This edition is based on The Folger Shakespeare Library's Aspley
imprint (JolleyUttersonTiteLockerLampson
copy), but it also has been checked against the Folger's Wright
imprint, which at some point was cropped, resulting in the loss
of running titles and even parts of lines of text. Facsimiles
of the Bodleian Library's Malone 34 copy and the Huntington Library's
Bridgewater copy (both Aspley imprints) were further consulted.
No corrections are introduced or normalization attempted, but
all known press variants are encoded in the text including the
two question marks that are not impressed in that copy but that
appear in all others, as well as the incorrect catchword at F3
and the incorrect number for Sonnet 116.
We are grateful to the Internet Shakespeare Editions, edited by Michael Best, for making available its images of pages in the facsimile of the Chalmers-Bridgewater Copy (Aspley imprint) in the Huntington Library published in London by Lovell Reeve in 1862.
In accordance with general RET guidelines, we keep
closely to the original book copy or manuscript. We retain the
original spelling, including many archaic letters, contracted or
curtailed forms, marks of abbreviation, and ligatured
typeface. That is, this edition should be regarded as a kind
of type facsimile. We record both the bibliographical text (title-page,
table of contents, running titles, foliation and pagination, catchwords,
signatures, and colophons) and the contents themselves, what editors
normally call the text. Insofar as diplomatic electronic editions
are encoded to identify and classify textual objects on the page,
however, we also unavoidably interpret the texts. For this
reason, this edition includes images of the pages of an early
published facsimile (the British Library copy reproduced
by Noel Douglas and printed in Bradford and London by
Percy Lund in 1926).
Each RET edition belongs to a corpus of English literature in the Renaissance. Encoding follows a basic set of guidelines for representing the Renaissance character set. No claim is made for the superiority of this method over others, except that it enables editors to encode all characters, whether available in ISO entity references or not.
In addition to the regular letters of the alphabet, the following
characters appear in this electronic type facsimile:
æ or {ae} digraph {ct} c/t ligature {ff} f/f ligature {ffi} f/f/i ligature {fi} f/i ligature {fl} f/l ligature {s} longs {{s}h} longs/h ligature {{s}i} longs/i ligature {{s}l} longs/l ligature {{s}{s}} longs/longs ligature {{s}t} longs/t ligature {w} w made with two v's { } blank space |_e| e-macron, abbreviated "e+m/n" |_o| e-macron, abbreviated "e+m/n"
Single braces enclose a code for a special character.
Single vertical bars delimit an abbreviation, in this
instance two common brevigraphs. Anything within
either single braces or single vertical bars is one piece
of type.
For tagging of text features, however, this edition does not
follow any one standard tagset. Instead, we offer three
textually identical versions of the 1609 quarto, one minimally
encoded in HTML for browsing, the second heavily encoded in
non-HTML SGML (in which the Guidelines of the
Text Encoding Initiative by Michael Sperberg-McQueen and
Lou Burnard have been followed when feasible), and
the third tagged in TACT COCOA markup for
text-analysis purposes.
Unlike the oldspelling reference texts of the most recent MLA volumes of the New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare, these versions include all significant bibliographic and linguistic features of the text and decline to introduce emendations, even of probable errors. In his 1977 edition to As You Like It, Richard Knowles, general editor of the New Variorum, described the policy that the latest New Variorum editions have followed:
This edition differs somewhat from earlier volumes of the New Variorum Shakespeare. The text is not a type facsimile, but a modified diplomatic reprint of the First Folio text which ignores its significant typographical irregularities, corrects its obvious typographical errors, but retains its lineation. All significant departures from F1 are duly recorded. [emphasis added] (ix)
Under this editorial policy, many typographical features of the original text are ignored or silently regularized:
The reprint does not reproduce typographical features such as the long s, ligatures, display and swash letters, and ornaments; abbreviations printed as one letter above another are reproduced as two consecutive letters, the second one superscript. Minor typographical blemishes such as irregular spacing, printing spacetypes, and wrong font, damaged, turned transposed, misprinted, or clearly erroneous or missing letters or punctuation marks have been corrected, usually silently. If, however, the anomaly is likely to have any bibliographical significance, its correction is recorded in the appendix. Where the error is not clearly typographical, or where the correction is not an obvious one, the text has been left unaltered and various emendations have been recorded in the textual notes. ... In general, the attempt has been made to omit and ignore all insignificant typographical peculiarities, but to retain or at least record any accidental details of possible textual significance. (xixii)
