Editorial
Principles
Through
Line Numbering (TLN)
This
edition is an attempt to create a electronically searchable facsimile edition
of the 1634 quarto of The Two Noble Kinsmen. To that end I have endeavoured
to reproduce the text in as near a condition as I was able to using HTML coding.
In practice this has often meant that some form of sacrifice has been required.
While all punctuation and spelling are unchanged, the various fonts, however,
are a different matter. When compiling The
Woman's Prize I experimented with various ways of approaching the original
fonts of that edition and none succeeded in satisfying me completely. So as with
that edition I have used Times New Roman which is as close to the primarily
roman font of the quarto as is possible with a computer. I have maintained all
italics and endeavoured to maintain relative font sizes, though both word and punctuation
spacings have been normalised for ease of reading. Page numbering, compositor signatures, and act/scene divisions have
been recorded as they occur in the quarto even if they are incorrect.
When the text has been divided into act and scenes, at the bottom of each scene
I have placed a reference to the location of the same scene, and its subsequent
line numbering, as it occurs in the Cambridge, Regents Renaissance Drama Series,
Oxford Complete Works, and Arden 3 editions of The Two Noble Kinsmen, that
is those editions of the play edited by Fredson Bowers, G. R. Proudfoot, William
Montgomery, and Lois Potter.
The
text is based upon the Locker Lampson-Church copy that is reproduced in Shakespeare's
Plays in Quarto, edited by Michael J. B. Allen and Kenneth Muir. Berkeley:
U of California P, 1981. Back
The
text has been numbered according to the system of Through Line Numbering (TLN)
that was developed by Charlton Hinman in The Norton Facsimile of the First
Folio of Shakespeare: "counted ... and following normal reading order, is
every typographical line after the head title that contains literal type,
beginning with "Actus primus, Scena prima" or whatever variation of this
may appear .... not counted in any plays are lines containing only catchwords
or signatures or both, or lines that contain only turnovers or turnunders (i.e.,
lines that, except for these, would be blank" (1996, xxiii). Hinman goes on to
offer two examples, one from A
Comedy of Errors:
Enter Antipholus, and E.Dromio of Ephesus. [1665]
(stice,
E. Ant. Iustice most gracious Duke,oh grant me
iu- [1666]
and
the other from 1
Henry VI:
Which ioin'd with him, and made
their march for
[2017]
( Burdeaux
Yorke. A plague vpon that Villaine Somerset,
[2018]
Because
this text of The Two Noble Kinsmen is based upon the 1634 quarto edition
I have used the abreviation "QLN" (quarto line number) to mark the text.
Back
Page last updated 24 July,
2000.
Any queries or suggestions please mail to Drew
Whitehead