LEMDO: Chapter 14. Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions: Features Unique to Manuscript Playbooks

Chapter 14. Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions: Features Unique to Manuscript Playbooks

Introduction to Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions: Manuscripts

This chapter is designed for editors and encoders working on semi-diplomatic transcriptions for manuscript playbooks. Those working on printed playbooks can find information written specifically for them in Chapter 13. Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions: Features Unique to Print Playbooks.¹

Prior Reading

Introduction to Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions

Semi-Diplomatic Principles, Requirements, and Prohibitions

Rationale

The encoding guidelines in this chapter presuppose that you have read Chapter 12: Semi-Diplomatic Trancriptions and that you understand the transcription principles of your anthology. Most of the encoding for semi-diplomatic transcriptions of manuscript playbooks is the same as the encoding for semi-diplomatic transcriptions of printed playbooks.

Learning Outcomes

By the time you have worked through this chapter, you will:

Know how to encode the file categories for your semi-diplomatic transcription.

Be able to encode features unique to manuscript playbooks such as hands, special characters, commonplace markers, and doodles.

Section	Description
File Naming Protocols for Manuscripts	Learn how to name the file for your manuscript’s semi-diplomatic transcription
Describe Source Manuscripts	Learn how to identify and describe the manuscript in your semi-diplomatic transcription
Encode Hand	Learn how to encode different hands
Encode Page Layout for Manuscripts	Learn about LEMDO’s treatment of manuscript layout
Encode Deletions and Insertions	Learn how to encode later additions to or deletions from a manuscript
Encode Commonplace Markers, Underlines, and Braces	Learn how to encode additional marks on the page
Encode Manicules and Doodles	Learn how to encode marginal drawings such as manicules

Other Resources

LEMDO YouTube video: Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions (Editorial)

Some useful external resources about encoding manuscripts in TEI include:

Burghart, Marjorie, ed. Creating a Digital Scholarly Edition with the Text Encoding Initiative: A Textbook for Digital Humanists. Digital Manuscripts, 2017.

Burghart, Marjorie, and Elena Pierazzo. Digital Scholarly Editions: Manuscripts, Texts, and TEI Encoding. DARIAH.

Flanders, Julia, Syd Bauman, and WWP Team. Manuscripts and the TEI Primer. Women Writer’s Project. Northeastern University. https://wwp.northeastern.edu/outreach/resources/ms_encoding.html.

Useful resources on drama in manuscript include:

Estill, Laura. Dramatic Extracts in Seventeenth-Century English Manuscripts: Watching, Reading, Changing Plays. University of Delaware Press, 2015.

Ioppolo, Grace. Dramatists and Their Manuscripts in the Age of Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton and Heywood: Authorship, Authority and the Playhouse. Routledge, 2006.

Long, William B. ’Precious Few’: English Manuscript Playbooks. A Companion to Shakespeare, edited by David Scott Kastan, Wiley, 2012, pp. 414-433.

Mayer, Jean-Christophe.Shakespeare’s Early Readers: A Cultural History from 1590-1800. Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Purkis, James. Shakespeare and Manuscript Drama: Canon, Collaboration, and Text. Cambridge University Press, 2016. WSB aaaf896.

Stern, Tiffany. Documents of Performance in Early Modern England. Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Werstine, Paul. Early Modern Playhouse Manuscripts and the Editing of Shakespeare. Cambridge University Press, 2013. WSB aaac5.

File Naming Protocols for Manuscripts

Prior Reading

Texts and Anthologies

DRE Play IDs

Library Codes

Rationale

Our objective for naming manuscripts is to make the file names consistent, short, and informative. This documentation will explain LEMDO’s standard practice to ensure that our semi-diplomatic transcriptions of manuscript playbooks meet that objective.

Practice: Name Your Manuscript’s Semi-Diplomatic File

The protocol for file names for semi-diplomatic transcriptions of manuscript texts is to use emd (following LEMDO conventions for early modern drama), a short form of the play title, underscore, then a code for the repository in which the manuscript is held. A template of this file name would be: emd[playID]_[repositorycode].xml.

Check DRE Play IDs to see if the play already has a shortened form. If it does not, confer with your anthology lead about an appropriate shortened form then confirm with the LEMDO team that this shortened form is suitable for processing.

See Library Codes for a list of abbreviations for repositories. If your repository is not listed in that file, please contact the LEMDO team and ask them to add the repository.

If your repository holds more than one full-text manuscript of the same play, differentiate them with numbers as follows: emdJoc_BL1.xml and emdJoc_BL2.xml.

