Finis commonly appears at the end of playbooks. Finis also occasionally appears within playbooks. For example, in the case of the quarto
Pericles, Finis appears twice, once before and once after Gower’s final chorus; likewise, in the folio Henry IV, Part 2, Finis appears before the Epilogue.
Even when Finis is the last word of the text, LEMDO does not treat this word as back matter, even though it is unspoken text. We include it in the body of the text, just like the printer’s headpiece and the main title that conventionally appear on the first page above the spoken text are included in the body element even though they are unspoken text.
Note that Finis goes in the body element even if it is followed by a cast list, colophon, or imprint. However, if the Finis appears at the end of the cast list, colophon, or imprint, you will include it in the back element. Do not move where Finis appears in the transcription.
Practice
Wrap the word Finis and any terminal punctuation in the label element.Readers who are well versed in TEI might wonder why LEMDO does not use the trailer for Finis. The trailer element is a member of model.divBottomPart, which means it can occur only at the end of a text division. Given the case of the quarto Pericles, we anticipate seeing other instances of Finis in places where trailer is not permitted. The TEI Guidelines’ definition of label—any label or heading used to identify part of a text— is loose enough to cover our particular use case.
Do not add a type. Even though we usually add type to the label element with the heading in other contexts, Finis is clearly not a heading.
Finis is often centered, italicized, and/or letterspaced. By default, Finis will render as centered in roman type with no letterspacing. To indicate that Finis is in italic type or is letterspaced in your copytext, add a rendition attribute to the label element with a pre-composed rendition (i.e., rnd:italic or rnd:letterspace). For more information on using pre-formed renditions, see .
If the typography cannot be described using one of our pre-formed values, you may style it using the style attribute. For more information on using the style attribute, see .
If Finis in your copytext is not centered, use the place attribute to indicate where on the page it is. See for more information about encoding placement of Finis.
Examples
These examples omit the WLNs on the lb elements.
This example from Q1 of
The Honest Whore, Part 1 shows common context for Finis at the end of the text following the final exeunt:
Exeunt.
In this example from the quarto of
Pericles, Finis occurs in the body of the text both before and after Gower’s final speech:
Gower.In Antiochus and his daughter you haue heard
Of monstrous lust, the due and iust reward:
So on your Patience euermore attending,
New ioy wayte on you, heere our play has ending.
In this example from the folio
Henry IV, Part 2, Finis occurs before the Epilogue:
Note that this example includes verticle spacing and figures, as is common around Finis.