The RET electronic texts thus encode some features that the New Variorum editorial policy does not. The volumes of this series seek to provide scholars with texts that as closely as possible reproduce in electronic form the earliest printed editions of Shakespeare's works (the quartos and the First Folio), operating under the assumption that both a work's bibliographic and linguistic codes contribute to its cultural meaning (cf. D. C. Greetham in McGann xviiixix). As Jerome McGann points out regarding orthographic variations in the 1609 quarto of the Sonnets and A Lover's Complaint, "As our scholarly knowledge increases ... we often discover that texts which had previously seemed corrupt are not so at all; that it is we (or our ignorance) who are at fault" (99). Not to reproduce bibliographic features, like the long s and ligatures, means that scholars, especially textual scholars, will not have information available that may be of use. For example, Randall McLeod has argued on grounds that include bibliographic ones that emending "wi{{s}h}" to "with" (where {{s}h} represents a long-s ligatured with h) in the first line of sonnet 111 ("Unemending Shakespeare Sonnet 111") and "{{s}t}ill" to "skill" (where {{s}t} represents a long-s ligatured with t) in line 12 of sonnet 106 (Clod "Information Upon Information") are not justified. Concerning the former, McLeod writes,
We have been wrong to talk of the reading of Q1 as "wish," for it is wi{{s}h}--to give it back its ligatured face and to countenance it for the first time. It is a threesort word, with two of its letters, s and h, tied, printed as a single type, sh. The "with," however, is a foursort word with no ligatures. The letters t + h never form a ligature in this fount (any that I have seen), whereas the letters s + h are never set without ligation in this text, though they can be occasionally found untied in contemporary English texts. It is strange but true that this simplest of physical facts, ligation, completely undercuts the only rationale editors have ever used to justify their emendations in Sonnet 111, that "wish"--as they put it--is an obvious typo. The editors have committed a blunder equivalent to saying "4 = 3." (8283)
This edition thus attempts to provide as much bibliographic and
linguistic information about the 1609 quarto as possible.
A layer of line-break (<br>), paragraph (<p>), centering (<center>), and horizontal-rule (<hr>) tags over the text formats it for Web reading. Type-styling tags for italic (<i>) and superscript (<sup>) characters render the look of the original generally; more detailed font information, as well as the existence of press-variants, appears in the <f> and <variant> tags found in the base document but are ignored by HTML browsers. Hung words are duplicated at the end of the line in which they belong and are there enclosed by a <supplied> tag, also not displayed by browsers; the original hung words appear in the text where they occur but are placed within HTML comment delimiters so that they do not show. Catchwords, signatures, and running titles are retained and identified by simple bold-face labels (<b>) preceding them within square brackets. Line numbers and rhyme scheme for each sonnet also are added within square brackets in boldface. All tags in the HTML text are listed in the TEI header.
One more boldface label appears in the HTML text within square brackets: bibliographical information about the page, the gathering, the signature, the forme, and the supposed compositor. This label is linked to a digitized image of the page in question.
All tags in the SGML version of the text are visible in the HTML document because the less-than and greater-than symbols, < and >, are represented literally by entity references and thus are interpreted as plain text rather than as tags by Web browsers. Note that this SGML-encoded text has not been parsed. Anyone who wishes to use an enriched DTD, unlimited by HTML, will inevitably want to modify these tags.
The RET SGML tagset does not exactly correspond to what appears
in the TEI Document-Type Definition (DTD), either in the choice of
tags or in the hierarchical structures that they have. However,
asterisked tags are taken from the TEI Guidelines, structural
tags for the 1609 quarto include a basic model adopted by TEI, and
this edition bears a TEI header. The authoritative guide for SGML is
by Charles Goldfarb.
The SGML tag-set for the 1609 volume includes the following tags.
Variable Attributes Attribute Values Closing Tag
*<app> </app> [apparatus]
*<back> </back>
<bkdv1 gathering= "1..11" </bkdv1> [book-division]
t= "quarto"
in= "4s">
<bkdv2 page= "1..80"
</bkdv2> sig= "A1r..L2v"
side= "inner | outer"
forme= "1..11">
<bkdv t= "ln" </bkdv>
n= "1..2812">
*<body> </body>
<bookseller> </bookseller>
<closing> </closing>
<compshift name= "A | B | A-like | </compshift> [omitted]
B-like | A and/or B | [compositor-shift]
unknown">
*<docEdition> </docEdition>
*<docTitle> </docTitle>
<f t= "bk [block] | </f> [omitted]
c [capitals] |
d [double]|
i [italic] |
l [lapidary] |
p [pica] |
r [roman] |
s [small]|
SC [superscript] |
t [titling] |
2 [2-line]">
*<front> </front>
*<fw t= "catch | rttop | </fw> [forme-work]
sig"> ...
