Illustrated View: CEDAR-DV, The Taming of the Shrew

By Sandra Schloen, December 2021

Illustrated View: The Taming of the Shrew (CEDAR-DV)

The Illustrated View, developed for the CEDAR, Digital Variorum project, presents interactive options for viewing any of the Shakespearian plays which have been documented and richly annotated using the CEDAR-based strategies in OCHRE. This View includes the following features, the set-up for which is described in detail in this article.

Cast of Characters; Prop Closet

Rebus option

Style options, e.g., Common parlance

[This article presumes a basic understanding of the Discourse structure of a Text in OCHRE, as well as the use of Properties to describe items.]

Preparing the Text(s)

The Illustrated View is based on the discourse structure of a Reading Text -- one which ignores the vagaries of quartos and folios, pages and their numbers, columns and other page layout, line or character spacing, and other epigraphic features. Rather, the Reading Text is organized into Acts and Scenes, stage directions, and lines of discourse (normally numbered for reference). We have based our Reading Text on the Folger Shakespeare Library version.

We have opted to make each Scene of the Play its own OCHRE Text item to allow the reader to start at any Scene, rather than just at the beginning of the Play. This also helps keep the computational load reasonable; that is, loading just a Scene at a time and not the entire Play.

The Scenes, as Text items, are named meaningfully and listed in sequential order as subitems of a hierarchy.

CEDAR Text hierarchies have additional options on their Preferences tab to specify two special hierarchies which should be linked into their respective link panes as shown above.

The Cast of Characters hierarchy is a simple list of Person items, each illustrated with a profile picture linked to its Links tab. OCHRE will use the Character's "primary" image (or first one, if no primary is specified). [If no profile picture is provided, a default image of Shakespeare will be used.]
The Prop Closet hierarchy is a selected, sequential list of Locations & objects. Each of these objects, too, should be illustrated with an appropriate image linked to its Links tab.

Note than when illustrating the Cast of Characters and the Prop Closet, OCHRE will standardize the size of the images and crop them square (along the shortest dimension, centering the cropped area in the other dimension). Keep this in mind when choosing/creating the illustrations.

Making a Scene

Each Scene is comprised of a sequence of lines of discourse, possibly with stage-direction items interspersed. Each line is comprised of discourse units that make up the dialogue. These discourse units can originate in this context primarily (having been imported by OCHRE from a document), or they can be copied-in (gray-copy) from some other discourse hierarchy. Remember, OCHRE supports multiple hierarchies for analysis! The Lines, their numbering, and the words (discourse units) that comprise them, are based on some Reading Text (Folgers, in this case, as noted above).

Stage direction

The discourse subitems represent the stage direction instructions.

"Line" item

Line items of Type "line" have their numeral assigned as an Abbreviation.

This stage direction item is labeled "SD.208.1.1-2" as a convention by this project, based on the Bodleian First Folio.

Stage Directions

OCHRE has been trained to recognize the following Property Variables and Values, available from the OCHRE master project:

"Stage direction" shown here as a sub-item of a "Discourse analysis"
"Stage entrance" and "Stage exit" as Action items of a Stage direction
"Character" as a link to a Person item implicated in the Stage direction
"Thing" (e.g. a Prop) as a link to a Value implicated in the Stage direction

Copy the properties related to Stage Directions into your project's Taxonomy, and use them to describe stage direction discourse items. This lets you identify the comings and goings of Persons and Things (Property values).

Be careful to separate stage directions into separate items if they represent a change in Act or Scene. That is, the "exit" from one Scene and the "entrance" to the next should be recorded as two separate stage directions, even if they are sequential, and they should be itemized separately within their respective Scenes.

The word "Curre" is illustrated by the Hound Thing, with its Collar and Leash.

Other "Things"

By Things, we mean quite literally an item that has been described by the special "Thing" Variable which OCHRE has been trained to recognize, available from the OCHRE master project to be copied into your own project Taxonomy.

Any word can be described by one or more Things, in order to explain or illustrate that word. The Things, themselves, should have linked images or other details which will be available in the Illustrated View.

The Huntsman doesn't really have a lot to say.

Speeches and Speakers

OCHRE has been trained to recognize the "Speech" Property Value that indicates the "Character" (link-Type Variable targeting a Person item) who is speaking the subordinate discourse units, shown here as a subitem of a "Discourse analysis."

