We chose to inscribe William Shakespeare’s _Hamlet_ onto the blockchain as an experiment. _Hamlet_ is an important work of art, and deserves to be preserved in some authoritative form on a medium that is likely to be maintained. The Ordinals protocol satisfies that goal; it may provide storage and interaction possibilities for cultural artifacts of all kinds.

The Folger edition of Shakespeare’s _Hamlet_ is a landmark of Shakespeare editing: its XML encoding scheme allows the text to be addressed and annotated in any number of ways. This is the first time a Shakespeare play has been “stored” in this way. In doing so, we want to call attention to the fact that cultural artifacts need to be preserved and made accessible over the long term. We also hope that this electronic XML source text will be annotated, and that the blockchain will provide an unambiguous record of future digital interactions with the text of Shakespeare. 

Shakespeare.meta