The Set Element

A special form of note describing the setting of a dramatic text (that is, the time and place of its action) is sometimes found in the front matter. Descriptions of the setting may also appear as initial stage directions in the body of the play, but such descriptions should be marked as stage directions, not set. The set element should be used only where the description forms part of the front matter, as in the following examples: ...

The action of the play is set in Chicago's Southside, sometime between World War II and the present.

Peer Gynt

Note on the Translation

...

Characters

The action, which opens in the beginning of the nineteenth century, and ends around the 1860s, takes place partly in Gudbrandsdalen, and on the mountains around it, partly on the coast of Morocco, in the desert of Sahara, in a madhouse at Cairo, at sea, etc.

Prologues and Epilogues

Many plays in the Western tradition include in their front matter a prologue, spoken by an actor, generally not in character. Similar speeches often also occur at the end of the play, as epilogues. The elements prologue and epilogue are provided for the encoding of such features within the front or back matter, where appropriate. A prologue may be encoded just like a distinct poem, as in the following example: Prologue, spoken by Mr. Hart Poets like Cudgel'd Bullys, never do At first, or second blow, submit to you; But will provoke you still, and ne're have done, Till you are weary first, with laying on: We patiently you see, give up to you, Our Poets, Virgins, nay our Matrons too. The Persons ... The SCENE

London

A prologue or epilogue may also be encoded as a speech, using the sp element described in section . This is particularly appropriate where stage directions, etc., are involved, as in the following example: Written by Colley Cibber, Esq and spoken by Mrs. Cibber Since Fate has robb'd me of the hapless Youth, For whom my heart had hoarded up its truth; By all the Laws of Love and Honour, now, I'm free again to chuse, — and one of you Suppose I search the sober Gallery; — No, There's none but Prentices — & Cuckolds all a row: And these, I doubt, are those that make 'em so. Pointing to the Boxes. 'Tis very well, enjoy the jest:

In cases where the prologue or epilogue is clearly a significant part of the dramatic action, it may be preferable to include it in the body of a text, rather than in the front or back matter. In such cases, the encoder (and theatrical tradition) will determine whether or not to regard it as a new scene or division, or simply the final speech in the play. In the First Folio version of Shakespeare's , for example, Prospero's final speech is clearly marked off as a distinct textual unit by the headings and layout of the page, and might therefore be encoded as back matter: I'le deliver all, And promise you calme Seas, auspicious gales, Be free and fare thou well: please you, draw neere. Exeunt omnes. Epilogue, spoken by Prospero. Now my Charmes are all ore-throwne, And what strength I have's mine owne As you from crimes would pardon'd be, Let your Indulgence set me free. Exit

The Scene, an un-inhabited Island.

Names of the Actors. Alonso, K. of Naples Sebastian, his Brother. Prospero, the right Duke of Millaine. FINIS

In many modern editions, the editors have chosen to regard Prospero's speech as a part of the preceding scene: Prospero I'll deliver all, And promise you calm seas, auspicious gales, Be free and fare thou well. Exit Ariel Please you, draw near. Exeunt all but Prospero Epilogue Now my charms are all o'erthrown, And what strength I have's mine own As you from crimes would pardoned be, Let your indulgence set me free. He awaits applause, then exit.

Records of Performances

Performance texts are not only printed in books to be read, they are also performed. It is common practice therefore to include within the front matter of a printed dramatic text some brief account of particular performances, using the following element: The performance element may be used to group any and all information relating to the actual performance of a play or screenplay, whether it specifies how the play should be performed in general or how it was performed in practice on some occasion.

Performance information may include complex structures such as cast lists, or paragraphs describing the date and location of a performance, details about the setting portrayed in the performance and so forth. (See the discussion of these specialized structures in section above.) If information for more than one performance is being recorded, then more than one performance element should be used, wherever possible.

Names of persons, places, and dates of particular significance within the performance record may be explicitly marked using the general purpose name, rs type="place" and date elements described in section . No particular elements for such features as stagehouses, directors, etc., are proposed at this time.

For example: Death of a Salesman

A New Play by Arthur Miller

Staged by Elia Kazan

Cast (in order of appearance) Willy Loman Lee J. Cobb Linda Mildred Dunnock Biff Arthur Kennedy Happy Cameron Mitchell

The setting and lighting were designed by Jo Mielziner.

