Index talk:Shakespeare - First Folio Faithfully Reproduced, Methuen, 1910.djvu

I have amended the guidance to achieve consistency across the whole book and have preserved as much of what was here previously as practicably possible. Chrisguise (talk) 05:33, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

Subdivision of the work

Each play should have its own sub page because transclusion of a whole play isn't consistent with general guidance on the length of a work on an individual page. Each play should be broken down as per the text. In some cases only Acts are delineated (e.g. Much adoe about Nothing), in others the are both Acts and Scenes (e.g.The Two Gentlement of Verona). Follow what is there.

For each play, {{AuxTOC}} should be used to form the contents list so that the conversion to PDF/e-book works properly.

Typography / spelling

Preserve the existing spelling (i.e. the use of 'i' for 'j' and 'u' for 'v', etc.)

Do not duplicate the long 's' (see below).

Abbreviations

A number of abbreviations are used throughout the work. In most cases these appear to have been used by the printer in the interests of preserving page layout. These abbreviations should be expanded - it's usually obvious what they stand for.

ў (found in cyrillic alphabet)

ɯ̃ (found in IPA)

ã - ñ - õ - ẽ - Ã - Ñ - Õ - Ẽ

very approximate, I haven’t found anything better. --Zyephyrus (talk) 18:40, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

I think it's common to use y^e (y{{sup|e}}) for "the" and y^u (y{{sup|u}}) for "thou". (Example of both here, and the same page transcribed at U.Vic.) Mudbringer (talk) 02:25, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Other sources: see here, or here. --Zyephyrus (talk) 21:34, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

@Chrisguise: There's a {{ye}}, that's backed by {{oldabbr}} (which means we can easily add {{yt}}), which uses a small superscript that's slightly offset to appear above. Better would be yͤ and yͭ which uses Unicode combining characters, but these are often a pain to enter (so we'd probably have to create templates for them). --Xover (talk) 07:33, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

Page numbering

There are a number of page numbering errors throughout the work. Duplicate as-is and use {{SIC}} to indicate the correct number (e.g. for page 77 misnumbered as 73, use {{SIC|77|73}} to give 77.

For example, in the 'Tragedies' section Pages 77 and 78 are apparently missing, but

There is no page 77 nor page 78 in the First Folio. The page numbering jumps from 76 to 79 with no text missing. That is the lines spoken by the Friar continue without interruption from the bottom of page "76" to the top of page "79". The printer of the First Folio made an error, and this error is faithfully reproduced in the facsimile. So, these pages are not "missing" after all. --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:41, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Header/Footer

Replicate text and italicisation. No need to duplicate font size. Include the line using {{rule}} not ----

Stage directions

Directions are italicised. Entrances are centered. Exits and other directions are {{float right}} if on the same line as dialogue or {{right}}, if on a separate one.

Character names

For clarity, names are on a separate line and italicised (not bold).

The abbreviation of names is erratic. Duplicate what is there, don't standardise them.

General page formatting

The page border is not to be replicated.

There are two options for laying out the pages; {{ppoem}} or <poem> </poem>.

Ppoem

The Ppoem template was only introduced relatively recently, but is now the preferred option. When using this option, for text that is not in verse, preserve the line layout, as text wrapping in Ppoem introduces a large hanging indent, which is both inconsistent with the layout, and unattractive in this particular work.

Where words break across lines, re-join the word and place it either at the end of the line it begins on, or at the beginning of the line it ends on, whichever balances the line lengths better.

Where words break across pages, do not use the Ppoem functionality for continued lines, as this will introduce the hanging indent. Frig the layout as follows:

Using 'understanding' as an example, with 'under-' at the end of one page, and 'standing' at the beginning of the next.

At the end of the first page put 'under-' (i.e. including the hyphen) in <noinclude></noinclude>. Follow it immediately (i.e. no spaces) by 'understanding' in <includeonly></includeonly>. At the beginning of the following page put 'standing' in <noinclude></noinclude>. This markup will result in the text on both pages appearing as printed, and it will also transclude properly.

In full, 1st page ends: <noinclude>under-</noinclude><includeonly>understanding</includeonly> 2nd page begins: <noinclude>standing</noinclude>

<poem>

Earlier transcription work has used this mark-up. The content of each page has been wrapped in <poem> </poem>. This (generally) makes it much easier to control line breaks - no need for hundreds of <br> or <br/>.

On pages where a transition from one act or scene to another occurs, the end of the act or scene must be followed by </poem> and the following one begun with <poem>, otherwise the act/scene won't format correctly when transcluded.

If a character's speech ends at the bottom of a page, insert <br> between it and </poem>, then start the next character's words immediately after <poem> on the next page. This will maintain correct spacing when the pages are transcluded.

Using {{center}}, {{right}}, etc. within <poem> </poem> generates additional blank lines so to make the layout look right sometimes requires a bit of adjustment. The following gives an example, the text width having been constrained to make the effect easier to see. Note the difference between:-

{{block left/s|width=350px}}
<poem>
With these mortals on the ground.
{{right|''Winde Hornes.''}}
{{center|''Enter Theseus, Egeus, Hippolita and all his traine.''}}
''Thes''.
Goe one of you, finde out the Forrester,
For now our obseruation is perform’d;
</poem>

and

<poem>
With these mortals on the ground.
{{right|''Winde Hornes.''}}{{center|''Enter Theseus, Egeus, Hippolita and all his traine.''}}''Thes''.
Goe one of you, finde out the Forrester,
For now our obseruation is perform’d;
</poem>
{{block left/e}}

Result

With these mortals on the ground.

