Notes on the Sources
The sources for most of the passages on this website are from Shakespeare's Plays, Sonnets and Poems found at The Folger Shakespeare or in print, edited by Barbara Mowat, Paul Werstine, Michael Poston, and Rebecca Niles. I have taken the liberty to reprint below the Textual Introduction from Folger Digital Texts website. The references in the third paragraph to brackets do not apply to the excerpts in this website. Visit Folger Digital Texts for the full power and richness of their resources. You can also download the Folger editions or purchase them in print or e-reader versions. When excerpting passages from this website, please comply with the Folger Shakespeare Library's rules for attributions and non-commercial use.
Be sure to visit the Folger Shakespeare Library when you are in Washington, D.C. Contributions to the Folger Shakespeare Library help the institution provide instruction and resources to students of Shakespeare from elementary school through adulthood. Contributing to the Folger is an excellent way to express gratitude for the work they do to introduce new generations to the works of William Shakespeare.
Textual Introduction
By Barbara Mowat and Paul Werstine
“Until now, with the release of the Folger Digital Texts, readers in search of a free online text of Shakespeare's plays and poems had to be content primarily with using the MobyTM Text, which reproduces a late-nineteenth century version of the plays and poems. What is the difference? Many ordinary readers assume that there is a single text for these works: what Shakespeare wrote. But Shakespeare's plays were not published the way modern novels or plays are published today: as a single, authoritative text. In some cases, the plays have come down to us in multiple published versions, represented by various Quartos (Qq) and by the great collection put together by his colleagues in 1623, called the First Folio (F). There are, for example, three very different versions of Hamlet, two of King Lear, Henry V, Romeo and Juliet, and others. Editors choose which version to use as their base text, and then amend that text with words, lines or speech prefixes from the other versions that, in their judgment, make for a better or more accurate text.
“Other editorial decisions involve choices about whether an unfamiliar word could be understood in light of other writings of the period or whether it should be changed; decisions about words that made it into Shakespeare's text by accident through four hundred years of printings and misprinting; and even decisions based on cultural preference and taste. When the Moby„ Text was created, for example, it was deemed —improper and —indecent for Miranda to chastise Caliban for having attempted to rape her. (See The Tempest, 1.2: “Abhorred slave,/Which any print of goodness wilt not take,/Being capable of all ill! I pitied thee…”). All Shakespeare editors at the time took the speech away from her and gave it to her father, Prospero.
“The editors of the Moby™ Shakespeare produced their text long before scholars fully understood the proper grounds on which to make the thousands of decisions that Shakespeare editors face. The Folger Library Shakespeare Editions, on which the Folger Digital Texts depend, make this editorial process as nearly transparent as is possible, in contrast to older texts, like the Moby„, which hide editorial interventions. The reader of the Folger Shakespeare knows where the text has been altered because editorial interventions are signaled by square brackets (for example, from Othello: “[If she in chains of magic were not bound,]“), half-square brackets (for example, from Henry V: “With ⌈blood⌉ and sword and fire to win your right,”), or angle brackets (for example, from Hamlet: “O farewell, honest〈soldier.〉Who hath relieved/you?“). At any point in the text, you can hover your cursor over a bracket for more information.
“Because the Folger Digital Texts are edited in accord with twenty-first century knowledge about Shakespeare's texts, the Folger here provides them to readers, scholars, teachers, actors, directors, and students, free of charge, confident of their quality as texts of the plays and pleased to be able to make this contribution to the study and enjoyment of Shakespeare.”