Collected
Editions
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 The standard
HTML Complete Works sites are:
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in the USA, the
MIT
Shakespeare Homepage. The Complete Works from the
Tech. HTML editions of the works are laid out nicely in table
format.
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in Australia, Matty Farrow's the
Complete
Works site, with a good glossary and an excellent search
engine.
[These, and almost all the Complete Works sites on
the Internet are
based on a very generic text released to the public domain in the
early 90's called the "Complete Moby™ Shakespeare,"
based initially, it is believed, on
The Stratford Town modern spelling edition of 1911 (see the
bibliographic entry for the MIT site from
SHINE). Where the
works are based on another text, it is noted below.]
Other notable HTML and text Complete Works sites:
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Open Source Shakespeare -
concordance, keyword and advanced
searching, statistics, the text of the plays, find characters, and a
search of all the poetry as well. Remarkable. Based on
the Globe edition.
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The Works in HTML editions from
Wikisource, without version attribution.
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PlayShakespeare.com, "the ultimate free Shakespeare resource,"
primarily a presentation of the texts with some ancillary materials.
"All of the texts on this site come from the First Folio of 1623 (and
Quartos where applicable) and the Globe Edition of 1866 and have been
re-edited and updated."
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Renascence Editions of the Complete Works in PDF and HTML
versions, University of Oregon.
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The
Complete Works from the etext library at the University of
Adelaide.
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The source for the
Project
Gutenberg texts of the Complete Works, and the Gutenberg
listing of
doubtful and spurious works. Project Gutenberg also mounts a
Complete Works interface
at this location.
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A no-frills, well designed portal to standard html versions of
the
complete works (the thirty-seven canonical plays, not Two Noble
Kinsmen), with a brief biography on the index page, and the ability to
search within any of the individual works or across all, from
ReadPrint.com.
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Another HTML edition of the
Complete
Works mounted by the Pasadena
Shakespeare Company. Notes and other introductory materials are
not provided.
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The
Complete Literary Works of William Shakespeare from
The Classic Literature
Library.
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The Great Books
Index. Well laid out index to basic versions of the plays.
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The University of Michigan has provided the Complete Works at
the Internet
Public Library.
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The Nine Volume 1863-1866
Cambridge Shakespeare
is available from Project Gutenberg in downloadable text format.
See the facsimile edition below for more information.
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The
1866 Globe Edition at the Electronic Text Center, University of
Virginia Library. The
Globe edition seems to have been the source for the aforementioned
"Complete Moby Shakespeare." The texts at this site are
presented in HTML, Microsoft Reader eBook, and Palm eBook formats.
Click here
for another interface to the same editions.
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The
First Folio and Early Quarto editions of the Works, again, from
the University of Virginia etext archive in original spelling
transcriptions.
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The 1914, W. J.
Craig, Oxford Edition of the Complete Works (37 plays, 154
sonnets), with an excellent search tool which finds words to Act/Scene
divisions.
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The University of
Victoria's Internet
Shakespeare Editions, including HTML and facsimile editions. "The aim of the Internet Shakespeare Editions is to make
scholarly, fully annotated texts of Shakespeare's plays available in a
form native to the medium of the Internet." They are far from achieving this very lofty goal, but offer links to many very
useful editions and resources.
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The University of Chicago Library
The First Folio of
Shakespeare, prepared by Charlton Hinman, published by The
Oxford Text Archive. This is a fully searchable version of the
second edition of the Norton Facsimile edition of 1996 (first edition,
1968).
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HTML original spelling transcription of the
1623 First Folio from The Classic Literature Library.
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Plain text original spelling transcription of the
First Folio from
Project Gutenberg.
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The Oxford Text Archive holdings for "Shakespeare."
Texts are downloadable and may be used freely for non-commercial
purposes.
Electronic facsimiles of early printed editions (Quartos and
Folios):
[The 1623 folio unless otherwise indicated.]
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Shakespeare in Quarto, from the British Library, ninety-three
quartos of twenty-one plays in their possession (many purchased from Halliwell-Phillipps,
Garrick and George III).
The display and ancillary material is very well done, with features for
novices and more advanced students. See
my review of this web site.
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The Rare Book
Room. Facsimile editions of Folios and Quartos held by
many of the world's libraries, including many by Shakespeare. Many
of the volumes in this collection (this site displays over 400 volumes)
have been published for sale by Octavo.
The finest of the First Folios from the Folger Shakespeare library can
be accessed
here.
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Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616.
Mr. VVilliam Shakespeares comedies, histories, & tragedies :
published according to the true originall copies. London: Printed by
Isaac Iaggard, and Ed. Blount, 1623. In
Horace Howard Furness
Memorial (Shakespeare) Library, at the
Schoenberg Center for Electronic Text
and Image, University of Pennsylvania.
