Encode Front Matter in Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions

Rationale

Front matter is non-spoken text that appears in a playbook before the spoken text. This documentation explains the practice that applies to all front matter except title pages and cast lists. Title pages and cast lists require more complex encoding than other types of front matter. See Encode Title Page of Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions and Encode Character Lists, Actor Lists, and Cast Lists in Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions.
While some digital documentary editions exclude some or all of the front matter, LEMDO considers the entire playbook to be significant. However, in many cases, the front and back matter will already have been transcribed and encoded by the Early Modern Dramatic Paratexts (EMDP) project, which is in the process of moving to LEMDO. EMDP’s transcriptions will be included in your edition. Confer with LEMDO, your anthology lead(s), and EMDP (represented by Heidi Craig) to determine which front matter you need to include.
In the case of plays in collections (e.g., the 1616 Ben Jonson folio and the 1623 folio of Shakespeare’s plays), the anthology containing those plays will decide on how to handle the front matter of the collection.

Practice

LEMDO allows a set list of types of front matter. Our front matter taxonomy is a subset of the taxonomy of paratexts developed by Sonia Massai and Heidi Craig for EMDP. Our taxonomy consists of:
Address to printer.
Address to reader.
Catalogue (may also appear in back matter).
Commendatory verse.
Dedication.
Dedicatory verse.
Half title.
Table of contents (may also appear in back matter).
Title page (treated in another documentation section).
Translator’s note.
Note that a few types of paratext can appear in either the front matter or the back matter of early modern playbooks.
Front matter belongs inside the <front> element (a child of <text> ) unless it has already been fully transcribed and encoded by EMDP. Wrap each discrete section of front matter in its own <div> element. Add the @type attribute and the appropriate value from the table below. Wrap the title of the section in the <head> element. If there are subheadings in the section, wrap them in <label> and style with CSS as needed.
Front Matter Value on @type
Address to printer addressToPrinter
Catalogue catalogue
Commendatory verse commendatoryVerse
Dedication dedication
Dedicatory verse dedicatoryVerse
Half title halfTitle
Table of Contents tableContents
Title page titlePage
Translator’s note translatorsNote

Examples

<front>
  <pb n="A2r"/>
  <div type="dedication">
    <figure type="ornament"/>
    <label type="heading" rendition="rnd:center">
      <lb/>To the right Wor<g ref="lig:longS_h">sh</g>ipfull, Mr. Ni- <lb/>cholas Bacon of Gi<g ref="lig:ll">ll</g>ingham, <lb/>E<g ref="g:longS">s</g>quire. </label>
  </div>
</front>

Prosopography

Heidi Craig

Heidi Craig is Assistant Professor CLTA of English at the University of Toronto. She is the editor of Early Modern Dramatic Paratexts. She is the author of Theatre Closure and the Paradoxical Rise of English Renaissance Drama in the Civil Wars (Cambridge University Press, 2023), as well as many articles and chapters on early modern drama, textual culture, bibliography, and digital humanities.

Isabella Seales

Isabella Seales is a fourth year undergraduate completing her Bachelor of Arts in English at the University of Victoria. She has a special interest in Renaissance and Metaphysical Literature. She is assisting Dr. Jenstad with the MoEML Mayoral Shows anthology as part of the Undergraduate Student Research Award program.

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 Beatrice 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

Project manager, 2025-present; research assistant, 2021-present. Mahayla Galliford (she/her) graduated with a BA (Hons with distinction) from the University of Victoria in 2024. Mahayla’s undergraduate research explored early modern stage directions and civic water pageantry. Mahayla continues her studies through UVic’s English MA program and her SSHRC-funded thesis project focuses on editing and encoding girls’ manuscripts, specifically Lady Rachel Fane’s dramatic entertainments, in collaboration with LEMDO.

Martin Holmes

Martin Holmes has worked as a developer in the UVic’s 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

Training and Documentation Lead 2025–present. LEMDO project manager 2022–2025. Textual remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA with a major in history and minor in Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. Their primary research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America. They are continuing their education through an MA program in Gender and Social Justice Studies at the University of Alberta where they will specialize in Digital Humanities.

Rylyn Christensen

Rylyn Christensen is an English major at the University of Victoria.

Si Micari-Lawless

Si Micari-Lawless is a research assistant with LEMDO and MoEML, and an incoming fourth-year English major at the University of Victoria.

Sonia Massai

Sonia Massai is Professor of Shakespeare Studies at King’s College London, UK. Her publications include her books on Shakespeare’s Accents: Voicing Identity in Performance (Cambridge University Press, 2020) and Shakespeare and the Rise of the Editor (Cambridge University Press, 2007), collections of essays on Ivo van Hove (Bloomsbury, 2018), Shakespeare and Textual Studies (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and World-Wide Shakespeares (Routledge, 2005), and critical editions of The Paratexts in English Printed Drama to 1642 (Cambridge University Press, 2014) and John Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore for Arden Early Modern Drama (Bloomsbury, 2011). She is co-editor of a new collection of essays on Hamlet for the Arden Shakespeare State of Play series, and she is Principal Investigator (PI) on Wartime Shakespeare, a Leverhulme-funded research project, whose outcomes will include an exhibition at the National Army Museum in London in 2023–2024 and accompanying exhibition book. She is currently preparing a new Shakespeare Arden edition of Richard III, and she has recently been appointed as General Editor of the New Cambridge Shakespeare (CSE) series.

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 Encode Front Matter in Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions
Type of text Documentation
Publisher University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform
Series Linked Early Modern Drama Online
Source
TEI Customization created by Martin Holmes, Joey Takeda, and Janelle Jenstad; documentation written by members of the LEMDO Team
Editorial declaration n/a
Edition Released with Linked Early Modern Drama Online 1.0
Encoding description Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines
Document status prgGenerated
Funder(s) Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
License/availability
This file is licensed under a CC BY-NC_ND 4.0 license, which means that it is freely downloadable without permission under the following conditions: (1) credit must be given to the author and LEMDO in any subsequent use of the files and/or data; (2) the content cannot be adapted or repurposed (except in quotations for the purposes of academic review and citation); and (3) commercial uses are not permitted without the knowledge and consent of the editor and LEMDO. This license allows for pedagogical use of the documentation in the classroom.