Chapter 12. Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions: Features Unique to Manuscript Playbooks

This chapter of our documentation is still in beta. We welcome feedback, corrections, and questions while we finalize the page in our 2024–2025 work cycle.

Introduction to Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions: Manuscripts

Prior Reading

LEMDO’s recommended guidelines for semi-diplomatic transcriptions of manuscripts follows the precepts outlined in Introduction to Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions (Print). We recommend reading that chapter first, starting with Semi-Diplomatic Principles, Requirements, and Prohibitions, which outlines the main choices an editor and encoder will have to make before embarking on a manuscript transcription. Please also consult the Introduction to General Encoding Guidelines.

Rationale

There are multiple ways to encode manuscripts (and, indeed, all documents) in TEI. LEMDO encoding recommends semi-diplomatic manuscript transcriptions that follow the DRE Editorial Guidelines. As the notes, these guidelines are not prescriptive about the length and scope of critical paratexts and/or annotations, the inclusion of contextual materials, or modernization guidelines. These, and other decisions, are made by the anthology lead and encoding team. At present, LEMDO does not support parallel transcription (outlined in 11.2.1 of the TEI Guidelines), that is, transcription that directly points to a location on a facsimile page.
When encoding a manuscript play for LEMDO, the emphasis is on the transcribed text, the scholarly apparatus, and the value it offers for readers. As the DRE Editorial guidelines ask: What are you editing towards? Who are you editing for?

Further Reading

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 Baumann, et al. Manuscripts and the TEI Primer. Women Writer’s Project. Northeastern University
Useful resources on manuscript drama and dramatic paratexts in general include:
Purkis, James. Shakespeare and Manuscript Drama: Canon, Collaboration, and Text. Cambridge UP, 2016. WSB aaaf896.
Long, William.
Werstine
Ioppollo
Stern, Tiffany. Documents of Performance in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Estill, Laura. Dramatic Extracts in Seventeenth-Century English Manuscripts: Watching, Reading, Changing Plays. Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2015.

File Naming Protocols for Manuscripts

Prior Reading

Rationale

Our objective for naming manuscripts is to make the file names consistent, short, and informative.

Practice

The protocol for file names for encodings 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 .
Visit the 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 below for a list of abbreviations for repositories. If your repository is not listed below, please contact LEMDO with a suggested abbreviated repository name so that it can be added. The library acronyms are the same as those used for encoding file names of facsimiles.
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 .

Abbreviations for Repository Names

Alnwick Castle, Duke of Northumberland’s Library Aln
British Library BL
Bodleian Library Bod
Boston Public Library BPL
Brandeis University Bran
Canterbury Cathedral, Elham Parish Library EPL
Cardiff Public Library CPL
Bibliothèque municipale Marceline Desbordes-Valmore (Douai) Douai
Folger Shakespeare Library Folger
Huntington Library Hunt
National Library of Scotland NLS
Rosenbach Museum and Library, Philadelphia RML
State Library of New South Wales SLNSW
Trinity College Dublin TCD
Texas Christian University TCU
UCLA (University of California Los Angeles) UC
UCLA – William Andrews Clark Memorial Library UCLA
University of Victoria Libraries (MacPherson Library) Mac
Victoria and Albert Museum VA
Yale University Library Y
Yale University, Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library YB

Examples

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

Manuscripts and the TEI Header

Rationale

We recommend that you begin by using a template for the teiHeader from an existing manuscript edition. The TEI Header and its component parts are explained at length in the TEI Guidelines.

