Editions and Adaptations of Shakespeare

This database includes the complete text of 11 major editions of Shakespeare's works, from the First Folio to the Cambridgeedition of 1863-66. It also includes 24 separate contemporary printings of individual plays, selected apocrypha and related works, and more than 100 adaptations, sequels, and burlesques from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.

Editions and Adaptations of Shakespeare contains the First Folio of 1623 and the most important of the original quarto printings of individual plays, which between them are the focus of so much of the textual debate surrounding Shakespeare.

The database also is an historical archive of Shakespeare editing. The major 18th- and 19th-century editions are included, providing a history of the scholarly foundations of the modern Shakespeare text.

A wide selection of theater adaptations enables further comparative studies. Editions and Adaptations of Shakespeare includes the whole of Bell's Acting Edition (1774) of the plays and poems and almost 100 adaptations of individual plays by writers such as John Dryden, Nahum Tate, Colley Cibber, and John Kemble.

Researchers can search text quickly and precisely within and across editions and display different versions simultaneously on the screen. Text can searched by keyword, edition, genre, play/poem title, author, speaker, and publication date. Various search options allow users to limit searches to plays and poems with associated text, plays and poems only, songs and lyrics only, stage instructions only, cast lists only, or the entire database.