The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 19.02038 Saturday, 5 April 2008
From: Hardy M. Cook <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Saturday, April 05, 2008
Subject: ISE: More Facsimiles and Facsimile Gateway
Dear SHAKSPEReans,
Earlier in the week (SHK 19.0195, Wednesday, April 2, 2008), I wrote
about some of the exciting Digital Collections making Shakespeare's
quartos and folios available over the Internet in medium to high quality
facsimiles <http://www.shaksper.net/archives/2008/0190.html>. At the
time, I did not mention a project that I am intimately involved in as a
member of the Editorial Board and as an editor of the _Poems_, "The
Internet Shakespeare Editions,"
<http://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/index.html>. The Internet
Shakespeare Editions (ISE) is undoubtedly the most ambitious and
potentially most valuable use of the Internet for textual studies. The
aim of the ISE, the child of visionary Michael Best, is to "create and
publish works for the student, scholar, actor, and general reader in a
form native to the medium of the Internet: scholarly, fully annotated
texts of Shakespeare's plays, multimedia explorations of the context of
Shakespeare's life and works, and records of his plays in performance."
At the heart of the ISE is "The Illuminated Text," "a new interactive
resource" which allows the user to take advantage of the full
capabilities of the computer by exploring a range of multimedia tools to
assist in the display, comparison, and exploration of Shakespeare's
texts. There are three main ways to explore the texts: 1. Folios,
quartos and other original publications (View, search, print, or cut and
paste transcriptions of the old spelling texts as they were originally
published.); 2. Facsimiles of the original publications (See graphics of
the books in which the plays and poems first appeared. These books are
held in major libraries around the world, and are made available here
for you to browse through.); and 3. The modern texts (Read and explore
modern editions of the plays and poems with full annotation and
explanations, as well as an introduction and illustrations from
performance.). When a work is completed, users of the site select work
(poem or play), and then explore that work by clicking between
diplomatic transcriptions of the original quartos and or folio
printings, a modern edition of the work that is thoroughly annotated,
and a facsimiles of the original printing/s. In addition, in the home
pages for each of the plays and poems, users will find another resource:
pages that collect everything related to the work across the whole site,
from the texts and facsimiles to performance, and contextual and
critical materials, and links to related sites elsewhere on the Web. If
theses apparatuses were not enough, appropriate materials to the
published book format will be included in an "integrated text" edition
from Broadview Press, Canada's leading independent academic press.
As the ISE continues to grow so does its integral collection of
facsimiles:
<http://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/facsimile/index.html>.
Currently, the Internet Shakespeare Editions have two copies of the
First Folio, Folios 2, 3, and 4, and many of the BL Quartos (more
forthcoming as funding and research assistant time permit). All can be
accessed from the pages of the texts, and the advanced navigation allows
comparative views and searching by TLN for a given play.
In addition, the ISE also has a gateway site to the most comprehensive
list of links to "Sites on Shakespeare and the Renaissance":
<http://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Annex/links/index.html>. Among this
list is a section on "Texts," which includes Facsimiles, Hypertexts,
Modern texts of the complete canon, Old spelling, Searching for
quotations, Shakespeare's Language, and Translations. The facsimiles
section,
<http://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Annex/links/Shakespeare_Sites/Texts.html#Facsimiles>,
includes annotations, key words, bibliographical information, and a
feature that should be found in more such lists of links, the date that
the link was last checked for validity.
From the onset of this project, Michael Best has moved carefully and
cautiously to insure academic integrity. In the Internet world, where
sites appear to loud flourishes and then either disappear or are never
or seldom kept up-to-date, scholars should welcome the Internet
Shakespeare Editions with its high standards. Unfortunately, this
project does not get the attention that is so rightly deserves.
Hardy
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