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Facsimile of the First Folio from the Perseus Project at Tufts
University, displaying the Brandeis University First Folio.
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The
facsimiles
from the Internet Shakespeare Editions at the
University of Victoria, including all four folios and a number of
quartos, with links into the individual plays within the folios.
Facsimiles of the first folios on display at this site are in the
possession of Brandeis University and the University of New South Wales.
The second (1632),
third (1663-1664), and
fourth (1685) folios displayed at
this site are from those in the possession of the University of New
South Wales. Unique to the ISE site is a
1593 1st quarto of Venus and Adonis from U. Victoria's MacPherson
Library, and a facsimile edition of John Velz's 1968
Shakespeare and the Classical Tradition.
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Halliwell-Phillipps, J. O.
The works of William Shakespeare, in reduced facsimile from the famous
first folio edition of 1623, Funk and Wagnalls, 1887, from
Google Book Search. A downloadable, PDF version is available.
The read onscreen feature did not work in IE7 for this scanned book.
Other "Halliwelliana" related primarily to the works can be found at
Presscom. The
Halliwell-Phillipps
reduced facsimile of the First Folio is also available from the
Internet Archive.
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Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies, being a
Reproduction in Facsimile of the First Folio Edition 1623 from the
Chatsworth copy in the possession of the Duke of Devonshire, K.G. with
an Introduction and Census of Copies by Sidney Lee (Oxford: At the
Clarendon Press, 1902), from the Liberty Fund. This is a
reproduction of Sidney Lee's 1902 collotype facsimile edition.
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Mostly 17th century
facsimile quarto editions of various plays by Shakespeare
(though some from the 16th, 18th and 19th centuries), part of the
Horace Howard Furness Collection at the
Schoenberg
Center for Electronic Text & Image, University of Pennsylvania.
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Meisei University
Shakespeare Folios
Electronic Library, presents materials on the First and Second
Folios, and includes a
First Folio and
Second Folio
image search, though the presentation and navigation present problems.
Notable are the HTML editions reflecting
marginalia.
For links to quarto facsimile editions of individual
plays, see individual plays by title
below.
Printed versions of facsimile editions
Printed versions of First Folio facsimiles were
produced in 1866, by Howard Staunton, unavailable on the Internet as far
as I am aware; in 1876 by the irrepressible J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps,
linked above; in 1902 by Sir Sidney Lee, also linked above; in 1954 by
Helge Kökeritz and Charles Tyler Prouty
(the Yale facsimile, which is now somewhat rare); and in 1968 by Charlton Hinman, the first Norton
Facsimile. The Norton Facsimile is now in its second edition
(1996), edited by Peter Blayney.
 Recommended
print version:
The Norton Facsimile
"Charlton Hinman's facsimile of
Shakespeare's First Folio was a colossal achievement when it was
first published in 1968, and its reputation is further enhanced
by this beautiful second edition. Looking for a way to provide
scholars with a reliable version of Shakespeare's text, Hinman
invented a device that sped up the collation process, allowing
him to compare 82 of the surviving copies of the Folio and bring
to light features of Shakespeare's work that have been--and
continue to be--edited out of most modern editions." --from the
Amazon.com product description.
The scholarship of Hinman has remained unsurpassed. The
second edition of this, his great work, was issued in 1996,
edited by Peter Blayney, who provides an introductory essay. |
A facsimile version of the best first folio held by the Folger
Shakespeare Library is available on CD-ROM in PDF format from
Octavo.
Electronic facsimiles of modern (eighteenth, nineteenth and early
twentieth century) printed editions, now in the public domain.
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 1709 -
The Nicholas Rowe 1709 Edition of the Works of Shakespeare
THE WORKS OF Mr. William Shakespear IN SIX VOLUMES.
ADORN'D with CUTS Revis'd and Corrected, with an Account of the Life and
Writings of the Author. By N. Rowe, Esq. LONDON: Printed for Jacob Tonson, within Grays-Inn Gate, next Grays-Inn Lane. MDCCIX.
Rowe was
the first formal editor of Shakespeare, and his first
formal biographer. His
Some Acount of the Life &c. of Mr. William Shakespear,
prefaced to his 1709 edition of the Works (based on the
Fourth Folio of 1685) became the standard 18th Century
biography, and in fact became the foundation document
for all subsequent biographies. Though it contains
inaccuracies, it also preserves information, as Sidney
Lee says, which, were it not for Rowe, would surely have
been lost. Rowe acknowledges his debt for "...the most
considerable part of the passages relating to this
life..." to the actor Thomas Betterton (1634-1710), who
made "a journey to Warwickshire on purpose to gather up
what remains he could, of a name for which he had so
great a veneration." Rowe includes the
apocryphal plays first added to the 1664 Third Folio in his
volume VI. His edition was also the
first illustrated edition
of the plays.