As articulated either in the discourse hierarchy of the Reading Text, or in some other discourse hierarchy (e.g., in our example we have epigraphic and discourse hierarchies based on the Bodleian folio), discourse units can be organized within such "Speech" items and thereby determine who is their speaker, reflecting this information in the Illustrated View.

Common Parlance

The OCHRE/CEDAR master project maintains a catalog, or "content pool", of "Common Parlance" phrases -- sayings or proverbs that are not original with Shakespeare, for example, but which were popular within the common culture. This master catalog is used to document the use of such phrases in any of the CEDAR projects; that is, a phrase from the Bible might be quoted by Shakespeare or Melville, for example, and this usage can be tracked.

Any specific CEDAR project, like "The Taming of the Shrew," will maintain its own version of a "Common parlance" Text that (gray-)copies in the phrases from the master CEDAR project that apply. The specific discourse units from the content pool of the Taming of the Shrew that make up the common-parlance phrases are organized within each relevant parent phrase which has been copied in from the master catalog. See the example that follows.

Not all of "Shakespeare" sayings are original!

In this example, the Text "Common parlance, Shrew" is a Text item within the Taming of the Shrew project, having only a discourse hierarchy.

The common parlance phrase "I'll feeze you, in faith" has been grey-copied in from the CEDAR master project because it is used within the Taming of the Shrew.

The discourse units "ILe pheeze you infaith", green-copied-in from the content pool of the Taming of the Shrew as child items of the common parlance phrase, give the exact wording of this phrase as used in the Taming of the Shrew.

Illustrated View

Select a Text item, one of the Scenes, from the navigation pane and click the View tab in the center pane. Choose "Illustrated" from the pick-list of View options provided.

Navigating Illustrated View

Use the navigation arrows to move to the Previous or Next Scene in this View. Or use the pick-list provided to jump directly to the desired Scene.

This navigation pick-list is based on the sequence of Scene-Text items, organized in a Text hierarchy, as described above.

Interacting with Illustrated View

Click on any of the bolded words in the text to view more details in the Properties pane. These extra details are based on Links or Properties (see "Other Things" above) on the discourse unit (the word) itself, or (preferably) on the discourse unit in the content pool to which the bolded one is aligned (using the CEDAR tools).

Click the Thing-hyperlink (shown underlined in blue) in the Properties pane to view other details -- images, bibliography, notes -- regarding that Thing.

Click on the Speaker prompt (e.g. "Beggar", "Lord", etc.) to see more information about the Character, based on the details of their Person item. The first Abbreviation listed for the Character is used as its speaker prompt.

Who is Onstage? (the Cast of Characters)

Click anywhere within the Text to see Who is onstage? OCHRE tracks this information based on the itemized Stage directions which list entrances and exits by the Characters. Those Characters who participate in the Scene are listed first; other Characters, not implicated in the Scene, follow in alphabetical order and their profiles remain dimmed.

In the screen shot below, the word "Huntfman" in Line 16 was clicked-on by the mouse-action. [Any word within the range indicated by the green squiggle would have had the same effect.] Notice that just preceding this line is a Stage direction that indicates that the Lord and "his traine" have entered (as noted in the Properties of the "Stage direction"-item which implicates the Lord, along with the "Huntsman" and the "Huntsman 2", in a "Stage entrance").

Notice, also, that the Hostess (Host.) has left the stage (as she goes to "fetch the Head-borough", lines 11-12). Although there is not an explicit Stage direction indicating this, we have added a Stage direction anyway, noting the "Stage exit" of the "Character" Hostess, even though it was implicit.

What is Onstage? (the Prop Closet)

This works exactly like the "Who is Onstage?" option except using Props (words identified as a "Prop object"; that is, Property values) instead of Characters (Persons). Stage directions must be annotated with the entrances and exits of those Things.

The Script

Click on a Character in the Cast of Characters to highlight the speeches of that Character. This represents, in effect, the script for that Character and is based on the preparation of "Speeches and Speakers" as described above. Toggle off the highlight by clicking again on the Character, or on another Character.

Rebus View option

Select one of the Rebus View options to activate this feature. OCHRE will substitute the "primary" image of a word (discourse unit) in place of the textual content of that word. The pick-list lets you choose the relative size of the image, with sizes listed smallest to largest.

Common Parlance option

Check on the Common Parlance option to feature phrases that are considered to constitute "common parlance." Such phrases will display as green, bolded; click on such to see their details in the Properties pane, including their usage in other contexts within the CEDAR constellation of projects.

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