Can you recommend any good print editions of Shakespeare in non-modernized orthography?

December 22, 2008 5:05 PM

Can you recommend any good print editions of Shakespeare in non-modernized orthography, priced for regular folks (not university libraries)?

I don't necessarily want uncorrected reproductions of the text exactly as it appears in a given primary source. Editorial corrections and cobbled-together ur-texts are OK with me. I just want the end result to be spelt and punctuated Elizabethan-style. Martin Seymour-Smith's edition of the sonnets is a good example of what I'm after.

I'm really only interested in hold-in-your-hand printed books, although if you know any good online editions like this feel free to list them up for future Googlers.

posted by No-sword to writing & language (13 answers total)

I like Arden for the footnotes.
posted by Medieval Maven at 5:46 PM on December 22, 2008

Medieval Maven, my Ardens don't use Elizabethan spelling.
posted by grumblebee at 6:06 PM on December 22, 2008

ebay has some reasonable deals on first-folio facsimiles.
posted by grumblebee at 6:09 PM on December 22, 2008

Hmm, but the Arden seems to be modernized. In The Tempest I see "Good, speak to th' mariners. Fall to it yarely or we run ourselves aground. Bestir, bestir!"

I'm looking for something closer to this: "Good: Speake to th' Mariners: fall too't, yarely, or we run our selues a ground, bestirre, bestirre."
posted by No-sword at 6:10 PM on December 22, 2008

Also, what about printing the first-folio on gutenberg, taking it to Kinkos and having them bind it for you?
posted by grumblebee at 6:13 PM on December 22, 2008

@grumblebee arugh you're right, and I misread what he was saying.
posted by Medieval Maven at 6:15 PM on December 22, 2008

Thanks grumblebee, those are both good backup suggestions. By "hold-in-your-hand printed books" I guess I meant that I would prefer to reap the benefits of modern scholarship, editing, and printing technology here... but maybe that won't be possible.
posted by No-sword at 8:16 PM on December 22, 2008

One would think that such a thing would be easier to find. (I have found the Wells/Taylor "original spelling" edition (Library of Congress record; Amazon listing) at libraries but that volume might be rare. (I would be very careful when searching for this as many sellers may confuse it with the modernized-spelling version by the same editors.))

I do see that Applause Books publishes a "First Folio Editions" collection which apparently (I've never actually seen any of these) renders the First Folio edition in the original spelling. (Amazon search.)
posted by yz at 9:03 PM on December 22, 2008

I suspect that your best bet may be the Norton First Folio facsimile, if you want the complete plays all together. It reproduces all of the plays in 1623 First Folio and there are modern critical intros in the Norton as well. It's not cheap though -- probably at least $100+.
posted by pised at 9:46 PM on December 22, 2008

By the way: I noticed that Amazon does have page-images of at least some of the Applause books. Thereon you can see that your Tempest quote above, for example, is very similar to but not exactly that found in the Gutenberg edition (one character is missing; the "v" is not printed in the "u" form). I haven't compared them with other scholarly versions of the First Folio or with facsimiles so you may want to investigate and compare the Applause editions a little further to obtain a better sense of their approach.
posted by yz at 5:54 AM on December 24, 2008

Also, what about printing the first-folio on gutenberg, taking it to Kinkos and having them bind it for you?

Another thought: you could also use a book-printing service such as Lulu to produce a reasonable volume. (I've used Lulu once and found the experience aggravating and the results imperfect but decent; I might be willing to try them again.)
posted by yz at 6:02 AM on December 24, 2008

My former professor, Neil Freeman has a series of books which include the first folio text accurately but in modern type--in other words, all the spelling weirdness, no emendations, punctuated as in the folio, but no Ss that look like Fs or anything. His website.

He also has great notes and what not.
posted by stray at 2:39 PM on April 9, 2009

Oh now I feel silly as I see that YZ mentions exactly what I'm speaking of. Anyway, they're great.
posted by stray at 2:40 PM on April 9, 2009