Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 2, No. 222. Wednesday, 18 Sep 1991.
(1) Date: Tue, 17 Sep 1991 15:35:00 -0400
From: "Katherine Egerton" <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Subj: Public domain Shakespeare volunteer
(2) Date: Tue, 17 Sep 91 14:51:33 EDT
From: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (Tom Horton)
Subj: PD Sh texts
(3) Date: Tue, 17 Sep 91 15:25:09 -0400
From: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (Laurie E. Osborne)
Subj: Text encoding
(4) Date: Tue, 17 Sep 91 15:57:10 -0700
From: Bruce Avery <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Subj: Re: SHK 2.0220 Public Domain Shakespeare Proposal
(5) Date: Tue, 17 Sep 1991 22:25:04 -0400
From: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (Liam R. E. Quin)
Subj: Re: SHK 2.0220 Public Domain Shakespeare Proposal
(6) Date: Wed, 18 Sep 1991 06:51:00 -0400
From: ERIC MITCHELL SABINSON
(INSTITUTO DE ESTUDOS DA LINGUAGEM/UNICAMP, SAO PAULO, BRASIL)
<This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Subj: Transcribing Shakespeare and Editions
(7) From: Ken Steele <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Subj: Public Domain Shakespeare
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 91 9:12:08 EDT
(1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 1991 15:35:00 -0400
From: "Katherine Egerton" <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Subject: Public domain Shakespeare volunteer
H'lo Ken -
By all means, sign me up for a scene. i'll keypunch for the greater good
of all. I don't have much of a preference in regards to which play first
(my project for the semester is shaping up to be Henry VI, for which the
demand is, shall we say, less than overwhelming), but I'll enter in whatever
I can get my hands on once an acceptable format has been agreed upon.
Am also willing to proof, etc..
Cheerio - Katy Egerton (egerton@unc)
(2)--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 91 14:51:33 EDT
From: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (Tom Horton)
Subject: PD Sh texts
Ken,
One general comment that I think you and the group should think about. In
determining what texts should be input, one has to decide for what purpose the
Sh e-text is wanted. For normal reading? For acting? For undergrad study?
For textual studies? In the messages in that last batch, it's clear you,
Michael Warren and Hardy Cook are clearly thinking along the latter lines (and
quartos and Folio texts), but there was one other person who wanted something
for acting. And the mission of the Gutenberg is for texts for reading.
Choice of edition in Sh is often hard even when a researcher has a clear
purpose in mind. Even if you don't get agreement on why you're doing this, it
should get discussed so as not to disappoint or offend anyone. But I
think this is one more issue to think about on top of the question of public
domain.
If there exist low-cost choices for some of these alternatives, then maybe that
should swing the choice in a direction where there aren't low-cost versions of
the texts. Ideally we'd like public domain versions of everything, but with
limited resources the question is where to concentrate our attention.
I second the idea of using software like COLLATE and URICA. Collation against
the Howard-Hill Q and Folio texts is possible, and against the Oxford edition
for modern texts might make sense for some plays if punctuation could be
ignored. I also agree about adding some markup. COCOA-style references are a
good choice, particularly since TACT can handle these. (But you'll incur the
wrath of the TEI folks, no doubt. Shhh. I won't tell.)
Tom
Dr. Thomas B. Horton
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Florida Atlantic University
Boca Raton, FL 33431 USA Phone: 407/367-2674 FAX: 407/367-2800
Internet: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Bitnet: HortonT@fauvax
(3)--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 91 15:25:09 -0400
From: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (Laurie E. Osborne)
Subject: Text encoding
I, too, will be glad to help. And I will get in touch with Bernice Kliman
who has recently produced an edition of parallel Hamlets. I don't know what the
copyright status is on that edition, but I do know she envisioned it being
reproduced for classes, etc.
Laurie
Laurie E. Osborne
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
(4)---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 91 15:57:10 -0700
From: Bruce Avery <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Subject: 2.0220 Public Domain Shakespeare Proposal
Comment: Re: SHK 2.0220 Public Domain Shakespeare Proposal
Regarding the scanning possibility mentioned by Hardy Cook and taken up by
Ken Steele. There are now several scanning programs out that claim to be able
to read virtually any type text. Omni page is one of them, but there are
others. Is there anyone out there who has any experience with these things?
They could make the whole job much easier. If anyone has tried to use one
of the OCR programs and found them useful, speak up. In the meantime I'll
inquire of some people I know at Apple who work in this area.
Bruce Avery
UC Santa Cruz
(5)-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 1991 22:25:04 -0400
From: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (Liam R. E. Quin)
Subject: 2.0220 Public Domain Shakespeare Proposal
Comment: Re: SHK 2.0220 Public Domain Shakespeare Proposal
Suggestion:
Use a very simple *subset* of SGML.
For example,
<play> Thirteenth Morning
<comment>
This is a long-undiscovered play.
Comments are optional. U{e tall-s if you want, too, if
your edition has them.
Use either / or /comment to end:
</>
<act> 1
<scene> 1
<sd> Enter Sir Andrew </sd>
How my head hurteth in the ill glimmering of the morrow's purple prose!
etc etc.