Examples

For instance, the file name for an encoding of a British Library manuscript of Jocasta is emdJoc_BL.xml.

Describe Source Manuscripts

Rationale

Most LEMDO editors, including DRE editors, will prepare a textual essay to accompany their text. We recommend that you follow the DRE Editorial Guidelines for the textual essay and capture in narrative form within this essay the relevant information about the manuscript: provenance, relation of your manuscript to other sources, binding, hands/scribes, and other information about the material text. Lists and tables within the narrative may be an effective additional way to convey some of the information. The textual essay is made available to readers as a discrete critical paratext in the edition.

The semi-diplomatic transcription of the manuscript will also contain some structured information in the


                                          <teiHeader>

of the XML file, but LEMDO does not require specific information because different manuscripts will have different kinds of information available about them to encode. For instance, the date of the manuscript may not be certainly known, the provenance information might be unclear, or the scribe might be unknown. Furthermore, not all editions will need or want to encode all available information about a given manuscript, especially if it is well described in a library catalogue or scholarly resource. It is up to the anthology lead and the editor to decide how much codicographical or paleographical information to give and to determine what information will be the most useful for readers of the edition.

Practice: Add the Manuscript Description

The manuscript description is part of your file’s source description (in the


                                          <sourceDesc>

element). Add an


                                          <msDesc>

element as a child of your


                                          <sourceDesc>

element.

Practice: Identify Your Manuscript

Use the


                                          <msIdentifier>

(manuscript identifier) element to capture key information about where your source manuscript is located. To encode the manuscript identifier, add the


                                          <msIdentifier>

element as a child of the


                                          <msDesc>

element. Add appropriate child elements to the


                                          <msIdentifier>

element to capture key information about the location of your source manuscript:

Place: Use the


                                                <settlement>

element to identify the settlement (i.e., city or town) where your source manuscript is held.

Repository: Use the


                                                <repository>

element to identify the repository (i.e., library, archive, museum, or private house) that holds your source manuscript.

Shelfmark or manuscript number: Use the


                                                <idno>

element to identify call numbers, shelfmarks, and manuscript numbers for your source manuscript.

To encode the information, follow these steps:

Type the location where the manuscript is held in the text node of the


                                                <settlement>

element.

Add a


                                             @ref

attribute to the


                                                <repository>

element with a value of org: followed by the xml:id of the repository. To find the xml:id of the repository, search the LEMDO Orgography (ORGS1) for the repository’s name. A member of the LEMDO team will add repositories to ORGS1 at your request.

Type the repository name in the text node of the


                                                <repository>

element.

Type the call number or shelfmark in the text node of the


                                                <idno>

element (with


                                             @type

and the value call). If there are multiple reference numbers that you would like to encode for your manuscript, add an


                                                <idno>

element for each one.

A sample manuscript identifier would look like this:

<msIdentifier>
  <settlement>London</settlement>
  <repository ref="org:BRIT1">British Library</repository>
  <idno>Additional MS 34063</idno>
</msIdentifier>

We recommend not abbreviating the names of collections in


                                          <idno>

; for example, use Additional MS rather than Add. MS. Note: the placement of the abbreviation MS can vary according to repository (for instance, sometimes people cite BL Add. MS and sometimes people cite BL MS Add. for manuscripts in the British Library’s Additional collection); we recommend being consistent within anthologies.

If a manuscript has more than one number that identifies it, for instance, a catalogue number different from a manuscript number, use multiple


                                          <idno>

element.²

Describe the Contents of Your Manuscript

Following the manuscript identification in the header, encoders can choose to describe the contents of a manuscript using the


                                          <msContents>

element. An


                                          <msContents>

element must have at least one child


                                          <msItem>

element. Some manuscripts will have only one item (say, a play); others, like British Library Egerton MS 1994, will have multiple items beyond a single play. It is up to the editor and anthology lead how much detail to include in


                                          <msContents>

LEMDO tends to use just a few child elements inside


                                          <msItem>


                                          <locus>


                                          <author>


                                          <title>


                                          <note>

, and


                                          <idno>

. We do not currently disallow other elements but plan to constrain the element more strictly.

Here is a sample of how the first plays of BL Egerton MS 1994 would be encoded.

