The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 19.0452 Thursday, 31 July 2008
[1] From: Ron Severdia <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Friday, 25 Jul 2008 08:26:00 -0700
Suct: Re: SHK 19.0439 Character/Scene/Line Breakdown Charts
[2] From: John Zuill <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Saturday, 26 Jul 2008 12:25:08 +1000
Suct: Re: SHK 19.0442 Character/Scene/Line Breakdown Charts
[3] From: Tom Salyers <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Sunday, 27 Jul 2008 03:02:28 -0700 (PDT)
Suct: Re: SHK 19.0442 Character/Scene/Line Breakdown Charts
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Ron Severdia <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Friday, 25 Jul 2008 08:26:00 -0700
Subject: 19.0439 Character/Scene/Line Breakdown Charts
Comment: Re: SHK 19.0439 Character/Scene/Line Breakdown Charts
There isn't a line count (eventually there will be), but all the scene pages on
PlayShakespeare.com have a list of characters in that scene. For example:
http://www.playshakespeare.com/hamlet/scenes
Line counts will vary by edition, of course.
Cheers,
Ron Severdia
PlayShakespeare.com
[2]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: John Zuill <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Saturday, 26 Jul 2008 12:25:08 +1000
Subject: 19.0442 Character/Scene/Line Breakdown Charts
Comment: Re: SHK 19.0442 Character/Scene/Line Breakdown Charts
This may be off topic again but oddly enough, doing a character scene break down
of a play is something I do quite often. I tend to end up doing a lot of the
work of producing as well as directing Shakespeare. I have run into a problem
with scheduling rehearsals. When you pay people little or nothing, they need to
have jobs. So I have to work around their schedules. Then I have scenes, which
need rehearsing. What I have to contrive is a series of incidents of
circumstance in which the person playing the part, is at rehearsal for the scene
in which they are required, at the right time. I think it's called a pattern of
permutations. I am not a computer person but I sallied forth with a database
program to try to design something that would chew up all the data of baby sit
times and Cassius in Scene 3 etc. The result was to have been something that
produced a two month rehearsal schedule at a press of the return key. I almost
went mad. I had to think in three different logical contexts at once and I
cannot. It took hours of listening to Bach to put all the circles back in the
round holes and all the squares back in the square holes. Bach is great for
sanity. In any case, if anyone has any idea how to do this, I would be delighted
to hear about it. Right now, I just do it the slow way. This can be very
frustrating.
[3]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Tom Salyers <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Sunday, 27 Jul 2008 03:02:28 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: 19.0442 Character/Scene/Line Breakdown Charts
Comment: Re: SHK 19.0442 Character/Scene/Line Breakdown Charts
>I think Tom Salyers is describing T. J. King's book, *Casting Shakespeare's
>Plays* (Cambridge UP, 1992).
>
>Best,
>John Cox
>Hope College
Thanks for the suggestions, everyone. I think this book is the exact one I'm
looking for. It seems to be out of print, but fortunately the local university
library has a copy.
If anyone's curious, the reason I was trying to find this book is that I'm in
the tedious data-entry phase of a project I'm working on in my spare time. It's
an experiment in programmatically doubling roles in Shakespeare plays without
all the tedium of manually poring over charts like the one in this book. I've
finally got a prototype working on Windows with one test play--in that I got it
to (for instance) stop doubling Dogberry and Verges--and I'm ready to expand it
to the rest of the plays.
Tom Salyers
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