Lee
(6)--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 1991 06:51:00 -0400
From: ERIC MITCHELL SABINSON
(INSTITUTO DE ESTUDOS DA LINGUAGEM/UNICAMP, SAO PAULO, BRASIL)
<This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Subject: Transcribing Shakespeare and Editions
Dear Ken,
You can count me in on the Shakespeare project, but there are two
things on my mind. I tend to bite off more than I can chew; therefore, I
would not commit myself to more than a scene at a time. (I have my hands
full translating Comserve's Database instructions these days.)
My other concern has to do with the editions I have here, The New
Nonesuch Shakespeare published in 1953 by the Nonesuch Press, "text
established MCMXXIX by Herbert Farjeon," and The Modern Readers Shakespeare,
New York: Society of Shakesperian Editors, 1909. I am probably out of date,
but as I am not a professional Skakespearean, these do quite well for me.
Would they do for transcription's sake? I am not familiar with the editions
mentioned here, nor do I have access to them here in BRAZIL.
Eric
(7)-------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Ken Steele <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Subject: Public Domain Shakespeare
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 91 9:12:08 EDT
Tom Horton is quite right to challenge us to examine our purposes and
aims in transcribing electronic texts of Shakespeare. Personally, my
motive is to offer a useful tool to the members of SHAKSPER; I already
have access to modernized commercial Shakespeare (the WordCruncher
Riverside) and old-spelling quarto and folio Shakespeare (texts based
on the OTA files). I am frustrated, however, that the Q & F files are
not more easily available to those who could make the best use of them.
A textual revolution which began in the 1960s and culminated in the
studies of *King Lear* by Urkowitz and Warren, and in the Oxford Complete
Works by Taylor & Wells, has made the quarto and folio texts increasingly
important for any scholarly work on Shakespeare at the graduate level,
and I gather that these texts are now being used to some extent for
undergraduate teaching also. The Folio texts are already being marketed
(on paper) as acting texts, so clearly Q&F are not remote to the purposes
of the theatre either.
Tom's other suggestion, that we look at what is already available at
reasonable cost, also leads me to believe that we should concentrate
on the original sixteenth- and seventeenth-century editions. The
Riverside Shakespeare is readily available from WordCruncher, and is
perhaps the standard traditional academic edition. (The last I heard,
WordCruncher was offering these texts for $189 US to students and
faculty). The Oxford Complete Works is available from Oxford
University Press Electronic Publishing, although as yet there is no
sign of the Old-Spelling edition they suggested might eventually be
released. (Likewise, the last I heard, Oxford offered the complete
works for $300 US, or a $1000 US site license). These two texts
represent quite possibly the most important editions of Shakespeare at
the moment. They are also under copyright, so we can't keyboard them
even if we would like to. It seems a poor alternative to use older
and less reliable texts, simply because they are out of copyright, and
it seems a little too ambitious (for now) to seek to create a new
edition entirely electronically...
So I think that brings us back to the original texts -- I am, of
course, open to alternative arguments. As for the encoding scheme,
Tom is right that the TEI/SGML folk would like us to use their
standard, although Liam Quin's note hardly constitutes "wrath" :-).
Certainly we should use a scheme which can easily be converted to SGML
via word processor macros or search-and-replace, but again we should
look at the projected use of these texts: I know of NO text retrieval
or analysis software written to handle SGML (although TACT promises to
do so after a few more releases). WordCruncher, OCP, and TACT are the
most common concordance/analysis/retrieval packages I know of for the
IBM; two of them can make use of COCOA brackets and two of them can
make use of WordCruncher codes (yes, TACT can do both -- and more).
What software do people use on the Mac, or on other platforms? It
wouldn't surprise me greatly to find many using word processors to
search these texts on a casual basis, either, but preparing texts in a
given format or solely for reading seems impractical and something of
a waste; without codes indicating speech prefixes and stage
directions, or speaker or Act/Scene/Line, the more sophisticated
software cannot distinguish between any of these categories.
Bruce Avery is right to question the sophistication of scanning
hardware and software; the last I heard (that's becoming a refrain!)
there was no combination capable of reading renaissance texts
reliably, although even moderately-reliable texts would speed up the
keyboarding phase. (Hardy Cook has indicated to me in private
correspondence that he's about to do some experimenting with his own
equipment; if successful this will be quite promising).
Eric Sabinson's question about copytext emphasizes another problem we
may have to overcome; although geographical distance has little effect
on our discussions, and on the exchange of electronic texts, it does
make it difficult to share copytexts (and with Canada Post on strike,
I can't even mail photocopies...). Again, we would have to choose
texts readily available to as many volunteers as possible, so long as
it were possible to bring those texts into line with the definitive
quartos and folios comparatively easily in the proofreading stage.
I would like to renew my request for information about Shakespearean
texts already available and in the public domain, too. Several
SHAKSPEReans have already told me about texts they have keyboarded
themselves, and I may be able to arrange access to a few others. We
may be able to get a head start on this project if more are available
than we know...
Ken Steele
University of Toronto