‘Go sound the ocean, and cast your nets’: Surfing the Net for Early Modern Theatre

Abstract

Professional scholars and students of Early Modern Theatre use the Internet on an almost daily basis, but this essay may be the first time that such sites have been reviewed for a journal in the field. ‘”Go sound the ocean, and cast your nets”: Surfing the Net for Early Modern Theatre,’ while certainly not exhaustive, surveys the ways in which we use (or abuse) Internet resources, in the process discussing: major gateway sites, including introductory sites for students as well as sites for professional scholars; online text sites, databases and e-journals; and the ways in which the Web has and will continue to affect our pedagogy. The essay reviews the ease with which various sites may be used, the effectiveness of the production values, the accuracy and usefulness of the information provided by each site, and the audiences for whom each site seems intended. As helpful as the new technologies have become in the university classroom, they are also seriously affecting our pedagogy; the easy availability of downloadable articles, Internet searches and extensive online databases has led to an epidemic of plagiarism, forcing faculty to view the Internet with critical eyes.