Encode Press Variants

Rationale

LEMDO’s semi-diplomatic transcriptions are encoded in TEI-XML and supplied in parallel with a facsimile of a single copy (TEI Guidelines). LEMDO recommends that you prepare your semi-diplomatic transcription from a single material witness. Our suggested criteria for selecting that witness are listed in Select Images for Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions. Start by providing a faithful transcription of that copy,1 with all of its press variants, and making links from your transcription to facsimile pages of the witness. LEMDO does not require a horizontal collation of variants; such collations are expensive and time-consuming.2 For highly canonical plays, the work has already been done. For non-canonical plays, you have to consider carefully whether horizontal collation is an essential part of your editorial process or merely an impediment to timely completion of your edition. You and your anthology leads will make the call about whether or not your edition will include press variants.

Practice

If you decide that capturing press variants is indeed an essential part of your work, LEMDO provides two encoding mechanisms for recording variants. Again, you will want to consult with your anthology leads about which mechanism is the most suitable.
The first mechanism allows you to transcribe your copy and correct readings that were corrected in other copies via stop-press corrections. The second allows you to transcribe your copy and collate it against one or more other copies. You will almost always want to choose the first mechanism. The second mechanism is useful only if your witness contains the corrected sheets and you want to capture the reading in uncorrected sheets in other witnesses. You would also use the second mechanism in the unlikely event that it’s not clear which reading is the correct one.
The first mechanism does help you to establish what is effectively an ideal text of a publication. For the purposes of the vertical collation that you will do against your modernized text, you will assume an ideal version of each publication, rather than a single witness with all its unique imperfections. In other words, we don’t collate press variants when we are establishing our modernized text; at that stage, we collate the differences between what publications would be if they consisted entirely of corrected sheets.

Mechanism 1: Capture Stop Press Corrections Using Sic and Corr

If you are confident that you know which sheets in your witness represent the uncorrected state and which represent the corrected state, you may use the <choice> element with child <sic> and <corr> elements to capture the corrected readings from other witnesses. In your textual essay, you will need to document the witnesses you consulted.
In the XML file containing your semi-diplomatic transcription, wrap the uncorrected character, word, or string in a <sic> element. Supply the corrected character, word, or string in the <corr> element. Wrap the sibling elements in a parent <choice> element.
<ab>And you <choice>
  <sic>way</sic>
  <corr>may</corr>
</choice> have your wish</ab>
<choice>
  <sic>Leiutenant</sic>
  <corr>Lieutenant</corr>
</choice>
LEMDO’s processing by default displays the uncorrected reading (as of 2020). The first example is from Q2 of The Honest Whore, Part 1; hovering over the word “way” generates a drop-down box with the word “may”. At some point, we’ll add processing that allows users to toggle between the readings.
Shakespeare: A Special Case
In the case of Shakespeare, the press variants have been thoroughly documented. We can, with little difficulty, have both our faithful transcription and our ideal copy.
The folio texts in the NISE anthology have all been checked against the State Library of New South Wales copy, the source of the facsimiles embedded in the transcriptions. Where there are uncorrected sheets in this copy, we can turn to the Norton Facsimile (Hinman and Blayney) to supply corrected readings.
In the XML, we tag uncorrected readings in the SLNSW copy with the <sic> element. We supply the corrected readings from Hinman and Blayney inside a <corr> element. Both elements are children of a <choice> element.

Mechanism 2: Capture Press Variants Using a Collation File

To deploy this mechanism, you will need to create a stand-off collation (or ask the LEMDO team to create it for you. Follow the instructions in Encode Collations. Your <listWit> will contain specific copies, rather than publications.
LEMDO does not yet have any examples of plays using this mechanism. Contact the LEMDO team for assistance.

Notes

1.Alternatively, you can start with the EEBO-TCP transcription and bring it into alignment with your chosen witness. Speak to the LEMDO Director about converting a TCP file to baseline LEMDO TEI.↑
2.See Neville, The Accidentals Tourist on how air travel made such work possible for an elite group of editors.↑

Prosopography

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 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.

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.

Bibliography

Hinman, Charlton and Peter W.M. Blayney, eds. The Norton Facsimile: The First Folio of Shakespeare: Based on Folios in the Folger Shakespeare Library Collection. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 1996. WSB ao884.
Neville, Sarah. The Accidentals Tourist: Greg’s “Rationale of Copy-Text” and the Dawn of Transatlantic Air Travel. Textual Cultures 14.2 (2021): 18–29. doi 10.14434/tc.v14i2.33649.

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 Press Variants
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.