Encode Title Page of Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions

Rationale

LEMDO is interested in the information that we can gather from early modern title pages. We encode title pages using the TEI’s full suite of <titlePage> elements so that we can easily harvest that information. This documentation explains how to use this full suite of elements and provides some key information about transcribing title pages and correcting transcriptions from EEBO-TCP.

Practice: Add the Title Page to Your File

The title page in your semi-diplomatic transcription goes in the <front> element of your XML file. To add your title page, you first must add a <titlePage> element as a child of <front> :
<text>
  <front>
    <titlePage/>
  </front>
</text>
You must tag each section of the title page using one of the elements described in this documentation. The basic elements of a <titlePage> typically follow this content model:
<titlePage>
  <docTitle>
    <titlePart type="main"><!-- title --></titlePart>
  </docTitle>
  <byline><!-- text --></byline>
  <figure type="device"/>
  <epigraph><!-- epigraph --></epigraph>
  <docImprint><!-- imprint text --></docImprint>
</titlePage>
Encode each new compositorial line in your title page with an <lb> element. Note that you must not use <lb> to indicate empty lines; use the <space> element instead. For more information on lineation, read Encode Lineation of Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions. For more information on encoding empty lines, see Encode White Space in Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions.

Practice: Encode the Document’s Title

The <docTitle> element contains the full title of the playbook. Titles of playbooks are often long, with extended descriptions of the action of the play and possibly information about performance. Wrap the entire title in the <docTitle> element.
The <docTitle> element must include one or more <titlePart> elements. LEMDO has adopted the TEI-recommended values for the @type attribute on <titlePart> : "main" (main title), "sub" (subtitle), "alt" (alternate title), and "desc" (descriptive title). Although we allow these four values, most title pages will not use all of them. Use the descriptions given below to guide your decisions about which values to give to the different parts of your title. Do note that you may choose to use the same value more than once; that is allowed. If you are uncertain which values you should use for your title, consult with your anthology lead.
To encode the title:
Wrap each component of your title in the <titlePart> element.
Add a @type attribute to each <titlePart> .
Add one of the allowed values to the @type attribute.
(Note that punctuation is part of the title. Include any punctuation within the text nodes of your <titlePart> elements.)

Title Type Values

The following table describes when to use which @type value in your document’s title.
Type Value Description Use Case Example
Main titles "main" Use for the main or initial part of the title. In most cases, follow the Short Title Catalogue, 2nd edition (or the Database of Early English Playbooks) to determine the extent of the main title. The most excellent
Historie of the Merchant
of Venice.
Descriptive titles "desc" Use for parts of the title that describe the play or indicate where, by whom, or when it was performed. Use multiple <titlePart> elements if there are multiple descriptions (especially if they are separated by white space). VVith the extreame crueltie of Shylocke the Iewe
towards the sayd Merchant, in cutting a iust pound
of his flesh: and the obtayning of Portia
by the choyse of three
chests.
Alternate titles "alt" Use for alternative titles that may follow the main title or the subtitle. The word or is a common beginning for an alternative title. Or,
The troubles of Queene Elizabeth:
Subordinate titles "sub" As of 2024-07-29, LEMDO editors and encoders have not used "sub" for a <titlePart> . Generally, early modern title pages seem to offer descriptions and alternate titles more than subtitles. We retain the value but acknowledge that true subtitles are rare. LEMDO welcomes a use case. Please let us know if you are transcribing and/or encoding a title page that has what appears to be a subtitle. n/a

Practice: Encode Bylines

The byline on a playbook title page is usually short. Wrap any text that indicates authorship (whether accurate or spurious) in the <byline> element. Include terminal punctuation inside the <byline> element. Do not tag the names; the LEMDO team will tag names in bylines before we publish your transcription.
<byline>Written by Thomas Dekker.</byline>

Practice: Encode Epigraphs

Some playbooks include an epigraph above or below the byline. The <epigraph> element alone cannot contain text. Wrap the text in an <ab> element and use the milestone <lb> element to capture compositorial line beginnings in the epigraph. Note that although epigraphs are often in a foreign language, they should not include the <foreign> element. LEMDO does not tag foreign languages in semi-diplomatic transcriptions. Instead, simply add a @rendition attribute with a value of "rnd:italic" if the text is in italic font.

Practice: Encode the Imprint

Use the <docImprint> element to capture all the information on the title page about where, by whom, and when the book was created and made available. Transcribe the entire imprint line within the <docImprint> element and use child <pubPlace> , <persName> , and <docDate> elements to capture specific entitites contained therein and make them processable.
Use the <pubPlace> element for the city of publication, the location of the publisher’s shop or stall, and the sign of the shop or stall.
Wrap the names or initials of all printers, publishers, and booksellers in the <persName> element. The TEI does provide a unique element for a publisher (the <publisher> element) but not for a printer. Rather than make a potentially false claim about publication, we have elected to tag the printer simply with the <persName> element. The LEMDO team will give each person named in the imprint line an xml:id in the historical prosopography (PERS1) and make a link later so that the final encoding will link to information about each person. (If we now know that the people named in the imprint line are not the agents who printed, published, or sold the book, we will be able to capture the correct agents in the document’s metadata. LEMDO is interested in the claims made by the title page, whether or not they are correct.) Note that any punctuation that does not belong to the name should go outside the closing tag of the <persName> element.
Use the <docDate> element to tag the date that the playbook’s title page gives, even if we know that it is not accurate. (E.g., the Pavier quartos are dated 1601 even though we now know they were printed in 1619. We can capture the true date of printing in the document metadata.)
A fully encoded <docImprint> will look as follows:
<docImprint> AT <pubPlace>LONDON</pubPlace>, <lb/>Printed by <persName ref="pros:ROBE11">I. R.</persName> for <persName ref="pros:HAYE2">Thomas Heyes</persName>, <lb/>and are to be <g ref="g:longS">s</g>old in <pubPlace>Paules Church-yard, at the <lb/>
  <g ref="g:longS">s</g>igne of the Greene Dragon</pubPlace>. <lb/>
  <docDate>1600</docDate>. </docImprint>

