The Internet Shakespeare Editions: Scholarly Shakespeare on the Web

Abstract

The Internet Shakespeare Editions (ISE) were founded in 1996, with a mission to make Shakespeare's works freely available in scholarly, multimedia, Internet editions. This article discusses the three main areas in which the ISE publishes: the texts themselves, records of performance and the context of Shakespeare's life and the social and intellectual climate of the time. Both opportunities and challenges are presented by the new medium: the encyclopaedic depth of data means that there is a need for intuitive signals to permit navigation between text, facsimile, annotation and performance; there is a need for data structures that will not render scholarly work obsolete over time; there is an opportunity to record some of the variety of Shakespeare on stage and film, but there are difficulties in dealing with issues of copyright. In the future, the site will become more interactive as, for example, visitors will be able to record reviews of current productions of the plays.