In his article, Marvin Spevack talks of the Arden Shakespeare CD-ROM Texts and Sources for Shakespeare Studies in the following terms:

Just announced is the Arden Shakespeare CD-ROM, which is to contain the second Arden edition of 1946-82 (although already being superseded by the third, the consultant editor of the CD-ROM having himself pointed out the need for the third), "facsimile images" of the appropriate Folio and quarto editions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Abbott's Shakespearian Grammar (1869, rev. 1871), Partridge's Shakespeare's Bawdy (1955, rev. 1968), to which still other "elements" are "added." It is unlikely that these elements--each with its own set of lemmata and wordforms, differing lineation conventions, and distinctive scholarly perspective--can be connected. That would require an engineering feat beyond the capacity of even all the king's hackers and all the king's netizens. The uninitiated users will doubtless be left to fend for themselves. (82-83)

I am delighted to say that Brad Scott and his team at Routledge, together with the developers DPSL, managed to achieve the engineering feat of which Spevack speaks and produce an unprecedented and widely acclaimed, user-friendly resource for research and teaching which was launched in April 1997. Interested parties are invited to contact me at the email or postal addresses below if they would like to see a demonstration disc.

Nicholas Kind