Winde Hornes.

Enter Theseus, Egeus, Hippolita and all his traine.

Thes.
Goe one of you, finde out the Forrester,
For now our obseruation is perform’d;

and

With these mortals on the ground.

Winde Hornes.

Enter Theseus, Egeus, Hippolita and all his traine.

Thes.

Goe one of you, finde out the Forrester,
For now our obseruation is perform’d;

Verse and normal speech

Some speech is in verse, some is not. Preserve the line breaks in all cases. Note the differences when using Ppoem identified above.

Poems and songs

Some plays feature songs. These should be centered and follow the formatting as required (italics, etc.). The easiest way to do this is to use {{center block/s}} and {{center block/e}}.

The text should be normal size, since these are not quotations (most books reproduce quoted poetry in a slightly smaller type size than the text around them).

Typical example

<poem>
{{center|''Enter Ariell with Musicke and Song. ''}}
'' Ariel. ''
My Master through his Art foresees the danger
That you (his friend) are in, and sends me forth
(For else his proiect dies) to keepe them liuing. {{float right|'' Sings in Gonzaloes care. ''}}
{{center block/s}}
''While you here do snoaring lie, ''
''Open-ey’d Conspiracie ''
''His time doth take: ''
{{center block/e}}
</poem>

---

Result:

---

Enter Ariell with Musicke and Song.

Ariel.
My Master through his Art foresees the danger
That you (his friend) are in, and sends me forth
(For else his proiect dies) to keepe them liuing. Sings in Gonzaloes care.

While you here do snoaring lie,
Open-ey’d Conspiracie
His time doth take:

Transcription advice

Various sources of the text are available (see below). The Internet Archive/Google ones are mostly just OCR derived and contain many errors. With Gutenberg it is not always clear exactly what it is they've used as the basis of the text (there were several editions of the first folio). I have found the best one to be the Oxford Text Archive, which is from the 1623 version. This has transcribed the spelling as-is (without the long 's') and it's easy to see the page breaks. The other benefit is that the abbreviations have been expanded. The downside is that with my IT skill level, I haven't found a way to carry over the italicisation.

I open the HTML version in a browser and copy and paste. All that is then required is some formatting, most of which can be easily done using a combination of a clipboard manager and find and replace. I use a free software package called 'Ditto' and, as a Firefox user, an add-on called 'Find & Replace for Text Editing'. Alternatively, use whatever method suits you, including, for example, the methods suggested below.

Sources

• Scans on Internet Archive
• Text on Google Books: corrections needed
• Text on Google Books, another one: corrections needed
• Text of Gutenberg Project for "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" .
• Gutenberg’s Project: text of Shakespeare’s First Folio
• Oxford Text Archive.

Two methods:

1. Copy-paste the Google Books text and correct it.

or

2. Transform the modernized text. (see here).

Other ideas? --Zyephyrus (talk) 10:19, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Note that with the title "The Plays of William Shakespeare as published in the first folio of 1623" it is unlikely that the OTA text is actually transcribed from a copy of the First Folio. It seems likely that it is a transcription of later facsimile. --Xover (talk) 07:44, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

Policy on long S

Since this is a facsimile of the First Folio, should we have a requirement to preserve long s? Languageseeker (talk) 03:23, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

No. The First Folio has a ton of similar quirks that we definitely should not try to reproduce, so singling out the long s makes no sense. I'd worry more about which First Folio it is we're reproducing, and how we can ensure consistency if and when we eventually reproduce another copy. --Xover (talk) 14:28, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

I know this is an old discussion, but I had a similar thought about preserving long s. I question the logic that it should be treated as a quirk.

This document uses long s in accordance to established orthographical convention at the time of publication. This is analogous to the way the document treats u and v, or i and j, which this project seems to have decided to preserve faithfully. In all cases, there were widely accepted, clear rules governing the use of each letter variant. To me, it makes no sense to faithfully preserve the original use of u/v and i/j, but single out s/ſ as being somehow different.

Perhaps I would better understand this argument if a couple specific examples of quirks that shouldn't be reproduced were provided, along with an explanation of how long s is more similar to those quirks than it is to u/v and i/j.

Also, if this has already been discussed and resolved elsewhere, I would appreciate if someone could point me to where it is. I looked around and couldn't find it. Athelwulf (talk) 19:17, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

@Athelwulf: I understand your confusion. I started out where you are now and it took me a good long while, and significant prompting by longer-term contributors, to really understand this issue. Partly that's because enWS, in general, is really bad about documenting the decisions it makes, so you need to go trawling through scattered archives to figure out how an established practice was arrived at. When I first became active on the project I was all focussed on diplomatic transcriptions and preserving every little typographic quirk. It took a long time and a lot of practical experience to figure out why the project had landed on the balance that it has. In any case…

The difference between the u/v and i/j cases, with the long s is that the former are expressions of unsettled and evolving orthography whereas the latter is an expression of typography. s and ſ are the same character just using a different glyph, much like other typographic ligatures like st and ƈt (that we have also effectively deprecated). Next you'll probably think of æ, which is an a/e-ligature, but the difference there is that æ and a few similar cases actually exist as distinct characters in some languages and so Cæsar vs. Caesar vs. Cesar becomes an authorial choice, not something determined by the printer. Xover (talk) 07:04, 18 August 2024 (UTC)