Library Guides: MUSC 115: History of the Broadway Musical: Newspaper Reviews

Finding Reviews

To find reviews of Broadway productions, you should look in newspapers that were published at the time of the show's opening. The databases to the right contain full-text PDFs of articles from different newspapers. Which database you should use depends on what musical you are trying to find reviews for. Read the description of each database to get an idea of what it contains, or contact me for more help.

Newspaper Databases

ProQuest Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Search the full text of these newspapers: The Baltimore Sun, Christian Science Monitor, New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal.
New York Times This link opens in a new window
Indexes, abstracts, and provides online full text for the New York Times newspaper, the New York Times Book Review, and the New York Times Magazine. Contains articles from 1980 to the present.
Times Digital Archive 1785-2019 This link opens in a new window
Researchers can search through the complete digital edition of The Times (London), using keyword searching and hit-term highlighting to retrieve full facsimile images of either a specific article or a complete page. The entire newspaper is captured, with all articles, advertisements and illustrations/photos divided into categories to facilitate searching.
Historical New York Times This link opens in a new window
This database provides full-text and full-image articles from the New York Times. The collection includes digital reproductions of every page from every issue--cover to cover--in downloadable PDF files. Contains articles from 1851 to 2010.
America's Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window
This database only indexes newspaper published up to 1876, so it should only be used for very old musicals. If your musical premiered after that date, this one won't be of much help to you!

Primary Sources

In this course, primary sources might include newspaper reviews written at the time of a show’s premiere, promotional materials (e.g., print ads or commercials), interviews with a musical’s creators or performers, audio or video recordings of a performance (e.g., cast albums), and a musical’s book (that is, its script) and score (piano-vocal scores are fine for our purposes).