[open-literature] New Members, Images and Video, Line Numbers in Introductions

Thu Jul 29 19:07:59 UTC 2010

(SUMMARY: Points for debate: How could we include image and video in
OS? Should we use line numbers in our Introductions?)

Good Evening,

Quite a few things up for discussion today, the first of which comes
after an email from Professor Hugh Richmond regarding the relationship
between our Open Shakespeare and his website, Shakespeare's Staging
(http://shakespeare.berkeley.edu/). This website contains a wealth of
images and videos all recording various stagings of the Bard's works.
As, of course, any staging is inevitably an interpretation of the
written text, Professor Richmond's website, rather like our own,
contains a great record of many generations' responses to Shakespeare.
I would very much like to see such resources incorporated into the
website, but would like your opinion on how to do it: should we build
create a new area or incorporate a smattering of video and images into
the sections we already have (i.e. into the short introductions
themselves or into each play's 'home' page)? How could we link
images/videos to plays? Could our annotation tool incorporate video
annotation? (i.e. an annotation for 'To be or not to be' could be a
famous performance of it)...What do you think? How hard are these
ideas to implement?

Professor Richmond is the latest member of this mailing list
(welcome!) so do post any questions you have for him here.

In other news, Rachel Thorpe has just completed her Venus and Adonis
introduction, which currently resides in google document form until we
upload the missing Venus and Adonis text to the website. Her
introduction, produced collaboratively with Hazel Wilkinson, is very
good, and I feel a little guilty in drawing attention to a rather
minor aspect of it, namely that Rachel has included line numbers for
all her citations. If we post this introduction as it is, then it will
be the first to include line numbers, and so changes our approach so
far. This need not be a bad thing: line numbers are, of course,
required in all decent scholarly articles. The question is, do we want
them on Open Shakespeare?

My instinct is to say no, since line numbers are redundant when a
computer can search the text for the section cited in an instant.
Further to this, line numbers - small things though they are - distort
our perception of the text in question, making it something far more
anatomised than it originally was. This is particularly true in the
case of plays, where 18th century division into acts, and scenes, as
well as the line numbers, make the reading experience completely
different from the experience of performance, or indeed form
Shakespeare's own conception of his plays. Although some plays fall
neatly into five acts, Shakespeare did not think out his plays in such
a way.

Does anyone agree with me? Do let everyone know what you think: should
we use line numbers? Are there technical considerations here too, such
as inserting/removing numbers in the electronic texts we are using?

This is turning into a rather long message, so I'll leave it here for now.

I look forward to hearing your replies,

James

-- 
OPEN SHAKESPEARE
'The Marriage of Text and Technology'
www.openshakespeare.org
blog.openshakespeare.org
www.openshakespeare.org/get-involved