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Volume the First
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Volume the Second
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Volume the Third
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Volume the Fourth
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Volume the Fifth
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Volume
the Sixth [The final seven plays in this
volume were first added to the "Shakespeare canon" in
the second impression of the Third Folio (1664),
were reprinted in the Fourth Folio, (upon which Rowe
based his text) but were excluded by later 18th
century editors beginning with Pope (though they do
appear in Pope's second edition of 1728). Only
Pericles persisted in the canon, finally
accepted there under the influence of Malone
(1790)].
For more on Rowe, see
his entry in "Shakespeare's Editors,"
where you can see all the major illustrations from this edition.
For more on Steevens see
his entry in
Shakespeare's Editors.
- 1767-1768: The Capell edition
Mr William
Shakespeare his Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies,
set out by himself in quarto, or by his Players, his
Fellows in folio, and now faithfully republish'd
from those Editions in ten Volumes octavo ; with an
Introduction: Whereunto will be added, in some other
Volumes, Notes, critical and explanatory, and a Body
of Various Readings entire. London, Printed by
Dryden Leach, for J. and R. Tonson in the Strand.
The links given below
are from the versions scanned for the
Internet Archive.
Unfortunately it is not possible to link to
individual sections within each work. Even
less fortunately, the set at the Internet Archive is
not complete, lacking volume II. Please
contact me if you find
a link to this volume.
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Volume I -
Poems upon the author.
Table of his editions. The tempest. The two
gentlemen of Verona. The merry wives of Windsor.
[Vol.
I in searchable Snippet view from GBS]
- Volume II -
Measure for
measure. The comedy of errors. Much ado about
nothing. Love's labour's lost.
[Vol.
II in searchable Snippet view from GBS]
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Volume III - A midsummer night's dream.
The merchant of Venice. As you like it. The taming
of the shrew. [Vol.
III in searchable Snippet view from GBS]
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Volume IV - All's well that ends well.
Twelfth night; or, What you will. The winter's tale.
Macbeth. [Vol.
IV in searchable Snippet view from GBS]
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Volume V - King John. Richard II. Henry
IV. [Vol.
V in searchable Snippet view from GBS]
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Volume VI - Henry V. Henry VI. [Vol.
VI in searchable Snippet view from GBS]
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Volume VII - Richard III. Henry VIII.
Coriolanus. [Vol.
VII in searchable Snippet view from GBS]
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Volume VIII - Julius Cęsar. Antony and
Cleopatra. Timon of Athens. Titus Andronicus. [Vol.
VIII in searchable Snippet view from GBS]
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Volume IX - Troilus and Cressida.
Cymbeline. King Lear.
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Volume X - Romeo and Juliet. Hamlet.
Othello. [Vol.
X in searchable Snippet view from GBS]
For more on Capell, see
his entry in the Shakespeare's Editors
section.
- 1773 - Johnson-Steevens 1, or the of the Works in the
Johnson-Steevens-Reed series
In the same year Steevens' Twenty of the plays...
appeared (1766) he published a prospectus for a new edition of
Shakespeare. Johnson's edition was only a few months old
at the time (it was published October, 1765). Steevens'
had gained Johnson's favor and Johnson was impressed with
Twenty of the plays.... The resulting edition of the
works did not appear until 1773, and even though Johnson had
very little to do with it, it is known as Johnson-Steevens 1.
I have been able to locate links to all ten volumes from various
libraries scanned through Google Book Search, available in full
view and PDF. Here are the links. The important new
materials the many notes supplied by Steevens, the list of old
editions of Shakespeare's plays, and the notes contained in the
Appendix.
For more on Steevens and links to his other editions, see
his entry in Shakespeare's
Editors.
- 1778 - Johnson Steevens 2,
1778
The plays of William Shakespeare in ten
volumes, with corrections and illustrations of
various commentators; to which are added Notes
by Samuel Johnson and George Steevens. The
Second Edition, Revised and Augmented,
London, C. Bathurst, etc., 1778. I am placing
links here to the contents of Volume I of this edition, and the two
volumes of Malone's Supplement. For the others, see
Steevens' entry in Shakespeare's
Editors.
