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Research dossier · Arts & Letters

Moby Dick—Rehearsed

American play by Orson Welles

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 23, 2026
Entity authoritySource title only
Source-derived summary

Moby Dick is a two-act drama written by Orson Welles. The play was staged June 16–July 9, 1955, at the Duke of York's Theatre in London, in a production directed by Welles. The original cast included Welles, Christopher Lee, Kenneth Williams, Joan Plowright, Patrick McGoohan, Gordon Jackson, Peter Sallis, and Wensley Pithey. The play was published by Samuel French in 1965.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Moby Dick—Rehearsed” is american play by Orson Welles. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Moby, Dick and Rehearsed, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA productive route into publication, performance and collection histories when the underlying object or edition remains clearly identified. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1955, 1965—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Moby, Dick and Rehearsed is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american play by Orson Welles” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The first chronological checks are 1955 and 1965.

Critical limits

Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Moby Dick—Rehearsed”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Moby Dick—Rehearsed primary sources, Moby Dick—Rehearsed archive and Moby research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Moby Dick—Rehearsed”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Moby Dick—Rehearsed” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.