<msContents>
  <msItem>
    <locus>ff. 2-30</locus>
    <author ref="pros:FLET1">John Fletcher</author>
    <author ref="pros:MASS10">Philip Massinger</author>
    <title>The Elder Brother</title>
  </msItem>
  <msItem>
    <locus>ff. 30-52</locus>
    <title>Dick of Devonshire</title>
  </msItem>
  <msItem>
    <locus>ff. 52-74</locus>
    <author ref="pros:HEYW1">Thomas Heywood</author>
    <title>The Captives</title>
  </msItem>
</msContents>

Describe Physical Aspects of Your Manuscript

You are not required to offer a physical description of a manuscript. Anthology leads will decide the level of granularity of information they want you to offer and if that information belongs in the textual essay or in the


                                       <mcDesc>

of your semi-diplomatic transcription (or both). If you and your anthology lead decide that it is appropriate to include a physical description in the


                                          <msDesc>

, you will add a child


                                          <physDesc>

element. Inside


                                          <physDesc>

, you will add an


                                          <objectDesc>

element. Your physical description goes inside a

<p>

element inside the


                                          <objectDesc>

Information that can appear in the physical description includes: a description of the support (paper, vellum, etc.), watermarks, foliation, and/or condition. Currently, LEMDO does not use the full TEI tagset for describing manuscripts, so the information is offered in prose. You can also link to your own textual essay from the


                                          <objectDesc>

<physDesc>
  <objectDesc>
    <p>A sentence or two followed by a link to your textual essay goes here.</p>
  </objectDesc>
</physDesc>

Keep in mind that this XML file may travel on its own and be archived independently of the HTML edition. A few sentences will suffice. Make a link to your textual essay following the instructions in Encoding Links Between Parts of Your Edition for making links between parts of your edition.

TEI Rationale

LEMDO uses the


                                          <msDesc>

(manuscript description) element to capture structured information about the source manuscript. The


                                          <msDesc>

element has a rich array of child elements that make it easy to encode metadata and narrative information about where the manuscript is held and what the manuscript contains along with a physical description of the manuscript.

The manuscript description element (


                                          <msDesc>

) is part of the source description (


                                          <sourceDesc>

) in the TEI header. LEMDO has constrained the Manuscript Description module to the following elements:


                                          <collation>


                                          <country>


                                          <handDesc>


                                          <institution>


                                          <locus>


                                          <msContents>


                                          <msDesc>


                                          <msIdentifier>


                                          <msItem>


                                          <msName>


                                          <objectDesc>


                                          <physDesc>


                                          <repository>


                                          <supportDesc>

, and


                                          <typeDesc>

. The only customization of those elements is that the value of the


                                       @resp


                                          <physDesc>

must point to a person in LEMDO’s personography (PERS1) or to an organization in LEMDO’s orgography (ORGS1). Experienced users of TEI may wish to read up on these elements in the Manuscript Description chapter of the TEI Guidelines. Anthology leads or editors may request that other elements from the Manuscript Description module be added to LEMDO’s schema; such requests will be reviewed by LEMDO’s Manuscript Consultant (Laura Estill) and LEMDO’s developers to ensure that we do not already have an encoding protocol to capture the information and to ensure that we have processing to handle a new element.

Processing

The contents of


                                          <msDesc>

form a permanent part of the XML and HTML files of the semi-diplomatic transcription. They can also be processed in various ways. For example, the Douai Shakespeare Manuscript Project processes the


                                          <msDesc>

values and text into a stand-alone, generated table included in each edition. See, for example, The Douai Twelfth Night: Manuscript Description.

Encode Hand

Prior Reading

Introduction to Sitewide Data Files

Handography (HAND1)

Introduction

LEMDO uses the


                                       @hand

attribute to signify which hand wrote pieces of manuscript plays. The


                                       @hand

attribute can be added to all the elements in the TEI’s att:written attribute class that we have in our schema³. In a LEMDO transcription of a manuscript, the elements to which you will most often add


                                       @hand

are:


                                                <del>


                                                <add>


                                                <stage>

LEMDO’s Handography

The


                                       @hand

attribute points to an entry in LEMDO’s centralized database of manuscript hands (the Handography, or HAND1.xml). You must prepare an entry for each hand in your manuscript using the


                                          <handNote>

element. Once you have prepared your entries, send them to the LEMDO team to be added to the Handography.

For information about how to prepare Handography entries and the structure of the HAND1.xml file, see Handography (HAND1).

Practice: Indicate Hands

To indicate a change in hand, add the


                                       @hand

attribute on the element that was written in the new hand. For example, if a stage direction was added by a new hand, put the


                                       @hand

attribute on the


                                          <stage>

element. Give the


                                       @hand

attribute a value of hand: followed by the xml:id for the hand that you wish to indicate. For example, <stage hand="hand:HHHH1">.