- Malone's Supplements to Steevens' edition of 1778
Edmond Malone (1741 - 1812), whose
An Attempt to Ascertain the Order in
which the Plays Attributed to Shakspeare
Were Written appeared in Steevens'
1778 edition of The plays published a two-volume Supplement to
that edition in 1780 which contains valuable notes and observations from
many sources, but particularly from Malone himself who was certainly the
greatest Elizabethan scholar of the 18th Century. I give links to
Volumes I and II below to save space, and then a detailed set of links
to the subsections within each volume on my
Steevens page and
Malone page. Volume I contains
general supplemental comments, comments to each of the plays in
particular, and Shakespeare's Poetry with annotations. Volume II
contains the seven supplemental plays added to the second impression of
the Third Folio (1664) and appendices to each of the volumes.
- 1790 - Malone's First Edition
This is Malone's first great edition of the
Works, including the poetry. Unfortunately, a
link to Volume I Part I cannot be found at this time
at Google Book Search or the Internet Archive.
It contains much of the Prolegomena which is, in any
event, accessible through
Boswell's 1821 successor to this edition, known
as the "third variorum edition." Volume 3 and
Volume 8 are linked at GBS, but cannot be viewed,
for unknown reasons. Especially useful among
the Malone materials in this edition is the Rise
and Progress of the English Stage, The
Dissertation on the Three Parts of King Henry VI,
and Malone's edition of Romeus and Juliet,
the source for Romeo and Juliet. Malone is
also important for his emphasis on the poetry, in
contrast to his predecessors and specifically contra
Steevens. Though the title page states that
Malone's edition appears in 10 volumes, it actually
appeared in 11, volume I having two parts.
According to Simon Jarvis (Scholars and Gentlemen,
p. 187) Malone (ironically) used the Isaac Redd
edition of 1785 (Johnson-Steevens-Reed 3) as his
base text, and then carefully collated the early
editions against this base text. In 1792
Malone proposed a new "splendid" edition of
Shakespeare in "fifteen volumes, royal octavo" but
the project was never realized. Malone's
second edition, if it can be called that, was
compiled by his literary executor, James Boswell the
younger in 1821 (linked below), nine years after
Malone's death.
The plays and poems : of
William Shakspeare, in ten volumes; collated
verbatim with the most authentick copies, and
revised: with the corrections and illustrations of
various commentators; to which are added, an essay
on the chronological order of his plays; an essay
relative to Shakspeare and Jonson; a dissertation
... an historical account ... by Edmond Malone,
J. Rivington and Sons, ..., 1790.
- 1793 - "Steevens own edition" of 1793, also known as
Johnson-Steevens 4 and Johnson-Steevens-Reed 4.
 The plays of William
Shakspeare. In fifteen volumes. With
the corrections and illustrations of
various commentators. To which are
added notes by Samuel Johnson and
George Steevens. The Fourth Edition.
Revised and Augmented, (with a
Glossarial Index) by the Editor of
Dodsley's Old Plays [Isaac
Reed], London, T. Longman, etc.,
1793.
Steevens "came out of retirement"
as an editor of Shakespeare in order
to use this publication as a
platform for his disputes with
Malone. |
In
1726 Pope was severely criticized by Lewis Theobald in his book Shakespeare restored, or, A specimen of the many
errors, as well committed, as unamended, by Mr. Pope : in his late
edition of this poet. Designed not only to correct the said edition, but
to restore the true reading of Shakespeare in all the editions ever yet
published. The book concentrates on the deficiencies exhibited by
Pope in his edition of Hamlet, but in a long appendix goes on to
comment, though not as exhaustively, on most of the other plays also.
I have been able to locate two facsimile editions on the Internet:
1747
- Links to Warburton's
Edition of 1747
1766 - In 1766 George Steevens
published Twenty of the plays of Shakespeare, being the whole number
printed in quarto during his life-time, or before the restoration,
collated where there were different copies, and published from the
originals, by George Steevens, Esq., in four volumes. Very
fortunately Google Book Search has digitized these works and they can be
accessed in facsimile using the links below. Garrick provided most
of the texts for this collection. Steevens was the first to
recognize the importance of printed preservation of these early texts.
In addition to the twenty plays, he also provided the text of the 1609
edition of the Sonnets, correcting the serious corruption inflicted by
Charles Gildon in his supplement to Rowe's edition of 1709 (the Rowe
"volume VII") where Gildon chose the corrupt 1640 Benson copy of the
Sonnets to reproduce rather than the 1609 first edition. Gildon's choice
became the 18th century printed standard until Steevens. Oddly
enough--though not so odd when one gets to know the perverse quirks of
Steevens' character--he later dropped interest in the Sonnets when his
great enemy Malone's interest in them grew, commenting that "...the
strongest act of Parliament that could be framed, would fail to compel
readers into their service." History has disagreed.