The Project
The Digital Renaissance Editions will publish fully annotated, critical editions of early English drama. Inspired by the Internet Shakespeare Editions, the Digital Renaissance Editions will offer open-access electronic editions of non-Shakespearean drama, from Tudor interludes through to the Restoration, from extant textual witnesses in manuscript and print.
Each edition will be prepared by a scholar or team of scholars, beginning with a fresh diplomatic transcription of a selected copytext, which is carefully encoded in XML and then proofread meticulously against the original. From this 'base' text a modern text is generated, and scholarly apparatus such as annotations, commentaries, and collations of textual variants are prepared. Each edition will also include high resolution facsimile images of extant textual witnesses. Introductory essays will situate the plays in their cultural, political, and theatrical contexts. All published content will be subjected to a rigorous peer-review process by leading international scholars to ensure accuracy and academic integrity.
The Digital Renaissance Editions will also offer an interactive interface and toolset to facilitate browsing and advanced search functions, as well as more specialized technical applications (such as concordances, statistical analysis, and data visualization).
A Critical Companion of freshly commissioned essays on topics relevant to the study of early English drama will be incorporated into the site, along with a Performance Database offering a searchable collection of multimedia content related to the plays.
This project is generously supported by the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Computing, School of Humanities and the School of Social and Cultural Studies at the University of Western Australia, and the Internet Shakespeare Editions at the University of Victoria.