Examples

In both of the first two examples, Hand 2 deletes material from Hand 1 and adds something new. Hand 1 wrote Macbeth. Hand 2 deleted it and added Macduff:

<ab>
<del hand="hand:DOUH1">Macbeth</del>
<add hand="hand:DOUH2">Macduff</add>
</ab>

Additional attributes allow you to say how the deletion/addition was achieved (e.g., by overwriting or by inserting):

<subst hand="hand:DOUH2">
<del>Macbeth</del>
<add place="plc-above">Macduff</add>
</subst>

If the same hand deletes a transcription error and then overwrites it, encode as follows. There is no need to indicate the hand because it does not change:

In this example, we have a stage direction added in a second hand:

<stage hand="hand:DOUH2">Enter Romeo</stage>

Encode Page Layout for Manuscripts

Rationale

LEMDO aims to produce semi-diplomatic transcriptions that provide a clean reading text and give a general sense of the manuscript layout. Researchers who are interested in particularities of page use or precise placement will want to consult facsimiles of the manuscript or the manuscript itself. When licenses or permissions allow, LEMDO embeds facsimiles of each page within the semi-diplomatic transcription.

Page layout includes matters like page beginnings, number of columns, placement of headers, placement of marginal material, vertical and horizontal white space, and horizontal lines.

Many of the page layout elements for semi-diplomatic editions of manuscript plays will be the same as those for semi-diplomatic editions of printed plays. For the most part, TEI elements do not make a distinction between manuscript and print. Indeed, the


                                          <msDesc>

(“manuscript description”) element is widely used for describing printed books.

Practice

Most of the practices for encoding manuscript layout are described in the chapter on Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions. The Further Reading section points to specific sections. In this section, we provide guidance on matters that differ for manuscript plays.

Running titles: For running titles and other paratextual materials in manuscripts we, like other projects using TEI to encode manuscripts, use the element


                                          <fw>

(“forme work”), even though a forme is a print technology. As with early printed editions, the forme work, such as running heads, can vary from page to page in manuscripts.

Placement of stage directions and other features: To encode the placement of text on a manuscript page, such as a stage direction, see Encode Stage Directions in Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions. Note that marginal stage directions are described as a special case. The Placement Taxonomy has some values that are allowed only for manuscripts (plc-above, plc-below, plc-right-above, plc-opposite, plc-overleaf, plc-inspace, plc-overwritten, plc-right-below plc-left-above, plc-left-below, plc-centre-above, and plc-centre-below) and one that is prohibited in manuscripts (plc-left-inline).

Lineation: Follow the instructions for encoding line beginnings in printed texts: Encode Lineation of Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions. Those guidelines use the term compositor; for compositor, please read scribe. You are, of course, encoding scribal line beginnings.

Rendering

For a discussion of how your manuscript encoding will be displayed, particularly if you are interested in preserving some of the mise-en-page, see the following sections of the chapter on Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions:

Introduction to Style in Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions

Encode File-Wide Style in Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions

Encode Inline Style Using Pre-Formed Values in Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions

Encode Inline Style Using CSS and CSS Flex in Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions

Encode Deletions and Insertions

Prior Reading

Encode Hungwords in Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions

Encode Hand

Practice: Encode Placement

Placement Taxonomy

When encoding insertions, you can encode the placement of the insertion using the


                                       @place

attribute and values from our placement taxonomy. You can also encode the hand, if known, of the insertion.

Insertions

Manuscript additions include anything that seems to have been inserted in the text after it was originally written. This could be something that the original scribe changed or added later. It could also be an insertion by a later hand. Encode all manuscript additions using the


                                          <add>

element.

The following example shows the original manuscript compiler adding a word above the line:

<ab>
<lb/>May we with right <add place="plc-above">and</add> conscience make this claim?</ab>

Sometimes, when adding an insertion or completing a line that is too long for the page, a manuscript compiler inserts a caret or an arrow to indicate where the insertion goes. You can indicate an upward pointing caret (^) using the g_caret glyph (see Keyboard Shortcuts and Special Characters).

The following example shows a caret added below the line to point to text added above the line (in this case, added by a second hand):

The following example shows a caret added above the line next to a textual addition by a second hand:

<add place="plc-above" hand="DOUH2">^heard</add>

Additions can be as short as a single letter:

<ab>
<lb/>May we with right and conscience make this claim<add hand="DOUH2">e</add>?</ab>

As the placement taxonomy notes, for manuscript encoding, use your judgment about the placement of an addition and what constitutes, for instance, the margin of a page.

