The Shakespeare Quartos Archive: A MITH Research Update

The Shakespeare Quartos Archive is a freely-accessible, high-resolution digital collection of the seventy-five pre-1641 quarto editions of William Shakespeare’s plays. This one-year project has also produced an interactive interface and toolset for the detailed study of the quartos, with full-functionality applied to all thirty-two copies of one play, Hamlet, held at participating institutions. Contributing content to this multi-institutional project are the Bodleian Library of the University of Oxford, the British Library, the University of Edinburgh Library, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Huntington Library, and the National Library of Scotland. Textual encoding is provided by staff of the Oxford Digital Library of the University of Oxford. Programming and prototype design is undertaken by staff of the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities of the University of Maryland. Now, three months from the conclusion of the grant, the production team will demonstrate the current state of the interface and seek advice and feedback to guide the completion of their work.