The Immortal Shakspeare: Transcribing a micrographic drawing

Abstract

A poster-sized drawing from the 19th Century portrays Shakespeare’s monument in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon. The linework is composed of tiny lettering, less than 1 mm in height, running in a continuous path throughout the design. Direct transcription of the text proved to be difficult. The print was digitised at 1200 dpi and image processing techniques were tried to follow the text lines and recognise the characters, but they were ineffective because of the irregularity of the writing. A software viewer was developed to facilitate navigation of the text on screen, with functions for enlargement, translation and rotation, and for constructing and editing a trajectory line following the path of the text. The text was fully transcribed and three sources were identified from the 1840s.