<gender t= "m"> </gender>[omitted]
*<group> </group>
<heading> </heading>
<headingno> </headingno>
*<lang t= "English"> </lang> [omitted]
<mode t= "p | v"> [prose or verse]
<pmdv1 t= "complaint | </pmdv1> [poem-division]
sonnets"
datecomp= "">
<pmdv2 t= "sonnet| stanza" </pmdv2>
n= "1..154"
rhyme= "ababbcc | etc.">
<pmdv3 t= "ln" </pmdv3>
n= "1..327">
<printer> </printer>
*<publisher> </publisher>
*<pubPlace> </pubPlace>
*<rdg source= "" </rdg> [reading]
status= "unclear">
<RETbook author= "" </RETbook>
title= ""
date= " ">
*<signed> </signed>
*<text> </text>
Table 2: SGML Tag-set
SGML tags have at least three main features. They include both
a starting tag and an ending tag and characterize the text that
they surround. Only five of the above tags (<compshift>,
<f>, <gender>, and <language>) lack ending tags.
They are understood to exist before the next appearance of the
same tag. Second, SGML tags may have multiple attributes, each
with its own value. (Attribute-value pairs are somewhat like COCOA
variable-value tags.) Third, SGML tags may be nested into hierarchical
structures. For example, press variants in text (but not layout)
are represented by a nesting of a <rdg> (reading) tag within
an <app> (apparatus) tag, as the following example shows.
The reading of this edition, "thee,", appears immediately
after the opening <app> tag, which indicates that a press
variant follows within the <rdg> tag. The <source>
attribute of the opening <rdg> tag indicates where the variant
may be found. The closing tag, </rdg>, clearly defines where
the intrusive reading ends. Other reading tags can follow (but
in this edition are not needed). The closing tag </app>
defines where the apparatus ends.
The general encoding structure is as follows:
<text>
<front>
[titlepage and dedication]
</front>
<body>
<group>
<front>
[heading for sonnets]
</front>
<body>
[sonnets]
</body>
<back>
[closing for sonnets]
</back>
<front>
[heading for Complaint]
</front>
<body>
[Complaint]
</body>
<back>
[closing for Complaint]
</back>
</group>
</body>
<back>
</back>
</text>
The 1609 quarto is thus structured as a group of two works, each
with front matter (a heading), body (a literary work), and back
matter (a "Finis"), within a larger text that has a
titlepage and dedication as its front matter, the group of two
works as its body, and an empty slot for back matter. Two texts
are thus nested within a larger text.
Two other RET structural encodings resemble the divisional tags
used by TEI (<div0>, <div1>, etc.). The first exposes
the bibliographical structure of the book itself. This structure
is not hierarchically subordinate to <front>, <body>,
and <back> tags. Pages within gatherings are encoded, respectively,
by nested <bkdv2> and <bkdv1> tags. The bibliographical
lineation also runs through the book, not nested within either
gatherings or pages. Thus the tag for a book-line is the unnumbered
<bkdv t="ln">. The second structure concerns the
poetry itself. Verse-lines within a sonnet, and sonnets within
a sonnet sequence or stanzas within a verse complaint, are encoded,
respectively, by <pmdv3>, <pmdv2>, and <pmdv1>
tags. The <pmdv> structure nests nicely within each of the
two <body> sections under the <group> tag, but the
bibliographical structure cuts across or overlaps both the basic
TEI model and the <pmdv> structures. Thus there are two
lineations, one for the book, and another for each poem. Because
SGML does not permit the simultaneous use of overlapping structures,
the RET document-type definition, which defines
each of the tags in the edition, does not specify their hierarchies.
However, they are implicit in the choice of numbered tags.
The recommended model for reference citations is as follows. The
standard citation for the poetry is the value of the <stitle>
tag (the book name), the value of the <pmdv1> tag (the name
of the individual work, either the sonnets or the Complaint),
the value of the <pmdv2> tag (the sonnet or stanza number),
and the value of the <pmdv3> tag (the sonnet-stanza line-number).
The standard citation for the physical book in this file is the
value of the <stitle> tag (the book name), the value of
the <bkdv1> tag (the gathering), the value of the <bkdv2
sig=""> tag and attribute (the signature), and the
value of the <bkdv t="ln"> tag (the through-book
line-number).
COCOA tagging takes its name from the first widely available package for literary concordances produced by Oxford Computing Services in the 1970s.1 COCOA-style tags have several implementations and no fixed set of rules. TACT, for example, can employ them but by relaxing the length of variable names in tags in effect makes its own version of COCOA tagging available. Its simple tag-grammar has three parts:
The variable names some general class of feature or attribute of the text that follows it, e.g., "author." The value gives the particular kind of this general class or category, e.g., "Edmund Spenser." The variable or type may take any form, but it always has the same spelling once employed. For example, other tags could be "title," "datepub," and "publisher," but these could not change into synonyms like "heading," "pubdate," and "publishers" and still remain the same tag. The value or token following it, "William Shakespeare," may change into other values such as "John Donne."
