1. The Cambridge "King Lear" CD-ROM offers an archive of textual and performance-related material relevant to the various texts of King Lear. One of the key purposes of the application appears to be to reintroduce issues of ambiguity associated with the play – demonstrating the alterations to the text made by editors and performers over the years. Many editions of the text are present, including quarto, folio, and performance texts, as well as a 'finder text' which offers a conflated version in order to aid navigation. The emphasis appears to be on performance, with some 500 illustrations from productions of the play, as well as copies of playbills, Shakespeare Survey reviews of performances, and biographies, theatre definitions, and theatre company descriptions from The Cambridge Guide to Theatre. The most important aspect to grasp from the use of this CD-ROM is what has been described as 'the fluidity of the text over time'. 1

2. The selected texts include several of the 'performance/acting' texts, as well a central 'finder' text, which serves as an anchor from which all other texts can be accessed. This finder text is a conflation of Quarto and Folio texts, and includes hyperlinks to commentaries and visual images. The full list of texts include:

   (i)	The Central Finder Text
   (ii)	The Quarto Text
   (iii)	The Folio Text
   (iv)	The History of King Lear by Nahum Tate, 1681
   (v)	King Lear – A Tragedy edited by Nicholas Rowe, 1709
   (vi)	David Garrick's Text as recorded by John Bell in 1774
   (vii)	William Charles Macready's Text of 1838 published by Lacy in 1857
   (viii)	Charles Kean's Text, 1858.

   Introductions to the texts are provided, in addition to extensive user information and directions for using both DynaText and the CD-ROM in general. In addition to this, there is a 'critical material' section, which includes relevant essays on the staging of Lear, including such topics as performance in other countries. The Introduction by Jay Halio provides a substantial amount of information on the texts and their staging, and also incorporates significant textual analysis.

3. There are three methods for navigating a way through the CD-ROM. These are:

   (i)	The Central Finder Text
   (ii)	The Table of Contents
   (iii)	The Search Facility

   One of the problems associated with the navigation is that so many windows are opened up during the course of using the software, even to display just a few lines of commentary. For example, to explain the variant spellings of the word 'Gloucester' between the Q and F editions, a large white page window must be opened. This page does however explain the possible reasons for differences in spelling, for example due to the different compositors. I should say that these commentary notes can also be accessed directly from the main lefthand menu under 'Notes on the Cambridge King Lear CD-ROM Finder Text', which displays all the commentary notes in the existing window (rather than opening up additional windows).

4. The application also contains scanned images of the 1608 Quarto and 1623 Folio printed texts (however, by clicking on many of these images in succession, I managed repeatedly to crash the application). These images can be zoomed in upon to examine the text. However, you do not seem to be able to move between pages of the image within the same window, you must first exit the window and then click on to the picture link to the following page.

5. Another problematic feature appears to be that, although the application is structured so that you can access individual Acts and Scenes, it is quite difficult to access parts of a Scene that are somewhere in the middle, rather than at the beginning or end of the Scene. As the material is contained within the DynaText software, it is held (to the observer) in one long scrolling file, as you can scroll from one end of the application to the other. This means that you can only scroll up or down by clicking on the up and down arrows on the top and bottom of the scroll bar, which makes for a very slow process of moving around the text. Of course the search facility means that you can look for a specific word in the text, which can therefore take you to any part of the text (including the critical essay materials).

6. I appeared to have to do a lot of 'looking around' when first using the application, to make sure I fully understood what all the DynaText symbols meant, as well as what some of the commentary abbreviations stood for. For example, the letters 'SH' stand for 'Speech Heading', but it took me some time to find my way to the buried section which could explain the meaning of this for me. The path led through 'Reference Material' and then in to 'abbreviations and conventions'; here I was able to translate the list of abbreviations from other parts of the application that I had been forced to make notes about.

7. The decision to use DynaText for the production of the CD-ROM must surely have been due to existing availability of the software within educational institutions. However, Inso, the company that makes DynaText went out of business in 2002, 2 leaving users to find other means of support for the software. Another problematic aspect of the project has been cost. Considering the sheer amount of work that must have been put into the CD-ROM, the price seems reasonable, but for a significant number of academic and educational institutions to obtain copies, it appears to have been priced out of the market. Amazon.co.uk currently prices the CD-ROM at between £352 3 and £528 4.

8. From a user perspective, one of the problems associated with using DynaText is the amount of knowledge required before a user can fully browse any work displayed within the software. For users already familiar with the icons and the general set up, there is little within the CD-ROM itself that requires previous knowledge in order to operate the system.

9. The materials on the disk have been encoded using SGML, and this SGML code is also available to users who wish to access it, and indeed print it. The application also conforms with the TEI standard. The authors appear to have chosen to encode everything, and to include variant words as staging comments, except when whole lines differ; these are then indicated in coloured type. Within the Finder Text, variations between editions are signified by colour.

10. The STATUS attribute is used to mark the text as green or blue, which indicates that that text can be found only in either the Folio or the Quarto. For example, a <STATUS='Qonly'> attribute tag indicates that the text within the tags is included only in the Quarto, similarly 'Fonly' indicates it is only present in the Folio.

11. I did find however that the green markings from the Folio edition were so dark, that it was difficult to distinguish them from that of the regular black text. The plain black text can also be misleading, in that it is impossible to tell when the cursor is not over a line whether there is in fact a link there. If a link is present, the cursor will turn into a finger pointing at the text, and clicking on this will open a small window containing staging commentary.

12. I feel that, in a way, the material might just as well have been available on paper, were it not for aspects such as the search facility or the links within the finder text to other resources (albeit involving the opening of more windows). The medium of the e-book has yet to evolve in order for the wealth of materials contained within this work to be fully appreciated.

Notes

1. Christie Carson, 'Rationale Behind the Project (The Cambridge King Lear CD-ROM)', Royal Holloway, University of London, last update: 9 Jan 2002. URL: http://web.rhul.ac.uk/drama/research/lear/learrationale.html [accessed 7 October 2003]

   

2. Peter Finch (Home Planet Software) article: 'DynaText and DynaWeb' last update: 28 September 2002. URL: http://www.homepla.net/xml/x/consulting/dynatext_dynaweb.html [accessed 7 October 2003]

   

3. Amazon.co.uk pricing for the King Lear CD-ROM. URL: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521794196/ref=sr_aps_books_1_2/202-5611716-9195869 [accessed 7 October 2003].

   

4. Amazon.co.uk pricing for the King Lear CD-ROM. URL: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521794188/ref=sr_aps_books_1_1/202-5611716-9195869 [accessed 7 October 2003].

   

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   Contents © Copyright Stephanie Thomas 2003.
   Layout © Copyright Renaissance Forum 2003. ISSN 1362-1149. Volume 6, Number 2, Winter 2003.
   Technical Editor: Andrew Butler. Updated 16 December 2003.

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