Title Statement and Responsibility

In the <titleStmt> of the TEI header, the first element is <title> . Not all manuscripts have a clear title for their plays. In the text node of the <title> element, give the title of the play as you want it to appear for the title of your edition.
In the responsibility statements ( <respStmt> ), include all people who were involved in the creation of this edition. ( <respStmt> elements contain two paired elements, <resp> and <persName> , to indicate who participated in which roles. Responsibilities and people can be repeated in multiple <respStmts> , which is to say: people can have more than one responsibility, and more than one person can have the same responsibility. Names should point to entries in the LEMDO Personography using @ref attributes. See the LEMDO list of possible responsibility types. One important responsibility to indicate for manuscripts is the transcriber(s):
<resp ref="resp:trc">Transcriber</resp>
Here is a template for a series of responsibility statements in a manuscript transcription:
<respStmt>
  <resp ref="resp:aut">Author</resp>
  <persName ref="pros:SHAK1">William Shakespeare</persName>
</respStmt> <respStmt>
  <resp ref="resp:edt">Editor</resp>
  <persName ref="pers:COTT1">Line Cottegnies</persName>
</respStmt> <respStmt>
  <resp ref="resp:trc">Transcriber</resp>
  <persName ref="pers:BART6">Emma Bartel</persName>
</respStmt> <respStmt>
  <resp ref="resp:trc">Transcriber</resp>
  <persName ref="pers:DELS1">John Delsinne</persName>
</respStmt>
You will find a list of xml:ids to point to (for names of authors and contributors) under the Resources tab of the lemdo-dev site.

Publication Statement

<publicationStmt>
  <publisher>University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform</publisher>
</publicationStmt>

Manuscripts, LEMDO Categories, and the TEI Header

See Introduction to LEMDO’s Taxonomies to see more on how LEMDO files are categorized. Semi-diplomatic transcriptions have at least four category declarations: document type, format, editorial treatment, and work type (that is, genre). For details on these categories, see Encode File Categories in Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions in the Semi-Diplomatic Transcription chapter.
Many manuscripts will have a similar declaration to the example below. The <textClass> element is nested in the <profileDesc> element in the <teiHeader> . The example below indicates that the encoded file represents a primary text (document type), a manuscript (format), a semi-diplomatic transcription (editorial treatment), and a play (genre).
<textClass>
  <catRef scheme="tax:emdDocumentTypes" target="cat:ldtPrimaryText"/>
  <catRef scheme="tax:emdBookFormats" target="cat:lbfManuscript"/>
  <catRef scheme="tax:emdEditorialTreatments" target="cat:letSemiDiplomatic"/>
  <catRef scheme="tax:emdWorkTypes" target="cat:lwtPlay"/>
</textClass>

Manuscript Description and the TEI Header

Rationale

The manuscript description element ( <msDesc> ) is part of the source description ( <sourceDesc> ) in the TEI header. See the Manuscript Description chapter of the TEI Guidelines for information about all the component elements.
Different manuscripts will have different kinds of information available about them to encode: for instance, not all manuscripts can be dated with precision; provenance information might be unclear, the scribe might be unknown. Furthermore, not all editions will encode all information about a given manuscript: for instance, it is up to the editors how much codicographical or paleographical information will be given. Each anthology lead and manuscript editor will have to determine what will be the most use for readers of the edition to encode. We recommend that the information about manuscripts be primarily in a textual essay in a separate file, in keeping with other LEMDO practices; this essay would then be available to readers in the textual introduction.
There are two main ways of encoding information in manuscript description: as values that can be machine-processed or as blocks of text that could form a catalogue entry or part of a critical introduction.

Identifying the Manuscript

The Manuscript Identifier should contain key information about where the manuscript is located: a place (often using the <settlement> tag); a repository; and any identifiers such as shelfmark or manuscript number.
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>
The repository @ref points to the repository in the LEMDO orgography. We recommend not abbreviating the names of collections in <idno> ; that is, use MS English poetry rather than, for instance, MS Eng. poet. 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, <altIdentifier> can be used to offer both identifying numbers.

Describing the Contents of a Manuscript

Following the manuscript identification in the header, encoders can choose to describe the contents of a manuscript using <msContents> , which contains <msItem> s. 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> .
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>

The Physical Description of a Manuscript

The physical description of a manuscript appears in the <physDesc> element in the header (which is nested in <msDesc> ). It is not required to offer a physical description of a manuscript, and each anthology lead will decide the level of granularity of information they wish to offer.
Information that can appear in the physical description includes, for instance, 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. This prose can appear in <ab> tags:
<physDesc>
  <objectDesc>
    <ab>A sentence or two followed by a link to the prose description of your manuscript goes here. 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.</ab>
  </objectDesc>
</physDesc>
Many LEMDO editors, including DRE editors, will choose to prepare a textual essay to accompany their text. We recommend following the DRE guidelines on the textual essay and including the relevant information (for instance, provenance, relation of your manuscript to other sources, binding, hands/scribes, and other information about the material text).

