The Winters Tale (Folio Text) (Shakespeare's First Folio for Kindle Book 3)

This is the Folio Text of The Winters Tale, first published in 1623, with unmodernised spelling and punctuation, and the original stage-directions. The act and scene divisions in the Folio are followed, and a hyperlinked TOC has been provided. A brief introduction discusses the punctuation, provided by Ralph Crane (a legally trained scribe who prepared the copy-text for the original printers).

Modernising Shakespeare makes texts easier to read, but also damages and changes them. With modernised spelling puns are lost (I/Aye and metal/mettle), and with modernised punctuation rhythm and the structure of argument are often destroyed. To read an unmodernised text is to discover a much more dynamic and interesting Shakespeare, in the form he would have recognised and that his friends and professional colleagues in the theatre chose to preserve.

Facsimiles of the Folio are available online, but as JPEGs of each page -- unsearchable, and with all the difficulties of old print and variable inking. This Kindle version of the Folio text of Hamlet offers far greater readability and is searchable, but preserves much that modernised editions change.