The texts
Modern texts
Included as part of the CD ROM are
modern-spelling texts of all the plays and poems.
These texts are in the public domain, and may be
used without restriction.
The main usefulness of these texts will be for
compiling scripts for acting. Scenes may be
printed individually, or the plays copied into a
word processor. Interested students may notice
that words and sometimes whole speeches of the
plays differ in different editions. You can
direct them to the old-spelling texts to see what
the modern editors had to choose from, and why
different versions will vary.
Old-spelling texts
The CD includes texts of three plays as they were
originally printed. Each of the plays chosen has
a particularly interesting early history. When we
pick up a modern text of Hamlet , it
looks complete, neat, and well-documented. In his
epic film of the play, Kenneth Branagh made it
clear that his aim was to present the play
complete and uncut. What few readers, or viewers
of the Branagh film, will realize is that the
"complete" Hamlet was an invention of
later editors, never performed in Shakespeare's
time.
Advanced students will find the comparison
between the originals and a modern text
fascinating, both because they present puzzles in
their own right, and because they will realize
that the text that we take for granted is not
fully "fixed," so that varying interpretations of
the play become not only possible but almost
necessary.
The concordances
Advanced students who are exploring Shakespeare's
language may find the concordances useful in
pursing patterns of imagery and other linguistic
signs in the plays (Othello has a
significantly higher frequency of the word "now"
than the other major tragedies...). Students who
are taking a course or play on Shakespeare as an
elective, and whose major area of interest is in
the sciences may also find this approach
stimulating.
The main usefulness of the concordances is to
provide a kind of "vertical" reading of the
plays, where apparently widely separated parts of
the play are brought together by a common
vocabulary. Give your students an opportunity to
explore the words of the plays: to find out which
are common words (apart from words like "the"!)
and which are unusual. We often like to think of
Shakespeare's characters as being "real" or
"realistic" -- but he uses the word "real" only
twice in all his plays. Ask your students to look
both for words that seem to turn up often in the
plays (does "love" appear in Romeo and
Juliet more often than in Hamlet or
As You Like It?), but for words that
appear rarely, or not at all..
The essence of this exercise is to explore, to
browse through a play vertically and to invite
your students to be prepared to be surprised.
Sometimes characters unexpectedly share a
vocabulary that others do not; sometimes images
cluster in one part of the play, or in one
character.
Click here to see the
list of system requirements.
About A
Shakespeare Suite
| System Requirements
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The Internet Shakespeare Editions is a
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CD-ROM go to research and development.
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