Frequently Asked Questions

Paul Prescott is Lecturer in English at the University of Warwick. He has acted and taught Shakespeare in the UK, Japan and the US, most recently as Associate Artist with the Palm Beach Shakespeare Festival, Florida. His publications include Shakespeare Handbooks: Richard III (Palgrave, 2006), articles on theatre criticism in Shakespeare Survey 57 and the Blackwell Companion to Shakespeare and Performance, and reviews for Cahiers Elizabethans and Shakespeare Bulletin. He is currently working on Shakespeare and the Director (with Dennis Kennedy; for Oxford University Press) and a stage history of Troilus and Cressida for Manchester University Press. He is also interested in practical approaches to teaching Shakespeare and is a Learning Associate Practitioner with the Royal Shakespeare Company.

If you cannot find the performance you want to review, you can ask for it to be added to our database. You will need to know the most important things about the performance – the names of the company, the director, and the main actors. If you have your program from the performance this will give you the information you need.

To request the performance, go to the page for reviews of the play you have seen by selecting it from the pull-down menu on the left of the screen and clicking “Go". Then click on “Add a review". On this page, you will see more pull-down menus for selecting the company and the production – and under these menus you will see a link “click here to request [a production]". This link will take you to a page where you can fill in all the necessary information and submit it to our Assistant Performance Editor. You will receive confirmation that it has been added with in a few business days.

When you receive the confirmation, you can go back to the site and write your review.

There are three activities available for all reviewers:

1. You can comment on an existing review on the site.
2. You can create a review of a production that is recorded in our database.
3. You can request that a production be added to the database – and when it is added you can then write your review.

In addition, you can rate certain reviews – those added by guest reviewers.

There are two kinds of reviewers contributing to the site: Invited reviewers and Guest reviewers. When you first register you will become a Guest reviewer. Invited reviewers are recognized as scholars or experienced members of the acting community. To see how you can become an Invited reviewer, see the FAQ below.

First, you must register as a user by clicking on the link in the sidebar on the left of the screen, then filling out the form. You will receive an email with a link that will validate your application. When your application to become a user has been validated, you can login, and will be able to see a link to the section of the Chronicle where you can add a review. For full instructions on creating a review, see the Help section.

The general format for citing pages on the Web is as follows:

1. Author or Editor if there is one (this will be indicated on the home page of the section).
2. Title of the page (all ISE pages have a heading as title).
3. Publisher (in this case ISE Performance Chronicle, Internet Shakespeare Editions, University of Victoria).
4. Date of creation (again, found on the home page for the section).
5. URL. (note that all postings have a permanent URL you can quote).
6. The date you visited the site.

The citation for this paragraph would be this, since no author is identified:

“Frequently Asked Questions.” ISE Performance Chronicle, Internet Shakespeare Editions, University of Victoria. 2008. <http://isechronicle.uvic.ca/index.php/FAQ>.

If you subscribe to any page you will receive notification by email of new reviews on the play to which the page is devoted. To receive notifications of all reviews, subscribe to the “All Reviews” page.

First, go to the page that lists All Reviews. On this page you can search (see the boxes on the left of the screen) for reviews in any country. To locate reviews for performance in a city, enter the name of the city in the Keyword(s) box and click Search.

Reviews submitted by invited reviewers are not subject to ratings. This is a policy decision by the Editor and the Internet Shakespeare Editions Advisory Board for Performance: invited reviewers are leaders in the field.

An Invited reviewer is someone with expertise recognized in either the scholarly or acting communities. If you would like to be considered an Invited Reviewer, write to the Editor, enclosing a letter requesting that you be invited, enclosing a Curriculum Vitae or a statement of your qualifications.

Dr Paul Prescott
Capital Centre Lecturer in English
Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies
Humanities Building
University of Warwick
Coventry
CV4 7AL
UK