Quote:
Originally Posted by Psymon
A trained monkey wouldn't know that the word "bitter" (in Sonnet #91) should, in fact, be "better."
More significantly, even most trained humans wouldn't know that "rn'wd" (in Sonnet #73) shouldn't be corrected to "ruin’d" (as most editors correct it as), but rather to "rwn'd" (although that does mean "ruin’d," of course). Only a person who is well-familiar with obscure, early printed English texts would have any clue about that.
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You're confusing knowledge with creativity: they aren't the same thing. You may indeed need to be an expert in late 16th / early 17th century orthography to be able to make the corrections you describe, but that doesn't mean that such corrections have any element of creativity to them. As a number of people in this thread have now advised you, correction of texts is not a creative process, and copyright cannot be claimed in the resulting work if all sources are in the public domain (well, it can be claimed, but the claim is unlikely to have any validity).
It may appear grossly unfair that someone can put a huge amount of effort into something, but not have any rights in what they've created as the result of that work, but that is indeed the situation. Hence my suggestion at the start of this discussion that you add a short introduction to your book. The introduction won't prevent anyone from entirely legally copying the Shakespearean texts, but it will prevent someone from simply reselling the entire book.
Let me add, by the way, that the sample pages you've shown us from your book look great, and I wish you every success with it, regardless of how you decide to distribute it.