Advisory Board Directors of the Productions Editors of the Plays Acknowledgements

Editorial Guidelines

The editions of Famous Victories, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, King Leir, and Selimus follow the ISE Editorial Guidelines. All other editions follow the DRE/NISE Editorial Guidelines.

ISE Editorial Guidelines
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