William Shakespeare/Talk

I'm not sure I like having two separate pages for each play, one for the text and one for commentary. I'm experiementing with a different approach. Take a look at Macbeth and let me know what you think. -- STG

I just wanted to thank the folks who have undertaken to post Shakespeare's works on Wikipedia. Very cool. I didn't find any commentary for Hamlet, but I can see where the single-page format used by Midsummer Night's Dream could be more convenient for many readers. Maybe a good thing would be a Perl script that follows the links from a Wiki page out to a maximum depth, and puts the result into a single text file? Maybe this could also be done in CGI, as an additional Wiki feature. -- WillWare

In reading the Christopher Marlowe talk page, and seeing yet another "who really wrote Shakespeare's plays" theory, I was wondering whether there's a good book on the subject. I've heard Francis Bacon and [Ben Jonson]? credited as well. Would welcome suggestions for further reading. --RjLesch

I would not expect to find the complete text of a literary work in an encyclopedia. Would it not be better to link to an external source? The task of making public domain text available online rests with Project Gutenberg. -- Bob Waller

You wouldn't find it in an encyclopedia because they're generally printed on paper -- space considerations apply. "Wikipedia is not paper". I'd say keep the texts in. --Paul Drye

I say keep them too (especially since I spend a lot of time on Macbeth), but I won't be adding any more in the near future. Until our software evolves to make better use of primary text, I think importing primary sources isn't particularly useful. -- STG

Actually, now that I notice that there are all these plays in here, I'm rather strongly opposed to keeping them inside Wikipedia itself. I know Wikipedia isn't paper, but still, the complete works of Shakespeare would be how many megabytes? And if Shakespeare's stuff gets to be in here, we'd have to let Chaucer and Dickens and all the rest of his classical-literature public domain buddies in as well. This way lies madness; [Wikipedia is not Project Gutenberg]?! When I click a link to an encyclopedia article about Midsummer Night's Dream (to pick a random example), I want to find historical context and literary analyses and other such information. I don't need yet another unannotated copy of the plain text. - Bryan Derksen