User:Sbh

Critical Editions of Elizabethan Dramas

A project that I would like to see somewhere, one that seems appropriate for Wikisource, is a series of free-content critical editions of Elizabethan plays, somewhat resembling the present-day Arden Shakespeare or Revels or the variorum editions of Beaumont and Fletcher or Shakespeare. (And speaking of Shakespeare, ideally Shakespeare would be included in this same series.) The thing I am struck by is that the early editors of Shakespeare and the other Elizabethan dramatists acted in a sort of Wiki-like manner. Each edition took what was best from the previous edition—introduction, notes, explanatory essays, whatever—eliminated superfluous material, added new information, and produced essentially an improved version of the previous.