It is hard to imagine a world without Shakespeare. Since their composition more than four hundred years ago, Shakespeare’s plays and poems have traveled the globe, inviting those who see and read his works to make them their own.
Readers of the New Folger Editions are part of this ongoing process of “taking up Shakespeare,” finding our own thoughts and feelings in language that strikes us as old or unusual and, for that very reason, new. We still struggle to keep up with a writer who could think a mile a minute, whose words paint pictures that shift like clouds. These expertly edited texts are presented to the public as a resource for study, artistic adaptation, and enjoyment. By making the classic texts of the New Folger Editions available in electronic form as The Folger Shakespeare (formerly Folger Digital Texts), we place a trusted resource in the hands of anyone who wants them.
The New Folger Editions of Shakespeare’s plays, which are the basis for the texts realized here in digital form, are special because of their origin. The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, is the single greatest documentary source of Shakespeare’s works. An unparalleled collection of early modern books, manuscripts, and artwork connected to Shakespeare, the Folger’s holdings have been consulted extensively in the preparation of these texts. The Editions also reflect the expertise gained through the regular performance of Shakespeare’s works in the Folger’s Elizabethan Theatre.
I want to express my deep thanks to editors Barbara Mowat and Paul Werstine for creating these indispensable editions of Shakespeare’s works, which incorporate the best of textual scholarship with a richness of commentary that is both inspired and engaging. Readers who want to know more about Shakespeare and his plays can follow the paths these distinguished scholars have tread by visiting the Folger either in-person or online, where a range of physical and digital resources exists to supplement the material in these texts. I commend to you these words, and hope that they inspire.
Michael Witmore
Director, Folger Shakespeare Library
Until now, with the release of The Folger Shakespeare (formerly Folger Digital Texts), readers in search of a free online text of Shakespeare’s plays and poems had to be content primarily with using the Moby™ Text, which reproduces a late-nineteenth century version of the plays and poems. What is the difference? Many ordinary readers assume that there is a single text of all these works: what Shakespeare wrote. But Shakespeare’s plays were not published the way modern novels or plays are published today: as a single, authoritative text. In some cases, the plays have come down to us in multiple published versions, represented by various Quartos (Qq) and by the great collection put together by his colleagues in 1623, called the First Folio (F). There are, for example, three very different versions of
Hamlet
, two of
King Lear
,
Henry V
,
Romeo and Juliet
, and others. Editors choose which version to use as their base text, and then amend that text with words, lines or speech prefixes from the other versions that, in their judgment, make for a better or more accurate text.
Other editorial decisions involve choices about whether an unfamiliar word could be understood in light of other writings of the period or whether it should be changed; decisions about words that made it into Shakespeare’s text by accident through four hundred years of printings and misprinting; and even decisions based on cultural preference and taste. When the Moby™ Text was created, for example, it was deemed “improper” and “indecent” for Miranda to chastise Caliban for having attempted to rape her. (See
The Tempest
, 1.2: “Abhorred slave,/Which any print of goodness wilt not take,/Being capable of all ill! I pitied thee…”). All Shakespeare editors at the time took the speech away from her and gave it to her father, Prospero.
The editors of the Moby™ Shakespeare produced their text long before scholars fully understood the proper grounds on which to make the thousands of decisions that Shakespeare editors face. The Folger Library Shakespeare Editions, on which the Folger Shakespeare texts depend, make this editorial process as nearly transparent as is possible, in contrast to older texts, like the Moby™, which hide editorial interventions. The reader of the Folger Shakespeare knows where the text has been altered because editorial interventions are signaled by square brackets (for example, from
Othello
: “
square bracket
If she in chains of magic were not bound,
square bracket
”), half-square brackets (for example, from
Henry V
: “With
half-square bracket
blood
half-square bracket
and sword and fire to win your right,”), or angle brackets (for example, from
Hamlet
: “O farewell, honest
angle bracket
soldier.
angle bracket
Who hath relieved/you?”). At any point in the text, you can hover your cursor over a bracket for more information.
Because the Folger Shakespeare texts are edited in accord with twenty-first century knowledge about Shakespeare’s texts, the Folger here provides them to readers, scholars, teachers, actors, directors, and students, free of charge, confident of their quality as texts of the plays and pleased to be able to make this contribution to the study and enjoyment of Shakespeare.
The Phoenix and Turtle
Let
the
bird
of
loudest
lay
On
the
sole
Arabian
tree
Herald
sad
and
trumpet
be
,
To
whose
sound
chaste
wings
obey
.
But
thou
shrieking
harbinger
,
Foul
precurrer
of
the
fiend
,
Augur
of
the
fever’s
end
,
To
this
troop
come
thou
not
near
.
From
this
session
interdict
Every
fowl
of
tyrant
wing
,
Save
the
eagle
,
feathered
king
;
Keep
the
obsequy
so
strict
.
Let
the
priest
in
surplice
white
,
That
defunctive
music
can
,
Be
the
death-divining
swan
,
Lest
the
requiem
lack
his
right
.
And
thou
treble-dated
crow
,
That
thy
sable
gender
mak’st
With
the
breath
thou
giv’st
and
tak’st
,
’Mongst
our
mourners
shalt
thou
go
.
Here
the
anthem
doth
commence
:
Love
and
constancy
is
dead
,
Phoenix
and
the
turtle
fled
In
a
mutual
flame
from
hence
.
So
they
loved
,
as
love
in
twain
Had
the
essence
but
in
one
,
Two
distincts
,
division
none
;
Number
there
in
love
was
slain
.
Hearts
remote
yet
not
asunder
,
Distance
and
no
space
was
seen
’Twixt
this
turtle
and
his
queen
;
But
in
them
it
were
a
wonder
.
So
between
them
love
did
shine
That
the
turtle
saw
his
right
Flaming
in
the
phoenix’
sight
;
Either
was
the
other’s
mine
.
Property
was
thus
appalled
That
the
self
was
not
the
same
;
Single
nature’s
double
name
Neither
two
nor
one
was
called
.
Reason
,
in
itself
confounded
,
Saw
division
grow
together
,
To
themselves
yet
either
neither
,
Simple
were
so
well
compounded
That
it
cried
,
How
true
a
twain
Seemeth
this
concordant
one
!
Love
hath
reason
,
Reason
none
,
If
what
parts
can
so
remain
,
Whereupon
it
made
this
threne
To
the
phoenix
and
the
dove
,
Co-supremes
and
stars
of
love
,
As
chorus
to
their
tragic
scene
.
Threnos
Beauty
,
truth
,
and
rarity
,
Grace
in
all
simplicity
,
Here
enclosed
,
in
cinders
lie
.
Death
is
now
the
phoenix’
nest
,
And
the
turtle’s
loyal
breast
To
eternity
doth
rest
,
Leaving
no
posterity
;
’Twas
not
their
infirmity
,
It
was
married
chastity
.
Truth
may
seem
,
but
cannot
be
;
Beauty
brag
,
but
’tis
not
she
;
Truth
and
beauty
buried
be
.
To
this
urn
let
those
repair
That
are
either
true
or
fair
;
For
these
dead
birds
sigh
a
prayer
.
William Shakespeare