Encode Hand

The @hand attribute can be added to all the elements in att:written that we have in our schema1, plus the <stage> element. In a LEMDO transcription of a manuscript, the elements to which you will most often add @hand are:
<del>
<add>
<stage>
LEMDO maintains a centralized database of manuscript hands in a file called HAND1.xml. You will have to prepare and submit a <handnote> for each of the hands in your manuscript. The LEMDO team will add it to HAND1.xml for you. In the following example for the Douai Shakespeare Manuscript Project, both <handNote> element are grouped together in a parent <handNotes> element, which has an @xml:id value beginning with HAND1_ and concluding with a signifier (usually the ID of the edition) that helps identify the manuscript. Each <handnote> element has an @xml:id value of DOUH# (DOUH + a number). This xml:id will be used in the transcription of the manuscript to indicate the different hands.
<handNotes xml:id="HAND1_DOUAI">
  <handNote xml:id="DOUH1">
    <p>The primary scribal hand used in the Douai MS, which is MS 787 in the Bibliothèque Marceline Desbordes-Valmore repository.</p>
  </handNote>
  <handNote xml:id="DOUH2">
    <p>The secondary scribal hand used in the Douai MS, which is MS 787 in the Bibliothèque Marceline Desbordes-Valmore repository. This hand is responsible primarily for the insertion of stage directions. This hand is smaller, thinner and more slanting, and does not appear in <title level="m">Macbeth</title>.</p>
  </handNote>
</handNotes>
Once the hand has been added and given an xml:id, here is how you will use the attribute. In these 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. Additional attributes allow you to say how the deletion/addition was achieved (e.g., by overwriting or by inserting).
<ab><!-- transcription -->
  <del hand="hand:DOUH1">Macbeth</del>
  <add hand="hand:DOUH2">Macduff</add>
  <!-- transcription continues -->
</ab>
<!-- GALL2 added this from MS documentation google doc --><!-- transcription --> <subst hand="hand:DOUH2">
  <del>Macbeth</del>
  <add place="plc-above">Macduff</add>
</subst> <!-- transcription continues -->
<speaker>
  <del hand="hand:DOUH1">S</del>
  <add hand="hand:DOUH2" rend="overwritten">M</add>es:</speaker>
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:
<speaker>
  <del>S</del>
  <add rend="overwritten">M</add>es:</speaker>
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

Many of the page layout elements for manuscript editions of play could be similar to printed editions of plays. See the chapter on Introduction to Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions (Print) for details on encoding key elements of layout such as columns, hungwords, and whitespace.
Please note that for running titles and other paratextual materials in manuscripts we, like other manuscript editions in TEI, use the element <fw> which stands for forme work—even though manuscripts are not created using a forme. As with early printed editions, the forme work, such as running heads, can vary from page to page in manuscripts.
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 Chapter 10. Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions:
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.
For more on lineation, see Encode Lineation of Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions; for those guidelines, for compositor, read scribe.

Encode Special Characters and Abbreviations in Manuscripts

Special Characters

If you are unable to find your special character in the linked page above, see the glyphs that are currently available. If you would like a glyph added to this list, please consult the LEMDO team.
Ligatures are a printed convention designed to mimic handwriting without breaking type; therefore, we recommend not encoding ligatures in manuscript transcriptions.
Follow the guidelines for encoding abbreviations in semi-diplomatic transcriptions: that is, all abbreviations are to be expanded as a pair in a <choice> element.
Abbreviations in manuscripts commonly involve superscript or subscript characters. You can encode those as follows:
<ab>
  <choice>
    <abbr>y<seg place="place_superscript">t</seg>
    </abbr>
    <expan>that</expan>
  </choice>
</ab>
Abbreviations in manuscripts can involve special characters such as macrons. You can encode those following the guidelines for Keyboard Shortcuts and Special Characters
Here’s an example for a manuscript that writes ꝑson with a cut p, that is, a p with a crossed descender, as an abbreviation for person:
<ab>
  <choice>
    <abbr>
      <g ref="g:cutp">p</g>son</abbr>
    <expan>person</expan>
  </choice>
</ab>

Encode Deletions and Insertions

Prior Reading

When encoding insertions, you can encode the placement of the insertion using the taxonomy (overwritten, left above, etc). You can also encode the hand, if known, of the insertion.

