{"id":892,"date":"2021-12-15T12:50:33","date_gmt":"2021-12-15T17:50:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/digitalmethodsforthehumanities\/?page_id=892"},"modified":"2021-12-15T13:47:46","modified_gmt":"2021-12-15T18:47:46","slug":"distant-reading","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/digitalmethodsforthehumanities\/digital-editions\/midsummer-nights-dream-act-1-scene-1\/distant-reading\/","title":{"rendered":"Part II: Midsummer Night’s Dream, Distant Reading"},"content":{"rendered":"

Part II: Midsummer Night’s Dream, Distant Reading<\/span><\/p>\n

My earlier analysis\u00a0attempted to\u00a0focus\u00a0on the power dynamic between men\u00a0and\u00a0women\u00a0and how Shakespeare uses two different scenarios to show how this dynamic worked. For the second part of this assignment, I wanted to\u00a0build on my connections to find out\u00a0if those power dynamics played out in different comedic plays and if there was a difference in the period the play was produced in.\u00a0I hypothesized that Shakespeare had more agency\u00a0and flexibility to\u00a0depict society\u00a0under Elizabeth\u2019s rule than under the Jacobean\u00a0or\u00a0King James\u00a0era\u00a0because of the stability she provided.\u00a0King James\u00a0lived his life in Scotland\u00a0before his reign in\u00a0England.\u00a0I expected that his reign would be\u00a0more\u00a0unstable, unlike, Queen Elizabeth who was a more experienced\u00a0ruler\u00a0by the time Shakespeare began his career.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Because I had chosen\u00a0<\/span>Midsummer\u2019s Night Dream\u00a0<\/span><\/i>as my text, I chose to look at other\u00a0romantic\u00a0comedic\u00a0plays. I compared\u00a0the comedic plays from the Elizabethan era\u00a0to\u00a0the Jacobean era. Shakespeare was born during Queen Elizabeth\u2019s reign which ranged from 1559 to 1603, and he\u00a0passed away in 1616\u00a0during the\u00a0Jacobean\u00a0era\u00a0which lasted from 1603 to 1625. Ordinarily, there were more Elizabethan plays than in the Jacobean era. Born in 1564, Shakespeare had more time in the Elizabethan era.\u00a0There were seven plays in the Jacobean era and eleven plays in the Elizabethan period.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>My data\u00a0provided\u00a0me with inconclusive results. I knew that the plays would have most of the dialogues performed by men. However, I was hoping to see an increase or\u00a0decrease in the amount based on who was the current monarch. My computer science team provided me with all\u00a0the\u00a0characters and number of dialogues\u00a0each had. I ranked the top three in each play. I found that out of the eleven comedic plays written under the Elizabethan period, eight of them had at least one woman as one of the top three characters to have the most dialogue. The numbers\u00a0played out\u00a0differently\u00a0in\u00a0the Jacobean\u00a0era. From 1603 to 1610, at least one woman was in the top three of each of the four plays written\u00a0and none in the corresponding three plays in the next decade.\u00a0The ratio between the two eras places the Jacobean era as\u00a0the period with the most female dialogues. But this does not mean that the women were\u00a0completely\u00a0silent, because as the numbers shows, they\u00a0were incredibly involved in their own construction in the plays.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>More contradictory evidence is the ranges of length in the Jacobean and Elizabethan era. My team found that the Jacobean era play length was 28,636 words, compared to the Elizabethan era which was 18,199 words. Additionally, there\u00a0is a\u00a0much larger range of dialogues for the Jacobean era than the Elizabethan era. In the Jacobean era, the number of dialogue ranges from 18,985 (<\/span>Pericles)\u00a0<\/span><\/i>to 56,318 (<\/span>Tempest)<\/span><\/i>\u00a0words. This is different in the Elizabethan era, where the ranges are from 14,790 (<\/span>Comedy of Errors)\u00a0<\/span><\/i>to 26001 (<\/span>Troilus and Cressida).\u00a0<\/span><\/i>I thought the opposite would occur. The instability of King James\u2019 reign or the different developments in his reign may have created the need to have different plays that had various focuses and length. For example, in the Jacobean era, colonization and the exploration of various parts of the world had begun to be more prevalent. This might have influenced the context of plays like the<\/span>\u00a0Tempest,\u00a0<\/span><\/i>the play with the greatest number of dialogues.\u00a0It seems as if the instability may have brought on\u00a0more interesting subjects and topics.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The research questions I provided my computer science team did not produce the needed\u00a0results\u00a0to test my\u00a0hypothesis.\u00a0I was going to used the information I had to compare how\u00a0<\/span>Midsummer\u00a0<\/span><\/i>was an either an anomaly or\u00a0the norm.\u00a0The\u00a0information\u00a0and data\u00a0I need\u00a0exists,\u00a0but\u00a0I asked the wrong questions.\u00a0I asked for the most used words in each era, other allusions to mythological figures, how many dialogues in each play, which characters had the most dialogue or words, which play was the longest, and the average play length in each era.\u00a0I thought\u00a0there was a correlation between agency and dialogue.\u00a0The data I found did not reject or back-up my claim.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Homepage<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Part II: Midsummer Night’s Dream, Distant Reading My earlier analysis\u00a0attempted to\u00a0focus\u00a0on the power dynamic between men\u00a0and\u00a0women\u00a0and how Shakespeare uses two different scenarios to show how this dynamic worked. For the second part of this assignment, I wanted to\u00a0build on my connections to find out\u00a0if those power dynamics played out in different comedic plays and if … Continue reading Part II: Midsummer Night’s Dream, Distant Reading<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4697,"featured_media":0,"parent":488,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-892","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/digitalmethodsforthehumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/digitalmethodsforthehumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/digitalmethodsforthehumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/digitalmethodsforthehumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4697"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/digitalmethodsforthehumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/digitalmethodsforthehumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/892\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/digitalmethodsforthehumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/digitalmethodsforthehumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}