It is the latter phase to which this web site gives access. Since the Restoration, the theater history of Romeo and Juliet has assumed a pattern. But these revivals, in their pattern and number, fail to capture the play's vitality or continuing transformations on the stage. To give that impression, even faintly, an editor needs a larger sample of productions from the many hundreds recorded. Prompt-books help to fill in the gaps, although they have almost as many idiosyncrasies as the original texts of Shakespeare's plays.
Promptbooks are tricky, secretive, stubborn informants.
They fall blackly silent just when we hope to be told where the actor stood or how he looked or what he did. In the first place, Shattuck's catalogue is incomplete. Published in 1965, it has a terminal date of 1961. Theatre Notebook printed some additions within several years, but the descriptive list has not kept up with production. Shattuck had anticipated a swelling of the records, but not the outburst which has happened.