data: add the Shakespeare plays with act-scene-line, resolved by Folger

[maehr]

Verified row from #25. Part of #28.

Affected file, TextRefs ID, or URL

New files under works/ (one per play) and one new systems/ file.

Citation system

Act, scene, line — 1.1.1, 3.1.64, 5.5.19.

What is wrong or missing?

#25 lists Shakespeare as a second-wave candidate and raises what it calls "the interesting one":

Folger Through Line Numbers (FTLN) are Folger-specific, while act/scene/line varies between editorial traditions. The survey argues act/scene/line is the abstract identity and FTLN is a resolver mapping. That is the right shape for TextRefs, but it needs the provider vocabulary mapping (textrefs/textrefs.org#71) and an FTLN concordance.

Neither is needed. Folger resolves act/scene/line directly. The FTLN detour, the concordance, and the dependency on textrefs/textrefs.org#71 all drop out.

Suggested correction or new value

One citation system, act-scene-line, three positive integers separated by dots. One work per play, so this is a sub-project rather than a single record — but the resolver is settled and identical across every play, which is what made this row look hard.

Resolver:

resolvers:
  - provider: Folger Shakespeare Library
    edition: 'Folger Shakespeare, digital texts'
    language: en
    access: open
    url: 'https://www.folgerdigitaltexts.org/{play}/line/{act}.{scene}.{line}'

{play} is the Folger play code (Ham, Mac, Rom, …). It is per-work, not per-locator, so it belongs in the work's resolver block rather than in a vocabulary map.

One open item before this becomes a resolvers: entry. The /line/ endpoint returns a bare text fragment of 26–61 bytes, not a readable page. It is a machine endpoint. A human-facing deep link still needs to be found — /?chapter=&play=&loc= falls back to the generic root page. One more pass on folger.edu should settle it. Everything else here is verified.

Evidence and sources

Checked 2026-08-25, every valid case paired with an invalid control.

URL	Response
…/Ham/line/1.1.1	Line 1.1.1: Who’s there?
…/Ham/line/3.1.64	Line 3.1.64: To be or not to be—that is the question:
…/Mac/line/5.5.19	Line 5.5.19: The Queen, my lord, is dead.
…/Rom/line/2.2.33	Line 2.2.33: Of mortals that fall back to gaze on him
…/Ham/line/9.9.9	HTTP 404 (Apache)
…/Ham/line/2.2.9999	HTTP 404
…/Ham/line/abc	HTTP 404
…/Zzz/line/1.1.1	HTTP 404

Real 404s on every bad input, from Apache rather than an application fallback. This is the control behaviour #22 taught us to demand, and Folger passes it cleanly.

If an FTLN concordance is ever wanted, Folger publishes it per line. https://www.folgerdigitaltexts.org/{play}/ftln/{n} returns the mapping directly:

Hamlet
FTLN: 1234
Line: 2.2.170
Speech: sp-1232
Speaker: #Polonius_Ham
Type: verse
Text: Where truth is hid, though it were hid, indeed …

So the FTLN → act.scene.line map is harvestable with one call per line, and …/Ham/ftln/1 correctly 404s (FTLN numbering does not start at 1). Worth recording even though the direct route makes it unnecessary today.

Rights or licence note

To establish. Folger Digital Texts have historically been published under a Creative Commons licence; confirm the current terms and record access: and license_url: when the work files are written. No text enters the registry.