The Folger is delighted to announce the launch of Folger Digital Texts. These are reliable, expertly edited, and free digital Shakespeare texts for use by researchers. Starting from the Folger Editions of Shakespeare’s works edited by Barbara Mowat and Paul Werstine, Folger Digital Texts uses XML to create a highly articulate indexing system. Researchers can read the plays online, download PDFs for offline reading, search a play or the whole corpus, navigate by act, scene, line, or the new Folger Throughline Numbers. In short, every word, space, and piece of punctuation has its own place online. Twelve plays are currently available, and the remainder of the works and poems will be released throughout 2013.
The XML-coded files are offered as a free download for noncommercial use by scholars and can be used as the groundwork for digital Shakespeare research projects, app development, and other projects.
The Folger Shakespeare Library editions, published by Simon and Schuster, remain available in print and as ebooks and include essays, glosses, notes, and illustrations from the materials in the Folger collections.
The Folger Digital Texts team includes Rebecca Niles, editor and interface architect, and Michael Poston, editor and encoding architect. They welcome your feedback at folgertexts (at) folger.edu.
If you click here, you will be taken directly to Folger Digital Texts.
Early Modern Online Bibliography 
January 1, 2013 at 12:25 pm |
These texts have an elegant and spare layout. The lack of notes limits their use as teaching texts, but they seem great for app development and scholarship.
I still use this kind of tool as ancillary to the printed text and chiefly as a word-finding or word-counting tool, helpful for close reading. It would be great to hear how others use this tool.
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January 1, 2013 at 12:27 pm |
Yes, the ability to search alone attests to their value. The absence of notes also enables these texts to become a pedagogical tool for grad students–and perhaps even quite advanced undergraduates.
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