The first draft of The Maids Tragedie [second quarto] is now on-line. The complete text is available here although be warned, it is 451 KB in size. After a final proof read has been completed the text will be split into a further two presentation styles: page by page as it appears in the original quarto, and another based upon act/scene divisions as inscribed by modern editors. These files will be considerably smaller in size and therefore more suitable for faster downloads. Work will soon begin on a parallel text edition of the first and second quartos.

16 June 2000

Work has begun on the second quarto of The Maid's Tragedy. This is expected to be finished in draft form by 14 July. After that a parallel text comparing the first and second quartos will be constructed.

15 June 2000

Twilight Pictures has been shortlisted for an award by Bibliomania as a site that is "one of the best for both content and quality"!

15 May 2000

The first draft of The Maides Tragedy [Q1] is on-line. After a final proof reading the text will be split into a further two presentation styles: page by page as it appears in the original quarto, and another based upon act/scene divisions as inscribed by modern editors. The complete text is available here although be warned, it is 379 KB in size.

Work has begun upon The Maid's Tragedy, perhaps the best known of all B&F plays. The index to this page contains a time table for the completion of the project. The aim is to produce a fully annotated modern edition of the play, as well as HTML facsimiles of both the first (1619) and second (1622) quartos.

Work has begun on the Lambarde manuscript version of The Woman's Prize. It will be offered in three formats: act/scene divisions, page by page, and complete text. In addition a parallel comparative text version of the first folio edition and the Lambarde MS is being set up.

At last, I have added some material to the Non-Dramatic Poetry section of this site. From the Ben Jonson folio of 1616 I have transcribed Beaumont's dedications to three of Jonson's plays:

• Volpone
• Catiline
• Epicene

In accordance with a suggestion from Michael Best from the Internet Shakespeare Editions I have decided to offer the plays contained within this site in a variety of forms: a full text version, a scene by scene version, and one that breaks down the original text into a page by page version. At the moment only The Two Noble Kinsmen can be viewed in this format, but The Woman's Prize is soon to follow

The most exciting news is that Twilight Pictures has been granted a Australian Commonwealth Government ARC grant that will facilitate its expansion. Many thanks to both the head of my department, Richard Fotheringham, and to my supervisor, Lloyd Davis, for organising this grant. In January 2000 I shall commence the development of a HTML version of The Maid's Tragedy, perhaps the most widely read of all the plays in the Fletcher canon with the possible exceptions of The Two Noble Kinsmen and Henry VIII.

The project will involve producing a version of the first and second quartos of The Maid's Tragedy as well as an exploration into electronic editing techniques. The title page of the second quarto bears the advertisement of its being "newly perused, augmented, and inlarged." Effectively this means that Q2 contains some 80 extra lines more than Q1, all of which that are "apparently authoritative" (Craik) in origin. Q2 also contains many verbal alterations, as well as correcting errors in Q1, and improving on Q1s "inadequate punctuation" (Craik). Despite this, the most recent editors: Norland, Gurr, Turner, and Craik have all used Q1 as the copy text. This should prove interesting.

My aim is to ultimately create something like Bernice Klineman's The Enfolded Hamlet with the two separate quartos of The Maid's Tragedy.