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Titles follow the First Folio, where there are sometimes minor variations of nomenclature between contents list, title at head of play and running header – our default preference is the title at the head of the play (thus, for example, Love's Labour's Lost and The Tragedy of Cymbeline as opposed to the contents list's Love's Labour Lost and Cymbeline King of Britain ). Some of the plays were originally staged with different titles (e.g. The Second Part of Henry the Sixth began its life as The First Part of the Contention betwixt the two famous Houses of York and Lancaster , and Henry the Eighth seems to have been called All is True ).
Lists of Parts are supplied in the First Folio for only six plays, so these are predominantly editorial, arranged by groups of character (thus for A Midsummer Night's Dream , the court, the genteel lovers, the artisans, the fairies). Capitals indicate that part of the name which is used for speech headings in the script (thus ' PROSPERO , the right Duke of Milan' and 'Sir John FALSTAFF ').
Locations are provided by the Folio for only two plays ( The Tempest is set on 'an uninhabited island' and Measure for Measure in Vienna). Eighteenth-century editors, working in an age of elaborately realistic stage sets, were the first to provide detailed locations. Given that Shakespeare wrote for a bare stage and often an imprecise sense of place, we have relegated locations to the explanatory notes at the foot of the page, where they are given at the beginning of each scene where the imaginary location is different from the one before. We have emphasized broad geographical settings rather than specifics of the kind that suggest anachronistically realistic staging. Thus Sicilia and Bohemia or court and country in The Winter's Tale , Venice and Cyprus in Othello, not usually such locations as 'another room in the palace'. Indications of movement from outdoors to indoors are given where appropriate.
Act and Scene Divisions were provided in the Folio (they were absent from the Quartos published in Shakespeare's lifetime). Sometimes, however, they were erroneous or omitted; corrections and additions supplied by editorial tradition are indicated by square brackets. Five-act division is based on a classical model, and act breaks provided the opportunity to replace the candles in the indoor Blackfriars playhouse which the King's Men used after 1608, but Shakespeare did not necessarily think in terms of a five-part structure of dramatic composition. The Folio convention is that a scene ends when the stage is empty. Nowadays, partly under the influence of film, we tend to consider a scene to be a dramatic unit that ends with either a change of imaginary location or a significant passage of time within the narrative. Shakespeare's fluidity of composition accords well with this convention, so in addition to act and scene numbers we provide a running scene count at the beginning of each new scene. Where there is a scene break caused by a momentary bare stage, but the location does not change and extra time does not pass, we use the convention running scene continues . There is inevitably a degree of editorial judgement in making such calls, but the system is very valuable in suggesting the pace of the plays (it reveals, for instance, the great compression of Othello ).
Speaker's Names are often inconsistent in Folio. We have regularized speech headings, but retained an element of deliberate inconsistency in entry directions, in order to give the flavour of Folio.
Verse is indicated by lines that do not run to the right margin and by capitalization of the first letter of each line. The Folio printers sometimes set verse as prose, and vice versa (either out of misunderstanding or for reasons of space). We have silently corrected in such cases, although in some instances there is ambiguity, in which case we have leaned towards the preservation of Folio layout. Folio sometimes uses contraction ('turnd' rather than 'turned') to indicate whether or not the final '-ed' of a past participle is sounded, an area where there is variation for the sake of the five-beat iambic pentameter rhythm. We use the convention of a grave accent to indicate sounding (thus 'turnèd' would be two syllables), but would urge actors not to overstress. In cases where one speaker ends with a verse half-line and the next begins with the other half of the pentameter, editors since the late eighteenth century have indented the second line. We have abandoned this convention, since the Folio does not use it, and nor did actors' cues in the Shakespearean theatre. An exception is made when the second speaker actively interrupts or completes the first speaker's sentence.
Spelling is modernized, but older forms are occasionally maintained where necessary for rhythm or aural effect. For instance, 'y'are' is generally modernized to 'you're', but the old form is retained in Regan's 'I know you are of her bosom … Y'are. I know't.'
