Introduction to Collations
If you are new to editing (e.g., if you are an RA working with an editor), you may
have seen (and possibly ignored!) the collations at the bottom of the page in an Arden
edition. Other editions put them at the back of the book, and many editions pitched
at students do not include collations at all. They are usually cryptic and require
an understanding of the abbreviations and typographical conventions used.
What to collate—and how much to collate—is an anthology-level decision. For example,
the DRE policy is to eschew the variorum approach:
A complete record of textual changes throughout a work’s editorial history is known as a variorum, and while variorum editions are useful tools, their thoroughness and comprehensivity are outside the goals of the DRE project.Consult with your anthology lead(s) before you read the rest of this chapter.
¶ Rationale
The point of a collation is to track variations in a text both as it differs between
copies of an early edition and as it changes in later editions because of editorial
interventions. A collation may attempt to capture some or all of the following variations
and interventions:
Variants in the extant copies of a single printed edition, usually with the aim of
identifying press variants between the uncorrected and corrected states of the sheets
that make up the book. For example, one might collate all the surviving copies of
the first quarto of Richard II in order to address questions about the way the book was put together.
Differences between multiple early editions. Early editions can be significantly different
from each other, having different copytexts (a manuscript, promptbook, a previous
printed playbook). Sometimes they bear signs of revisions, by the author(s) and/or
later revisers. For example, an editor might collate Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4, F1, and F2 of
Richard II.
Sometimes the differences are so significant that scholars think of the early editions
as constituting different texts (e.g., the three texts of Hamlet, the two texts of King Lear, or the multiple texts of Mucedorus). Depending on the anthology’s approach to such texts, you may need to make multiple
collations to capture all the information you wish to include in your edition. Consult
with your anthology lead to decide on an approach to multi-text plays. Documentation
for extended collations is forthcoming.
Variants among manuscript witnesses (e.g. the six known manuscripts of Middleton’s
A Game at Chess).
Editorial interventions made over a play’s 300+ years of editorial history (in the
case of Shakespeare, Rowe’s edition of 1709 up through the latest Arden 3 edition,
say).
Prosopography
James D. Mardock
James Mardock is Associate Professor of English at the University of
Nevada, Associate General Editor for the Internet Shakespeare Editions,
and a dramaturge for the Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival and Reno Little
Theater. In addition to editing quarto and folio Henry
V for the ISE, he has published essays on Shakespeare, Ben
Jonson, and other Renaissance literature in The
Seventeenth Century, Ben Jonson
Journal, Borrowers and Lenders, and
contributed to the collections Representing the Plague
in Early Modern England (Routledge 2010) and Shakespeare Beyond Doubt (Cambridge 2013). His
book Our Scene is London (Routledge 2008)
examines Jonsonʼs representation of urban space as an element in his
strategy of self-definition. With Kathryn McPherson, he edited Stages of Engagement (Duquesne 2013), a collection
of essays on drama in post-Reformation England, and he is currently at
work on a monograph on Calvinism and metatheatrical awareness in early
modern English drama.
Janelle Jenstad
Janelle Jenstad is a Professor of English at the University of
Victoria, Director of The Map
of Early Modern London, and Director of Linked Early Modern Drama
Online. With Jennifer Roberts-Smith and Mark Kaethler, she
co-edited Shakespeare’s Language in Digital Media: Old
Words, New Tools (Routledge). She has edited John Stow’s
A Survey of London (1598 text) for MoEML
and is currently editing The Merchant of Venice
(with Stephen Wittek) and Heywood’s 2 If You Know Not
Me You Know Nobody for DRE. Her articles have appeared in
Digital Humanities Quarterly, Elizabethan Theatre, Early Modern
Literary Studies, Shakespeare
Bulletin, Renaissance and
Reformation, and The Journal of Medieval
and Early Modern Studies. She contributed chapters to Approaches to Teaching Othello (MLA); Teaching Early Modern Literature from the Archives
(MLA); Institutional Culture in Early Modern
England (Brill); Shakespeare, Language, and
the Stage (Arden); Performing Maternity in
Early Modern England (Ashgate); New
Directions in the Geohumanities (Routledge); Early Modern Studies and the Digital Turn (Iter);
Placing Names: Enriching and Integrating
Gazetteers (Indiana); Making Things and
Drawing Boundaries (Minnesota); Rethinking
Shakespeare Source Study: Audiences, Authors, and Digital
Technologies (Routledge); and Civic
Performance: Pageantry and Entertainments in Early Modern
London (Routledge). For more details, see janellejenstad.com.