The incidental music was composed by Alex North.

The costumes were designed by Julia Sze.

Presented by Kermit Bloomgarden and Walter Fried at the Morosco Theatre in New York on February 10, 1949.

Or:

La Machine Infernale a été représentée pour la première fois au théâtre Louis-Jouvet (Comédie des Champs-élysées) le 10 avril 1934, avec les décors et les costumes de Christian Bérard. ...

Cast Lists

A cast list is a specialized form of list, conventionally found at the start or end of a play, usually listing all the speaking and non-speaking roles in the play, often with additional description (Cataplasma, a maker of Periwigges and Attires) or the name of an actor or actress (Old Lady Squeamish. Mrs Rutter). Cast lists may be encoded with the general purpose list element described in section , but for more detailed work the following specialized elements are provided:

A castItem element may contain any mixture of elements taken from the model.castItemPart class, members of which (when this module is included) are: Cast lists often have an internal structure of their own; it is quite usual to find, for example, nobility and commoners, or male and female roles, presented in different groups or sublists. Roles are also often grouped together by their function, for example: Sons of Cato: Portius Marcus

A cast list relating to a specific performance may be accompanied by notes about the time or place of that performance, indicating (for example) the name of the theatre where the play was first presented, the name of the producer or director, and so forth. When the cast list relates to a specific performance, it should be embedded within a performance element (see section ), as in the following example:

The first performance in Great Britain of was given at the Arts Theatre, London, on 3rd August 1955. It was directed by Peter Hall, and the décor was by Peter Snow. The cast was as follows:

Estragon: Peter Woodthorpe Vladimir: Paul Daneman ...

In this example, the castItem elements have no substructure. If desired, however, their components may be more finely distinguished using the elements role, roleDesc, and actor. For example, the second cast item above might be encoded as follows: Vladimir: Paul Daneman

The global xml:id attribute may be used to specify a unique identifier for the role element, where it is desired to link speeches within the text explicitly to the role, using the who attribute, as further discussed in section below.

The occasionally lengthy descriptions of a role sometimes found in written play scripts may be marked using the roleDesc element, as in the following example: Tom Thumb the Great a little hero with a great soul, something violent in his temper, which is a little abated by his love for Huncamunca Young Verhuyk For non-speaking or un-named roles, a castItem may contain a roleDesc without an accompanying role, for example Costermonger

When a list of such minor roles is given together, the type attribute of the castItem should indicate that it contains more than one role, by taking a value such as list. The encoder may or may not elect to encode each separate constituent within such a composite castItem. Thus, either of the following is acceptable: Constables, Drawer, Turnkey, etc. Constables, Drawer, Turnkey, etc.

A group of cast items forming a distinct subdivision of a cast list may be marked as such by using the special purpose castGroup element. The rend attribute may be used to indicate whether this grouping is indicated in the text by layout alone (i.e. the use of whitespace), by long braces or by some other means. A castGroup may contain an optional heading (represented as usual by a head element) followed by a series of castItem elements: friends of Mathias Walter Mr Frank Hall Hans Mr F.W. Irish

Alternatively, the encoder may prefer to regard the phrase friends of Mathias as a role description, and encode the above example as follows: friends of Mathias Walter Mr Frank Hall Hans Mr F.W. Irish

This version has the advantage that all role descriptions are treated alike, rather than in some cases being treated as headings. On the other hand there are also cases, such as the following, where the role description does function more like a heading: Mendicants Aafaa Femi Johnson Blindman Femi Osofisan Goyi Wale Ogunyemi Cripple Tunji Oyelana Si Bero Sister to Dr Bero Deolo Adedoyin Two old women Iya Agba Nguba Agolia Iya Mate Bopo George Dr Bero Specialist Nat Okoro Priest Gbenga Sonuga The old man Bero's father Dapo Adelugba

Major Structural Divisions

Large divisions in drama such as acts, scenes, stasima, or entr'actes are indicated by numbered or unnumbered div elements, as described in section . The type and n attributes may be used to define the type of division being marked, and to provide a name or number for it, as in the following example: Night—Faust's Study (i) Outside the City Gate

Where the largest divisions of a performance text are themselves subdivided, most obviously in the case of plays traditionally divided into acts and scenes, further nested text-division elements may be used, as in this example: Act One Pa Ubu, Ma Ubu Pa Ubu

Pschitt!

