Locating Plays, Scenes, and Monologues

[Reference sources such as Play Index and Inter-Play are helpful when trying to locate plays in collections—that is not the purpose of this guide.]

Most individual plays (and there are thousands in our collection) have no subject headings.

Here is an example:

This means that unless you have a particular playwright or title in mind, a browsing approach is the best way to review a sampling of the plays, scenes, and monologues in the library's collection.

Browsing in HopeCAT

Be aware that monologues (for example, "American literature" monologues) are not all classified alike and are, as a result, found in several areas within the collection. Three examples are listed below.

Outstanding Women’s Monologues 2001-2002 PN2080 .O8835 2002
More Monologues on Black Life PS3555 .D925 M67 2000
Voices of Color: Scenes and Monologues from the Black American Theatre PN2080 .V65 1994

Browsing the Stacks

There are the obvious areas— PS ’s and PR’s (American and British).

Several popular anthology series are in the PS600’s:

New Playwrights: The Best Plays of 2002 PS634 .N416 2002
Plays and Playwrights 2003 PS625 .P539 2003
HB Playwrights Short Play Festival 1997: The Motel Plays PS634 .H3 1997

But less obvious are PN ’s.

There are approximately 100 titles which are collections of monologues, collections of scenes, etc., including annual anthologies (sample titles are arbitrary as far as year):

101 Scenes for Groups PN2080 .U49 2000
The Best Stage Scenes 2000 PN2080 .B456 2000

Browsing for Plays from other literatures:
Greek and Roman PA3600 – PA8700
Russian PG3200 – PG5000
French, Italian, Spanish PQ1200 – PQ7300
Canadian and Irish (with British) PR’s
    (tricky: Samuel Beckett lived and wrote in France, so his work is in the PQ’s)
German and Scandinavian PT1300-PT9800
Eastern European, Asian, Jewish, Arabic PH3200 – PL2900

Note: although we do not have a lot of, say, “Arabic Drama”—specific searches, such as IRAN AND DRAMA are fruitful. IRANIAN DRAMA is not a subject heading; HUNGARIAN DRAMA is a subject heading.

Africa:
In the case of plays of Africa, etc., it is always best to complement a stacks browse with several catalog searches. The keyword search AFRICA AND DRAMA brings up call numbers in the PR’s ( South Africa--drama was cataloged with British Literature (not sure where it goes now?), PQ’s (Francophone Africa is cataloged with French Literature) PS’s, as well as the PL’s, and PN’s.

WorldCat: Sometimes Van Wylen Library owns a book that includes the play you are looking for but a keyword search fails to locate it. If you try the same search in WorldCat and limit to Hope College, this will sometimes be successful in finding something we own that was “missed” in the HopeCAT search.

MeLCat: If Van Wylen Library does not own a play you are looking for, borrow it through MeLCat.

Revised August 2006