Punctuation in Shakespeare's time was as much rhetorical as grammatical. 'Colon' was originally a term for a unit of thought in an argument. The semi-colon was a new unit of punctuation (some of the Quartos lack them altogether). We have modernized punctuation throughout, but have given more weight to Folio punctuation than many editors, since, though not Shakespearean, it reflects the usage of his period. In particular, we have used the colon far more than many editors: it is exceptionally useful as a way of indicating the way in which many Shakespearean speeches unfold clause by clause in a developing argument that gives the illusion of enacting the process of thinking in the moment. We have also kept in mind the origin of punctuation in classical times as a means of assisting the actor and orator: the comma suggests the briefest of pauses for breath, the colon a middling one and a full stop or period a longer pause. Semi-colons, by contrast, belong to an era of punctuation that was only just coming in during Shakespeare's time and that is coming to an end now: we have accordingly only used them where they occur in our copy-texts (and not always then). Dashes are sometimes used for parenthetical interjections where the Folio has brackets. They are also used for interruptions and changes in train of thought. Where a change of addressee occurs within a speech, we have used a dash preceded by a full stop (or occasionally another form of punctuation). Often the identity of the respective addressees is obvious from the context. When it is not, this has been indicated in a marginal stage direction.
Entrances and Exits are fairly thorough in Folio, which has accordingly been followed as faithfully as possible. Where characters are omitted or corrections are necessary, this is indicated by square brackets (e.g. '[ and Attendants ]'). Exit is sometimes silently normalized to Exeunt and Manet anglicized to 'remains'. We trust Folio positioning of entrances and exits to a greater degree than most editors: thus, for instance, we follow Folio in having the other characters enter in the middle of Petruchio's speech to Kate at Taming of the Shrew , 2.1.268–81, making the latter part of the speech into a kind of game for the benefit of the onstage audience (an interpretation that strongly shaped Greg Doran's RSC production).
Other Stage Directions such as stage business, asides and indications of addressee are rare in Folio. Modern editions usually mingle editorial directions with original Folio and Quarto ones, sometimes marking interventions by means of square brackets. We have sought to distinguish what could be described as directorial interventions of this kind from Folio-style directions (either original or supplied) by placing the former in the right margin in a different typeface. There is a degree of subjectivity about which directions are of which kind, but the procedure is intended as a reminder to the reader and the actor that Shakespearean stage directions are often dependent upon editorial inference alone and are not set in stone. We also depart from editorial tradition in sometimes admitting uncertainty and thus printing permissive stage directions, such as an Aside? (often a line may be equally effective as an aside or a direct address – it is for each production or reading to make its own decision) or a may exit or a piece of business placed between arrows to indicate that it may occur at various different moments within a scene.
Explanatory Notes at the foot of each page explain allusions and gloss obsolete and difficult words, confusing phraseology, occasional major textual cruces, and so on. Particular attention is given to non-standard usage, bawdy innuendo and technical terms (e.g. legal and military language). Where more than one sense is given, commas indicate shades of related meaning, slashes alternative or double meanings.
Textual Notes at the end of each play indicate major departures from the Folio. They take the following form: the reading of our text is given in bold and its source given after an equals sign, with 'Q' indicating that it derives from the principal Quarto and 'Ed' that it derives from the editorial tradition. The rejected Folio ('F') reading is then given. A selection of Quarto variants and plausible unadopted editorial readings are also included. Thus, for example, at Hamlet , 3.4.180, ' bloat = Ed. F = blunt. Q = blowt', indicates that we have adopted the editorial reading 'bloat' where Folio has 'blunt' and Quarto has 'blowt'.
'Key Facts' boxes at the beginning of each work give information on plot, sources, proportion of verse and prose, textual issues, authorial attribution when doubtful or collaborative, date of composition and first performance. They also include lists of substantial parts (characters who speak more than about forty lines) in descending order of size. Since the definition of a line spoken is variable (because of prose and half-lines), figures are given in terms of a percentage of the whole, the number of speeches delivered and the number of scenes the character is onstage. These lists make it possible to distinguish between works that are more ensemble-based (e.g. A Midsummer Night's Dream and 2 Henry IV ) and those that are dominated by a small number of characters (e.g. Othello and 1 Henry IV ). Though there is a degree of imprecision about these lists as a result of editorial interventions, they offer much valuable information – for instance that Sir Toby Belch has the largest part in Twelfth Night and that only six lead characters so dominate their world that their part is over three times the length of anyone else's in the play (Hamlet, Richard III, Timon, Macbeth, Prospero, Henry V).
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