Combing through our libraries archive was an awesome experience. My search for marginalia didn’t yield many results yet a lot can be inferred from the few instances I managed to stumble upon. My findings which I submitted to Book Traces, were from the script of playwright Richard Sheridan’s comedy The Rivals which was published in 1912 (first in 1775). The play is a “comedy of manners” that tells the story of a rich bachelorette named Lydia Languish and her search for love in a lower social class.

    The marginalia that was inside seemingly belonged to one reader, whose notes lead me to suspect he/she was an acting as a character in the play. Although these instances of marginalia are anonymous and minor they reveal the common practice of using marginalia to write cues for the actor has been around for awhile.

Seeing marginalia that concerned acting cues rather than mere highlighting or textual analysis showed a whole new perspective of the readers interpretation of the play. Looking through an actor/actresses notes to themselves involving their roles is a great way to see inside their art form. Unfortunately there truly werent enough instances of acting notes for me to characterize the acting style and character portrayal the original reader had. If done on a large enough scale an archive of scripts with marginalia could potentially reveal the trends and evolution of acting as an art form.