This project attempts the creation of a virtual and physical platform that would foster research on textual, scenic and literary realms of the Early Spanish Classical Theater.  PTCE will promote investigation on the scenic and literary history of the early farces and commedies that populated the Spanish stage.  At the same time, it will develop critical editions of a significant number of plays.  Through the creation of a specific website it will broadcast its results for the general public and the specialists. The Project connects textual, theater, philological and literary studies with the digital humanities.  We will also create a Database that would be useful for researchers of literature and theater of this period.

Within its deliverables, PTCE will foster a number of academic conferences and workshops and broadcast (summer courses, representations) on scenic and literary aspects of Early Spanish Classical Theater (characters, scenes, European connections, philological trends, etc.) and will develop a significant number of hard-copy critical editions. Through its website, appropriate labeled PTCE, it will present a selection of these editions with a search engine that allows enquiries of simple terms, chained terms within the text, introduction and notes as well as a guided search that allows character, genre searches, etc. We attempt to combine the strength of on-line text repositories and databases.

PTCE will ideally be enhanced with the creation of a second and third stage that would develop a platform for the investigation on professional theater writers such as Lope de Rueda or Juan Timoneda as well as the humanist playwrights of Tragedy by the end of the century in order for the projects to be combined into a major portal to promote the critical enquiry, research and care towards the Early Spanish Classical Theater, a major intangible patrimony.