Wrap all deletions in the


                                          <del>

element. Within the


                                          <del>

element, you can indicate that the text deleted is illegible:

<ab>
<lb/>When shall we <del>
<gap reason="illegible"/>
</del> three meet again?</ab>

Gap is only used to encode material that has not been transcribed.

If, however, you can read the deleted text, type the text that has been erased, struck through, or otherwise deleted:

<ab>
<lb/>When shall we <del rend="strikethrough">three</del> three meet again?</ab>

Note that in the above example, the original scribe has struck out a repeated word.

You can use the


                                          <unclear>

element to indicate a stretch of text that is partially legible:

<ab>
<lb/>When shall we <del rend="strikethrough">
<unclear>three</unclear>
</del> three meet again?</ab>

In the above example, the transcriber is guessing that the struck out word is three.

Some reasons for using


                                          <unclear>

include deletions and illegible writing.

Additions Paired with Insertions

Sometimes a deletion will be paired with an insertion. In TEI, these are nested in a


                                       <subst>

element:

<ab>O sonne, amongst so <subst>
<del rend="overwrite">few</del>
<add hand="JOC2">many</add>
</subst> miseries</ab>

The above example shows a second hand writing over a word in the original manuscript.

As with all other additions, you can indicate the hand if it is not the hand of the main scribe; you can also indicate the place of the addition.

<ab>O sonne, amongst so <subst>
<del rend="strikethrough">few</del>
<add hand="JOC2" place="plc-right-margin">many</add>
</subst> miseries</ab>.

Additions Contained by Superscripted Material

If material is superscripted inside added material (i.e., superscripted with respect to other letters in the added material), encode as follows:

This encoding allows us to capture the fact that the “e” is superscripted in the added material, relative to the “y”.

Encode Commonplace Markers, Underlines, and Braces

Prior Reading

Practice: Encode Placement

Placement Taxonomy

Encode Manicules and Doodles

Commonplace Markers

Commonplace markers are punctuation marks that indicate a passage is worth copying (Estill). Normally, they look like inverted commas, single quotation marks, or double quotation marks. For commonplace markers in the shape of inverted commas, we encourage compilers to simply type them where they appear in the manuscript, using single or double apostrophes or commas as appropriate. To prevent an invalidity error, be sure to type a curly apostrophe using LEMDO’s built-in keyboard shortcuts. (See LEMDO’s Keyboard Shortcuts.)

<ab>
<lb/>But worthy childe, drive from thie doubtfull brest <lb/>this monstrous mate: in stead whereof embrace <lb/>’’equality whiche stately states defende, <lb/>’’and byndes the mynde with true and trustie knots <lb/>’’of frendely faith, which never can be broke. </ab>

In the example above, the final three lines are prefaced by commonplace markers.

Underlined Text

For text that is underlined, use the


                                       @rend

attribute on a


                                          <seg>

element:

<ab>She that was ever <seg rend="rnd:underline">fair</seg> and never <seg rend="rnd:underline">proud</seg>
</ab>

If you want to indicate that the underlining has been added by a particular hand, add the


                                       @hand

attribute to the


                                          <seg>

element. Follow the instructions in Encode Hand.

Braces

For braces, we encourage compilers to simply type them where they appear in the manuscript. If the brace spans more than one line, you may use CSS to stretch the brace.

If the brace occurs in a cast list in order to group characters and describe them as a group, you will want to use CSS Flex in order to create rows of information. If you have advanced CSS skills, you may try to follow this example from the Douai Shakespeare Manuscript Project:

<castGroup style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;">
  <castGroup>
    <castItem xml:id="emdDouai_Mac_malcolm">
      <role>Malcolme</role>
    </castItem>
    <lb/>
    <castItem xml:id="emdDouai_Mac_donalbain">
      <role>Donalbaine</role>
    </castItem>
  </castGroup>
  <metamark style="transform: scaleY(3); transform-origin: center; margin: 0 1em;">}</metamark>
  <roleDesc>his sons</roleDesc>
</castGroup>

If you do not have advanced CSS skills, please ask the LEMDO team for help. We relish these kinds of challenges!

