Oxford (University and City) Book

The Records of Early English Drama (REED) series aims to establish the context for the great drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries by examining the historical manuscripts that provide external evidence of drama, secular music, and other communal entertainment and ceremony from the Middle Ages until Puritan legislation closed the London theatres in 1642. Oxford (University and City), the series' latest volume, brings together, for the first time, all of the evidence for performance in the whole of Oxford, including colleges, halls, university, town government, parish churches, craft guilds, and ecclesiastical courts.

The collection includes unique eyewitness accounts of performances of professional players including a description of the death of Desdemona in Shakespeare's Othello. As with all volumes in the REED series, Oxford (University and City) is transcribed from the original sources, edited, and presented with explanatory notes, translations, and a general introduction. The edition complements the material contained in REED Cambridge (UTP, 1988), and allows scholars to better understand academic drama in its local and collegiate contexts and to compare and contrast the nature of academic drama in both cities.