Insertions

Encode manuscript additions using the <add> tag: that is, 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 after or it could be a later hand.
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):
<add place="plc-below" hand="DOUH2">^</add>
<add place="plc-above" hand="DOUH2">once more</add>
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.
For deletions, 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 <unclear> 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), then encode like this (using the case you mentioned of banning and ^ye bitter curse): the encoding would be:
<add place="plc-above">y<hi rendition="rnd:superscript">e</hi>
</add>
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

Commonplace Markers

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.
<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.
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>
At this point, we are unable to differentiate between hands on underlines.

Encode Manicules and Doodles

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. Currently, the default rendering for <figure> is centered; adding a @place attribute will override the default.
<figure type="manicule"/>
See the Encode Title Page of Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions documentation on the controlled vocabulary for describing figures.
Note: the @hand attribute can be used on <figure> if it is clear who drew the image.
<figure hand="JOC2" type="manicule"/>
For a drawing on the page, you can use <figDesc> to briefly describe the drawing.
<figure hand="JOC2" type="doodle">
  <figDesc>A drawing of a face</figDesc>
</figure>

Notes

1.As of 2021-10-14, we use the following elements from att:written: <lem> , <rdg> , <add> , <del> , <ab> , <closer> , <div> , <figure> , <fw> , <head> , <hi> , <label> , <note> , <opener> , <p> , <seg> , <signed> , and <text> , <trailer> .

Prosopography

Emma Bartel

Emma Bartel is a transcriber with the Douai Shakespeare Manuscript Project.

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.

John Delsinne

John Delsinne is a PhD candidate at Sorbonne Université where he is preparing a dissertation on the staging and representation of battles in Shakespeare’s history plays. He seeks to determine how the historical sources were adapted and tries to reconsider the vision of military history that arises from the plays. He is both an encoder and a transcriber with the Douai Shakespeare Manuscript Project.

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.

Line Cottegnies

Line Cottegnies teaches early-modern literature at Sorbonne Université. She is the author of a monograph on the politics of wonder in Caroline poetry, L’Éclipse du regard: la poésie anglais du baroque au classicisme (Droz, 1997), and has co-edited several collections of essays, including Authorial Conquests: Essays on Genre in the Writings of Margaret Cavendish (AUP, 2003, with Nancy Weitz), Women and Curiosity in the Early Modern Period (Brill, 2016), with Sandring Parageau, or Henry V: A Critical Guide (Bloomsbury, 2018), with Karen Britland. She has published on seventeenth-century literature, from Shakespeare and Raleigh to Ahpra Behn and Mary Astell. Her research interests are: early-modern drama and poetry, the politics of translation (between France and England), and women authors of the period. She has also developed a particular interest in editing: she had edited half of Shakespeare’s plays for the Gallimard bilingual complete works (alone and in collaboration), and, also, Henry IV, Part 2, for The Norton Shakespeare 3 (2016). With Marie-Alice Belle, she has co-edited two Elizabethan translations of Robert Garnier (by Mary Sidney Herbert and Thomas Kyd), published in 2017 in the MHRA Tudor and Stuart Translation Series as Robert Garnier in Elizabethan England. She is currently working on an edition of three Behn’s translations from the French for the Cambridge edition of Behn’s Complete Works

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.

William Shakespeare

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. Dramatic Extracts in Seventeenth-Century English Manuscripts: Watching, Reading, Changing Plays. Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2015.
Purkis, James. Shakespeare and Manuscript Drama: Canon, Collaboration, and Text. Cambridge UP, 2016. WSB aaaf896.
Stern, Tiffany. Documents of Performance in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Orgography

The British Library (BRIT1)

https://www.bl.uk

Metadata