Well, that's what I keep telling myself about the behemoth of ten years intermittent research into the Benson repertory! I'm more or less stuck at the moment on 83% complete which is about as much as I've been able to squeeze from the wonderful British Library Newspaper Archive. So... what do I do with it? It has to be accessible or it remains a vanity project
My current thinking is that the data could be cloud-hosted as a Google sheets document both here and on another blog site just for the data - without all my bletherings attached! In order to do this, however, I have to do some serious work at standardising the data and making sure there are as few human errors as possible. I started this only intending to document the North East visits of the companies to inform my Masters' dissertation and so the early entries are inconsistent and I've used some annotations that even I don't really understand. Then there's a lack of consistency in the inputting of play titles and even in the recording of midweek matinees, not to mention the erratic nature of some of my late-night spelling: Juliet Caesar isn't a play anyone really wants to see...! I'm burning the midnight oil each night, trying to get this part right so that I can try to migrate the data across in order to publish the 'work in progress' database by the end of this month. I can then keep it updated and hopefully-eventually - reach a 90% complete point, which would feel like a huge achievement.
I still want to write about Benson but, to do that, I need more information. So, in September I head Stratford-wards again for another couple of days of Reading Room exploration. The scholarship money is much depleted now, but a nice cheque from the Tax Office has given me the excuse to book 'my' lovely cottage again, just for four nights this time, and to buy tickets to see As You Like It in the outdoor theatre, School for Scandal, Pericles and Merry Wives. When I come home, I will start the writing... I will, honestly!
The quote is Coriolanus and this is Benson AS Coriolanus:
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