Joey Takeda
Joey Takeda is LEMDO’s Consulting Programmer and Designer, a role he
assumed in 2020 after three years as the Lead Developer on
LEMDO.
Mahayla Galliford
Research assistant, remediator, encoder, 2021–present. Mahayla Galliford is a fourth-year
student in the English Honours and Humanities Scholars programs at the University
of Victoria. She researches early modern drama and her Jamie Cassels Undergraduate
Research Award project focused on approaches to encoding early modern stage directions.
Martin Holmes
Martin Holmes has worked as a developer in the
UVicʼs Humanities Computing and Media Centre for
over two decades, and has been involved with dozens
of Digital Humanities projects. He has served on
the TEI Technical Council and as Managing Editor of
the Journal of the TEI. He took over from Joey Takeda as
lead developer on LEMDO in 2020. He is a collaborator on
the SSHRC Partnership Grant led by Janelle Jenstad.
Navarra Houldin
Project manager 2022–present. Textual remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them)
completed their BA in History and Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. During
their degree, they worked as a teaching assistant with the University of Victoriaʼs
Department of Hispanic and Italian Studies. Their primary research was on gender and
sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America.
Sarah Neville
Sarah Neville is an assistant professor in the department of English at
the Ohio State University who also holds a courtesy appointment in
Theatre. Her published scholarly research explores how authority is
constructed by authors and audiences in a variety of genres and
technologies, including Renaissance science and medicine, contemporary
textual and digital scholarship, and modern performance. She is
currently finishing a monograph about printed books of botany in the
early Renaissance book trade. Neville was an assistant editor of the
New Oxford Shakespeare (2016–2017), for which
she edited five plays, and is a coordinating editor of the Digital
Renaissance Editions, an open-access project publishing online scholarly
editions of non-Shakespearean early English drama. Neville’s textual and
editorial scholarship is bolstered by her practice-as-research. She is
the founder and creative director of Lord Denney’s
Players, an academic theatre company housed within the OSU
English Department that is designed to explore intersections of texts,
criticism, and performance. At OSU she regularly teaches classes in
Shakespeare, Renaissance poetry, research methods, and textual
studies.
Tracey El Hajj
Junior Programmer 2019–2020. Research Associate 2020–2021. Tracey received her PhD
from the Department of English at the University of Victoria in the field of Science
and Technology Studies. Her research focuses on the algorhythmics of networked communications. She was a 2019–2020 President’s Fellow in Research-Enriched
Teaching at UVic, where she taught an advanced course on
Artificial Intelligence and Everyday Life.Tracey was also a member of the Map of Early Modern London team, between 2018 and 2021. Between 2020 and 2021, she was a fellow in residence at the Praxis Studio for Comparative Media Studies, where she investigated the relationships between artificial intelligence, creativity, health, and justice. As of July 2021, Tracey has moved into the alt-ac world for a term position, while also teaching in the English Department at the University of Victoria.
Orgography
LEMDO Team (LEMD1)
The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project
director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators,
encoders, and remediating editors.
Metadata
Authority title | Introduction to Collations |
Type of text | Documentation |
Short title | |
Publisher | University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform |
Series | Linked Early Modern Drama Online |
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TEI Customization created by Martin Holmes, Joey Takeda, and Janelle Jenstad; documentation written by members of the LEMDO Team
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