The collection includes a series of photographs, playbills, theatre programmes and letters relating to these performances, as well as production books for the other plays directed by Coghill - most notably A Midsummer Night's Dream, which he directed in 1945 for John Gielgud at the Haymarket Theatre, London.

A large proportion of the papers concerns Coghill's work for the Oxford University Drama Commission in the 1940s and his attempts to found a Chair of Drama at Oxford and to acquire a theatre for the University. His correspondence with members of the academic, theatrical and film worlds reflects his efforts to legitimise and establish a permanent home for drama in Oxford. Since he usually retained carbon copies of his outgoing letters, both sides of the exchange are in many cases preserved.

Coghill was Chairman of the Oxford Repertory Theatre and later a Curator of the Oxford Playhouse, which was acquired by the University as its theatre in 1961 after plans to build a new theatre were abandoned. A quantity of correspondence, Curators' minutes and financial papers relating to the Playhouse is preserved in the collection, as are letters and documents relating to Richard Burton's benefactions to the University.