Quick Link to Cold Reads Catalog

Thumb Rule

There needs must be at least one script for every major role in the play’s most populous French scene. (A French scene occurs whenever a character enters a scene or leaves the stage.) Ideally, each reader present should have a script, to follow along when they’re not “on.”

[NOTE to Host: make sure all readers have the same edition/translation of the play.]

Standard Sources

In the last century, cold readers had to buy or borrow, beg, or steal, or print out paper copies, which was on reason why people didn’t read plays. These days we simply download scripts to digital devices.

Play in the Public Domain

Any play published before 1930 (as of 2025) has outlived its copyright protection, and most of the good ones are available online. Just Google a title (PDF).

534 BCE (BC) to 1930 CE (AD).
That’s 2,364 years of dramatic literature, from the ancient Greeks and Romans to Christian mysteries and miracles, the Neoclassicists, the Renaissance—from Italy to Spain to England (Shakespeare), France (Moliere), then Germany (Lessing), Sturm und Drang (Goethe, Schiller), evolving to rebellious Romanticism (Hugo, Tieck), descending into maudlin Melodrama, rising like a phoenix into Realism (Ibsen, Chekhov, Strindberg, Shaw, O’Neill) and its alternatives (Naturalism, Symbolism, Surrealism, Expressionism, Futurism, Constructivism)—all before the movies came along and stole .

Restricted

Most modern plays, on the other hand, are copyright protected, and (legally) must be purchased (or borrowed), which can get expensive—not to mention the frustration of a dozen readers trying to find copies of the same edition at the library or book store.

On-line bookstores sell anthologies of four to fifty plays for anywhere from a penny (plus S&H) to fifty bucks (a dollar a play) as long as they’re in stock. Photocopies (legal ones) average under a dime a page, which can mount up depending on the page format (see Printing Tips). Readers who can’t afford scripts rely on the pocket change of those with pocket change to spare.

Cold Reads Digital Collection

Through the years Cold Reads/Charlotte has amassed a library of several hundred digital scripts, all of which are available for download free of charge. The Catalog of Plays tab lists them alphabetically by author, Category Digital Scripts shows script by type and period. Alphabetical list by title is pending. (Anybody want to volunteer?)

PLEASE NOTE:  Most modern scripts (since 1923) are copyright-protected, and require a password. Click Password Request (left sidebar) to declare your intention to read the play one time, aloud, in a small group, with no audience, no money changing hands.  Since our goal is to regenerate public interest in theatre by reading plays, we hope to justify fair use of copyrighted material. You will receive the word within a day or three.

Please don’t abuse this privilege.
You may be legally liable.

Any suggestions? Questions?

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