I’ve just added Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet to my project that aims to render old, public domain literature and philosophy easier to read.  The project currently provides a web interface with the following for each text: 

• Aligned simplifications: The original text is displayed directly alongside a simplified, modern, colloquial version, so that it’s easy to check the approximate meanings for difficult phrases.
• A collapsible outline: An outline of succinct notes summarizes the text, and makes it possible to navigate more easily.

It’s all free, there are no ads, and you don’t have to login.  My current intention is to get a sense of whether it’s feasible to make old literature and philosophy more accessible in a way that widens the audience who will potentially read it. You can also read more about my general motivations here.

I’ve used LLMs to generate the outlines and simplified texts, so there may be some occasional (but hopefully infrequent) slop mixed in.  I’ve attempted to minimize such slop using algorithms that construct and align the generated content to the original texts in a very fine-grained, piecemeal way.  I find the current result to be at least good enough to be somewhat helpful for me when I’m reading the original texts, and I intend to keep iterating to improve the quality over time.

(Also, side-note: This is not a vibecoded project.  I’ve written most of the code by hand over the past couple years.)

I’m curious about whether people in this community are interested in this sort of thing.  If so, I’m happy to take suggestions for other Shakespeare plays that I should prioritize adding to the project.  I’d also be interested if people have suggestions for additional annotations or features that would be especially helpful for reading these plays.

I’m working on marking the iambic pentameter in this monologue. I am confused because I am trying to go with the da-DUM rhythm, but also keep the integrity of how some words are said.

What dictates a trochee?

Are my markings correct?

Any help is greatly appreciated :)