Early Theatre awards essay prizes every two years for outstanding contributions in the following categories:

• Best article on a theatre history topic relying on REED-style records
• Best article on the interpretation of a topic in early drama, medieval or early modern
• Best note or Issues in Review essay 

• Winner: Matteo A. Pangallo (Virginia Commonwealth University), ‘“I will keep and character that name”: Dramatis Personae Lists in Early Modern Manuscript Plays’, Early Theatre 18.2 (2015), 87-118, https://doi.org/10.12745/et.18.2.1166
• Honourable Mention: Misha Teramura (Reed College), ‘The Admiral’s Vayvode of 1598’, Early Theatre 18.1 (2015), 79-100, https://doi.org/10.12745/et.18.1.1168

• Winner: Cameron Hunt McNabb (Southeastern University), ‘Night of the Living Bread: Unstable Signs In Chester’s “Antichrist”’, Early Theatre 19.2 (2016), 9-30, https://doi.org/10.12745/et.19.2.2695
• Honourable Mention: Ann Hubert (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), ‘Preaching Rhetorical Invention: Poeta and Paul in the Digby Conversion of St Paul’, Early Theatre 18.1 (2015), 9-32, https://doi.org/10.12745/et.18.1.1070