The Shakespeare Quarto Archives provides online access to digitized versions of 32 early printed editions of Shakespeare's plays from the 16th and 17th centuries. It aims to furnish scholars, educators, and students with high-resolution images and fully searchable texts of these rare primary sources. The quartos are valuable because they represent some of the earliest extant copies of Shakespeare's works from his lifetime and may show what he originally wrote. The archive allows researchers to examine variations between editions located around the world and provides tools to analyze, compare, annotate, and search across the texts.

1. Shakespeare Quarto Archives

2. Scholarly Digital Libraries
 Provides online access across geographical
boundaries
 Open access
 Furnishes materials held in various locations
 Supplies primary sources for a
scholar, educator, student
 Images – captured in high resolution
 Text – transcribed and fully searchable
 Video – may be primary sources or tutorial

3. Shakespeare Quartos Archive
 Intended audience
 Literary scholars
 Theatre professionals – actors, directors, playwrights
 University students
 Educators

4. Value of Quartos
 No manuscripts survive
 Quartos are earliest extant copies from
Shakespeare’s lifetime (1567-1616)
 They show what Shakespeare probably wrote
 About half of Shakespeare’s plays printed as
quartos
 Quarto refers to the format or paper folding and
leaves
 Formats include: folio, quarto, octavo, duodecimo

5. Uses of Shakespeare Archive
 Quartos are dispersed throughout the world
 Archive provides central point of accessing 32
quartos
 Scholars and researchers need to examine different
editions for variations in text
 Archive provides electronic tools to analyze text
 Scholars need annotations and marginalia

6. Tools Enable
 Comparison between two or more texts
 Images of pages can be cropped and resized for
study
 Search feature allows users to search across all
editions
 Cue lines rendered in blue for staging prompts
 Site provides tools for notes, labels, and exhibitions

7. Examples of Functionality
Select a library

8. Multiple Editions, Locations
1603 Edition, British Library

9. Multiple Editions, Locations
1637 Edition, National Library of
Scotland

10. Compare Editions, Copies
British Library, 1603 and Huntington Library, 1603

11. Compare Editions, Copies
British Library, 1603; Huntington, 1603;
Folger, 1604

12. Textual Comparison
British Library, 1603 and British Library, 1605 Highlight indicates difference in
text

13. Zoom and Details
British Library, 1603 -- Zoom and Bleeding
Ink

14. Zoom and Notes
British Library, 1603 and Annotations

15. Search Across Texts
Huntington, 1604; Search Across All
Texts

16. Cue Lines -- Actors, Directors
British Library, 1603; Cue Lines

17. Notation Features
Bodleian Library 1622, Note with Label

18. Annotation, Print View
Example of notes about possible printer’s errors as reason for
variation

19. Digitization, Administrative Data
Location of encoding – British Library and Folger Library

20. Thank you!
Florence Paisey, Spring 2012