William on Web Products

The primary William on Web products are the MS-Excel spreadsheet structural analysis of each play, and two WoW Edition MS-Word playscripts: one a full text and the other a strike-through-cut (STC) playscript version offering a start to your own director's cut. The playscripts provide inexpensive, complete and reliable texts laid out for clarity and ease of modification and rehearsal use. They are closely linked, by page and line numbers and named rehearsal units (user-alterable), to the spreadsheets for effective rehearsal coordination. The spreadsheets are complex but easy-to-use automated versions of the essential characters-by-scene analyses long used by directors and stage managers in their casting and rehearsal planning roles.

Every product takes the form of a file or files delivered by email with a licence to make generous specified use of those files. The Standard Package at US$ 99.95 per play is a bargain for such a valuable combination. A 10% discount refund applies to educational buyers with email addresses ending in "(dot).edu" and to non-profit theatre organizations with proof of charitable status.

The product range offers various ways to view or sample these Microsoft Office 2003 files at different levels of usefulness, commitment and price. Samples are just that — free samples to give you just a taste of the products. The PDF WoW Edition playscript print files are printable fixed images that allow you to study, print and/or photocopy the entire text of our Full or STC playscripts, but not to edit the scripts further. The Standard MS-Word playscript files do allow this. The Enhanced MS-Word playscripts with Editing Macros include a few extra simple tools for helping make cut lines and phrases disappear from the actor's text and for tightening up the text on the page. The PDF spreadsheet file offered for each play makes a poster of the entire file frozen in one of its most useful states. You can see all the data we've derived from the text, but little of what we can do with it. The Standard MS-Excel spreadsheet file is our main product: it's why we're here. With push-button controls it'll do stuff to make you drool now and save you hours in production later. More below...

* * *

What follows here is more detail on each part of the product range.

The free Samples give you only a taste. For the playscripts, the three short PDF file extracts from WoW Edition's Romeo and Juliet allow you to compare a few pages of a Full version with an STC cut version in two different states. For the spreadsheet, samples are PDF print files of parts of the MS-Excel file chosen to show some of the layouts - in various states as accessed through the automation features. Samples have little utility of their own.

The inexpensive PDF print files can be printed on almost any printer using the freely downloadable Adobe Acrobat reader. The PDF WoW Edition playscripts permit you to examine the text in detail, print repeatedly and/or photocopy the full text of our two script versions, but not to use MS-Word or other word-procesor to edit the texts further. You're free to write in notes, changes and cuts as you do with any other print edition.

For the spreadsheet, the PDF file offered is of the entire file in Order of 1st Appearance, one of its most useful states, printable in colour on several overlapping sheets of legal-size paper. Depending on the play's length, complexity and number of roles, they combine into William on Web either a large or a huge poster. You can see all the data we've derived from the text, but not much of what we can do with it. (Yes, you pirates — and I'm no angel — PDF files can be decoded into MS-Word or MS-Excel using available software, but we know in the case of WoW products this is so incomplete it's far more trouble than it's worth.) MS-Excel files with Source Code will eventually allow trusted contributing users full programming access to William on Web's proprietary code.

The Full WoW Edition Standard Version playscript has been carefully derived from the first fully public domain text found at www.mit-tech.edu, with its many gross and minor errors (at that time) corrected after our line-by-line comparisons with the Applause, Arden, Oxford, Norton, Pelican, Riverside, New Variorum and Signet editions of Shakespeare's plays. Punctuation and layout are based on the Arden, Applause and Norton First Folio. The text is fully editable, for directors to alter as they wish. The role names are 3-letter symbols on the first line of each speech to minimize text length. The pagination is fixed, as are the line numbers, so even after three weekly sets of cuts during rehearsals, everyone remains on the same page. Romeo still dies on line 2872, page 73, in every copy. If page 60 is slashed to ten lines after the last preview, the SM reprints and distributes just page 60 for, say, the LX operators (who can preserve their cues while revising their own Word files to match the cuts), and the Flies guys (who just pencil their cues in again anyhow).

The STC WoW Edition Standard Version of each playscript is effectively identical, line for line, to the Full script. Those lines or words we considered obscure, unnecessarily repetitive or verbose, or once humorous but no longer amusing, have been ~~struck through~~ to help drive forward the story of the play, but the lines are still visible and easily restored. Some traditionally combined roles have the speaker's original identity changed, but they can readily be changed back as they were. This file is an excellent aid for any director (not just the less experienced) to begin their own edit.

The Editing Macros playscript enhancement is often used for the actors' scripts because it hides the cut lines and reduces the blank spaces big cuts leave behind. When entire scenes are cut, any "empty" pages are simply not printed, not copied or not distributed. The cut words and scenes remain always intact in the script; at the touch of a button they re-appear on-screen, and many directors like to work with the ~~struck-through~~ cuts showing in their own copy.

The MS-Excel spreadsheet Standard Version for each play has a careful analysis of the corrected script by French scenes, whenever any character enters or leaves the stage. Macros triggered by screen forms and automation buttons allow many useful sorts and other routines that vary how this data is displayed. Sorts include by WoW's Dramatis Personae, programme order, actor name, character name, role size, and first appearances either in any act or before or after the interval(s). Routines include an Interval Mover which provides for one or two Intervals ("Maybe after III:2, or after III:4?"), role selection and exclusion ("Juliet's gone to the bloody dentist? Show me Romeo and Nurse scenes without her!") and a multi-role casting analysis ("Hmm…1st Citizen and 3nd Watchman combine OK… and 2nd Servant if we cut his lines; let's give that to Jake").

The code for these macros is proprietary and not revealed in the Standard Excel files.