All COCOA tags apply to the text from wherever they occur and hold until another tag with the same variable appears. That is, every word in the text following "<author William Shakespeare>" would be tagged as being written by Shakespeare until a subsequent "<author>" tag occurred. The span of such COCOA tags, then, is always indefinite.
There are a small of number of reserved characters in the COCOA encoding that do not occur in the quarto and that have a special meaning:
RET employs the following tags in this edition. The tags are listed
in alphabetical order.
Variable Type of Tag Value Type of Value
(Explanation) (Explanation)
<author author's name William Shakespeare>, etc.
<bkt book type addressee>
bookseller>
catch> catchword
closing>
datepub>
dedication>
edition>
placepub>
printer>
publisher>
rttop> running title
sig> bibliographical signature
signed> person's signature
title> title of book
-> null
<bkdv minor section titlepage>
dedication>
-> null
<bkdv1 gathering gathering1>, etc.
<bkdv2 forme forme1>, etc.
<bkdv3 side of forme inner>
outer>
<bkdv4 signature sigA1r>, etc.
<bkl line-no. 1>, etc.
<bookseller bookseller's
name W. Aspley>, etc.
<compshift compositor
shift A>, etc.
<datecomp date of
composition 1590-1609>, etc.
<datepub date of
publication 1609>, etc.
<edate date of
publication
of electronic
text 1997>, etc.
<eeditor editors of
electronic
text H. M. Cook and I. Lancashire>, etc.
<eplacepub place of
publication of
electronic
text Toronto>, etc.
<f font
bk> block
c> capitals
d> double
i> italic
l> lapidary
p> pica
r> roman
s> small
SC> superscript
t> titling
2> 2line
<forme forme inner>
outer>
<gender author's
gender m>
<lang language lang>
<library holder of
source copy Folger Shakespeare Library>
<mode prose or
verse p>
v>
<page page 1>, etc.
<period era of source
text Renaissance>, etc.
<placepub place of
publication London>, etc.
<pmdv1 poem sonnets>
complaint>
<pmdv2 poem section sonnet1>, etc.
stanza1>, etc.
<pmdv3 poem line no. 1>, etc.
<printer printer's name W. Aspley>, etc.
<publisher publisher's
name T. T.>, etc.
<rhyme rhyme scheme ababcdcdefefgg>, etc.
<shelfmark catalogue number
for source copy Folger STC 22353>, etc.
<sig signature A1r>, etc.
<STC Short-Title
Catalogue no. 22353>, etc.
<stitle short-title WS.Sonnets>, etc.
<tt texttype heading>
headingno>
text>
title>
Table 1: COCOA Tag-set
These include four kinds of tags. Global tags set characteristics for the entire book. Global tags do not change through the course of the work. For this reason they are only useful for identifying the electronic file and for retrieving information from it when combined with other works with different global tags. The following global tags apply to the 1609 quarto:
<author William Shakespeare>
<title Shakespeares Sonnets>
<stitle WS.Sonnets>
<placepub London>
<printer G. Eld>
<publisher T. T.>
<datepub 1609>
<datecomp ca. 15901609>
<lang e>
<STC 22353, 22353a>
<library Folger Shakespeare Library>
<shelfmark Folger STC 22353, Folger STC 22353a>
<eeditor Hardy M. Cook and Ian Lancashire>
<eplacepub CCH, University of Toronto>
<eseries RET3>
<edate 1997>
<gender m>
<period Renaissance>
Feature tags identify units in the book as being of a certain
kind and often as having some attribute. The <mode> and
<tt> tags exemplify this type. Structural tags classify
passages of text according to whether they repeat themselves,
or re-cycle, within the work, especially nested inside some other
unit of text. The numbered <bkdv> and <pmdv> tags
function in this way. Last, word-level tags mark a string with
one of its attributes, such as its font.
Every electronic edition should have a default or recommended
model or template for reference citations. This is the signature,
followed by the identifier for the responsible compositor (in
parentheses), a colon, the sonnet or the stanza number, and the
verse line number. This appears in the TACT .MKS file as
the reference template: "$bkdv4 ($compshift): $pmdv2. $pmdv3."
1 This section is adapted from "Bilingual Dictionaries in an English Renaissance Knowledge Base" by Ian Lancashire, in T. R. Wooldridge, ed., Historical Dictionary Databases, CCHWP 2 (Toronto: Centre for Computing in the Humanities, 1992), pp. 69-88.