Old Timey Announcement

[RiverNotch]

I hope to be releasing, as soon as possible,

The Plays of William Shakespeare

in twelve digital (pdf) volumes,

edited and annotated by Samuel Johnson and George Steevens,

with illustrations from the Boydell Folio.

The Plays shall be arranged, not by their traditional categories,

but in chronological order, according to modern scholarship.

The contents of the volumes being prepared shall be as follows,

although I may revise them according to volume length

or the demands of the public (you!):

Volume 1. Prefatory Materials.

Volume 2. The Early Plays. 

The Two Gentlemen of Verona,

The Taming of the Shrew,

and The First Part of Henry VI.

Volume 3. The Earlier Henriad.

The Second Part of Henry VI,

The Third Part of Henry VI,

Titus Andronicus,

and Richard III.

Volume 4. The Lyrical Plays.

The Comedy of Errors,

Love's Labour's Lost,

and Richard II.

Volume 5. The Lyrical Plays.
Romeo and Juliet,
A Midsummer-Night's Dream,
and King John.
Volume 6. The Later Henriad.
The Merchant of Venice,
The First Part of Henry IV,
and The Second Part of Henry IV.
Volume 7. The Later Henriad.
Much Ado About Nothing,
The Merry Wives of Windsor,
and Henry V.
Volume 8. The Central Plays.
Julius Caesar,
As You Like It,
Twelfth-Night,
and Hamlet.
Volume 9. The Problem Plays.
Troilus and Cressida,
Measure for Measure,
and All's Well that Ends Well.
Volume 10. The Jacobean Tragedies.
Othello,
King Lear,
and Timon of Athens.
Volume 11. The Jacobean Tragedies.
Macbeth,
Antony and Cleopatra,
and Coriolanus.
Volume 12. The Late Romances.
Cymbeline,
The Winter's Tale,
The Tempest,
and Henry VIII.
Appendices and Indices.

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I promised something like this before, but I lost those copies soon enough, when my computer broke down. But now I'm committed! I'm a little torn with the way the plays are arranged, though: I fear the arrangement might be unwieldy, since sections like "The Later Henriad" don't contain all the plays traditionally considered to be part of that cycle, as well as plays that are unrelated (although were released at the same time).

There are a few thematic concessions already, I will note: 1 Henry VI, according to most of my sources, was written after 3 Henry VI as a prequel; Much Ado About Nothing here precedes The Merry Wives of Windsor, when my sources relate that the latter was probably finished and released while the author was in the middle of writing 2 Henry IV; and Twelfth Night is often considered to have been finished and released after Hamlet. I will also note that, before, I would have released the first edition of Johnson's Plays of Shakespeare, but the second edition incorporates many of his notes relegated to the former's appendix, as well as some new, important observations.

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As for why this is worth getting, and whether this is all legal:

Yes, this is all legal. The copy of Johnson-Steevens-Shakespeare, I got from Wikimedia Commons, and my copies of both these plays and an incomplete reprint of the Boydell Folio all have lapsed copyrights.

This is only the canonical plays -- ie, the plays in the first folio -- without the poems or plays like Pericles and The Two Noble Kinsmen. At first, I wondered whether to get this, or the later edition of the annotated plays as compiled by Edmond Malone, another contemporary of Samuel Johnson, but that later edition was so full of annotations, largely from Malone or from other respondents to Johnson, that I figured it would deter from the plays too much, even if Malone is the more reliable scholar. And really, that's why I'm releasing these plays: not for the scholarship, but for the criticism.

Not that Dr. Johnson's scholarship wasn't any good. The principles that Dr. Johnson outlined in his Preface are, many of them, considered the founding principles of modern textual scholarship, in particular his respect for available early editions, and his reluctance to emend for purely stylistic reasons, the opposite of which was in vogue among all of the editors Dr. Johnson followed. But it's such observations on style and value as in his Preface, or his notes to Macbeth, Hamlet, and the Later Henriad -- his criticism -- that makes Dr. Johnson the most respected literary critic of his day, in fact one of the most respected literary critics of all time, and this edition one worth perusing.