Example

Below is a full example of an encoded title page:
<titlePage>
  <lb/>
  <titlePart type="main"> The mo<g ref="g:longS">s</g>t excellent <lb/>Hi<g ref="g:longS">s</g>torie of the Merchant <lb/>of Venice. </titlePart>
  <lb/>
  <titlePart type="desc"> VVith the extreame crueltie of Shylocke the Iewe <lb/>towards the <g ref="g:longS">s</g>ayd Merchant, in cutting a iu<g ref="g:longS">s</g>t pound <lb/>of his fle<g ref="g:longS">s</g>h: and the obtayning of Portia <lb/>by the choy<g ref="g:longS">s</g>e of three <lb/>che<g ref="g:longS">s</g>ts. </titlePart>
  <lb/>
  <titlePart type="desc"> As it hath beene diuers times acted by the Lord <lb/>Chamberlaine his Seruants. </titlePart>
  <lb/>
  <byline>Written by William Shake<g ref="g:longS">s</g>peare.</byline>
  <figure type="horizontal-rule"/>
  <figure type="device"/>
  <figure type="horizontal-rule"/>
  <lb/>
  <docImprint> AT <pubPlace>LONDON</pubPlace>, <lb/>Printed by <persName ref="pros:ROBE11">I. R.</persName> for <persName ref="pros:HAYE2">Thomas Heyes</persName>, <lb/>and are to be <g ref="g:longS">s</g>old in <pubPlace>Paules Church-yard, at the <lb/>
    <g ref="g:longS">s</g>igne of the Greene Dragon</pubPlace>. <lb/>
    <docDate>1600</docDate>. </docImprint>
</titlePage>

Special Case: Title Pages from EEBO-TCP

If you are working from a converted EEBO-TCP text, correct the transcription as necessary (see the DRE Editorial Guidelines). TCP texts include the <titlePage> element. All the components of the <titlePage> are tagged with the <titlePart> element because our conversion processes cannot read the title page the way you can. You will need to parse the title page and tag the components correctly, using the content model described in this documentation page.

Special Case: Cast List on Title Page

There may be instances that a cast list appears on a title page. When a cast list appears on a title page, encode it with the <titlePart> element and a @type attribute with a "castList" value.
<titlePart type="castList">
  <label type="heading">Actors</label>
  <castList>
    <castGroup>
      <castItem>
        <lb/>
        <role>Iupiter.</role>
        <lb/>
        <role>Ganimed.</role>
        <lb/>
        <role>Venus.</role>
        <lb/>
        <role>Cupid.</role>
        <lb/>
        <role>Iuno.</role>
        <lb/>
        <role>Mercurie, or <lb/>Hermes.</role>
        <lb/>
        <role>
          <g ref="lig:AE">Æ</g>neas.</role>
      </castItem>
    </castGroup>
    <castGroup>
      <castItem>
        <lb/>
        <role>Ascanius.</role>
        <lb/>
        <role>Dido.</role>
        <lb/>
        <role>Anna.</role>
        <lb/>
        <role>Achates.</role>
        <lb/>
        <role>Ilioneus.</role>
        <lb/>
        <role>Iarbas.</role>
        <lb/>
        <role>Cloanthes.</role>
        <lb/>
        <role>Sergestus.</role>
      </castItem>
    </castGroup>
  </castList>
</titlePart>

Further Reading

For figures that appear on title pages, see Encode Figures

Prosopography

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.

Kate LeBere

Project Manager, 2020–2021. Assistant Project Manager, 2019–2020. Textual Remediator and Encoder, 2019–2021. Kate LeBere completed her BA (Hons.) in History and English at the University of Victoria in 2020. During her degree she published papers in The Corvette (2018), The Albatross (2019), and PLVS VLTRA (2020) and presented at the English Undergraduate Conference (2019), Qualicum History Conference (2020), and the Digital Humanities Summer Institute’s Project Management in the Humanities Conference (2021). While her primary research focus was sixteenth and seventeenth century England, she completed her honours thesis on Soviet ballet during the Russian Cultural Revolution. She is currently a student at the University of British Columbia’s iSchool, working on her masters in library and information science.

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.

Nicole Vatcher

Technical Documentation Writer, 2020–2022. Nicole Vatcher completed her BA (Hons.) in English at the University of Victoria in 2021. Her primary research focus was women’s writing in the modernist period.

Rylyn Christensen

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

Thomas Hayes

Variant spelling: Heyes.

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 Title Page of 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.