Encode Manicules and Doodles

Prior Reading

Encode Figures

Practice: Encode Placement

Placement Taxonomy

Practice: Encode Manicules and Other Marginal Drawings

Encode manicules and other marginal drawings using the


                                          <figure>

tag. See Encode Title Page of Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions for encoding practice and LEMDO’s controlled list of allowed values on the


                                       @type

attribute of the


                                          <figure>

element.

Currently, the default rendering for


                                          <figure>

is centred; adding a @place attribute will override the default.

Note: the


                                       @hand

attribute can be used on


                                          <figure>

if it is clear who drew the image.

For a drawing on the page (encoded using either the value illustration or portrait on the


                                       @type

attribute), you must use the


                                          <figDesc>

element to briefly describe the drawing.

<figure hand="JOC2" type="illustration">
<figDesc>A drawing of a face</figDesc>
</figure>

Notes

1.Note that an early iteration of LEMDO documentation’s referred to old-spelling texts, a term inherited from the Internet Shakespeare Editions and superseded by the term semi-diplomatic transcription.↑

2.LEMDO does not use TEI’s


                                 <altIdentifier>

.↑

3.As of 2026-01-23, we use the following elements from att:written:


                                    <lem>


                                    <rdg>


                                    <add>


                                    <del>


                                    <ab>


                                    <closer>


                                    <dateline>


                                    <div>


                                    <emph>


                                    <figure>


                                    <fw>


                                    <head>


                                    <hi>


                                    <label>


                                    <note>


                                    <opener>

<p>


                                    <salute>


                                    <seg>


                                    <signed>


                                    <sp>


                                    <speaker>


                                    <stage>

and


                                    <text>


                                    <trailer>

.↑

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 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.

John Fletcher

Playwright (John Fletcher).

Laura Estill

Laura Estill is a Canada Research Chair in Digital Humanities and Associate Professor of English at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, Canada, where she directs the digital humanities centre. Her monograph (Dramatic Extracts in Seventeenth-Century English Manuscripts: Watching, Reading, Changing Plays, 2015) and co-edited collections (Early Modern Studies after the Digital Turn, 2016 and Early British Drama in Manuscript, 2019) explore the reception history of drama by Shakespeare and his contemporaries from their initial circulation in print, manuscript, and on stage to how we mediate and understand these texts and performances online today. Her work has appeared in journals including Shakespeare Quarterly, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, Digital Humanities Quarterly, Humanities, and The Seventeenth Century, as well as in collections such as Shakespeare’s Theatrical Documents, Shakespeare and Textual Studies, and The Shakespeare User. She is co-editor of Early Modern Digital Review.

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.

Philip Massinger

Thomas Heywood

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

Burghart, Marjorie, and Elena Pierazzo. Digital Scholarly Editions: Manuscripts, Texts, and TEI Encoding. DARIAH.

Burghart, Marjorie, ed. Creating a Digital Scholarly Edition with the Text Encoding Initiative: A Textbook for Digital Humanists. Digital Manuscripts, 2017.

Estill, Laura. Commonplace Markers and Quotation Marks. ArchBook: Architectures of the Book. 2014; updated 2019. https://drc.usask.ca/projects/archbook/commonplace.php.

Estill, Laura. Dramatic Extracts in Seventeenth-Century English Manuscripts: Watching, Reading, Changing Plays. University of Delaware Press, 2015.

Flanders, Julia, Syd Bauman, and WWP Team. Manuscripts and the TEI Primer. Women Writer’s Project. Northeastern University. https://wwp.northeastern.edu/outreach/resources/ms_encoding.html.

Ioppolo, Grace. Dramatists and Their Manuscripts in the Age of Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton and Heywood: Authorship, Authority and the Playhouse. Routledge, 2006.

Long, William B. ’Precious Few’: English Manuscript Playbooks. A Companion to Shakespeare, edited by David Scott Kastan, Wiley, 2012, pp. 414-433.

Mayer, Jean-Christophe.Shakespeare’s Early Readers: A Cultural History from 1590-1800. Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Purkis, James. Shakespeare and Manuscript Drama: Canon, Collaboration, and Text. Cambridge University Press, 2016. WSB aaaf896.

Stern, Tiffany. Documents of Performance in Early Modern England. Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Werstine, Paul. Early Modern Playhouse Manuscripts and the Editing of Shakespeare. Cambridge University Press, 2013. WSB aaac5.

Orgography

The British Library (BRIT1)

https://www.bl.uk

Metadata

Authority title	Chapter 14. Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions: Features Unique to Manuscript Playbooks
Type of text	Documentation
Publisher	Linked Early Modern Drama
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Document status	prgGenerated
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