A room in Pa Ubu's house, where a magnificent collation is set out Act Two Scene One Scene Two

In the example above, the div2 element has been used to represent the French scene convention, (where the entrance of each new set of characters is marked as a distinct unit in the text) and the div1 element to represent the acts into which the play is divided. The elements chosen are determined only by the hierarchic position of these units in the text as a whole. If the text had no acts, but only scenes, then the scenes might be represented by div1 elements. Equally, if a play is divided only into acts, with no smaller subdivisions, then the div1 element might be used to represent acts. The type should be used, as above, to make explicit the name associated with a particular category of subdivision.

As an alternative to the use of numbered divisions, the encoder may represent all subdivisions with the same element, the unnumbered div. The second act in the above example would then be represented as follows:

For further discussion of the use of numbered and unnumbered divisions, see section .

Speeches and Speakers

The following elements are used to identify speeches and speakers in a performance text:

As noted above, the structure of many performance texts may be analysed as multiply hierarchic: a scene of a verse play, for example, may be divided into speeches and, at the same time, into verse lines. The end of a line may or may not coincide with the end of a speech, and vice versa. Other structures, such as songs, may be discontinuous or split up over several speeches. For some purposes it will be appropriate to regard the verse-structure as the fundamental organizing principle of the text, and for others the speech structure; in some cases, the choice between the two may be arbitrary. The discussion in the remainder of this chapter assumes that it is the speech-based hierarchy which most prominently determines the structure of performance texts, but the same mechanisms could be employed to encode a view of a performance text in which individual speeches were entirely subordinate to the formal units of prose and verse. For more detailed discussion and examples of various treatments of this fundamental issue, refer to chapter .

The who attribute and the speaker element are both used to indicate the speaker or speakers of a speech, but in rather different ways. The speaker element is used to encode the word or phrase actually used within the source text to indicate the speaker: it may contain any string or prefix, and may be thought of as a highly specialized form of stage direction. The who attribute however contains one or more pointer values, each of which indicates one or more other XML elements documenting the character to whom the speech is assigned. Typically, this attribute might point to a person element in the TEI header , to a role element in the cast list , or even to some external source such as an online handbook of dramatic roles. The most usual case is that the pointer value supplied (prefixed by a sharp sign) corresponds with the value of an xml:id attribute, used elsewhere in the document to identify a particular element, as in the following examples: Menaechmus Peniculus Menaechmus Responde, adulescens, quaeso, quid nomen tibist? Peniculus Etiam derides, quasi nomen non noveris? Menaechmus Non edepol ego te, quot sciam, umquam ante hunc diem Vidi neque novi; ...

If present, a speaker element may only appear as the first part of an sp element. The distinction between the speaker element and the who attribute makes it possible to encode uniformly characters whose names are not indicated in a uniform fashion throughout the play, or characters who appear in disguise, as in the following examples: Henry Higgins The Notetaker

...

If the speaker attributions are completely regular (and may thus be reconstructed mechanically from the values given for the who attribute), or are of no interest for the encoder of the text (as might be the case with editorially supplied attributions in older texts), then the speaker element need not be used; the former example above then might look like this: Menaechmus Peniculus Responde, adulescens, quaeso, quid nomen tibist? Etiam derides, quasi nomen non noveris? Non edepol ego te, quot sciam, umquam ante hunc diem Vidi neque novi; ...

More than one identifier may be listed as value for the who attribute if the speech is spoken by more than one person, as in the following example: Nano Castrone Nano and Castrone sing Fools, they are the only nation Worth men's envy or admiration

The sp and speaker elements are both declared within the core module (see section ).

Grouped Speeches

This module makes available the following additional element for handling groups of speeches:

The spGrp element is intended for cases where the characters in a performance launch into something which might be regarded almost as a kind of separate structural division, typically associated with its own heading or numbering system, but which floats in the text, at the same hierarchic level as speeches preceding or following it. Such units are often numbered, titled, and visually presented as distinct objects within the text. Here is a typical example from a well-known American musical comedy: By Strauss : performed by Georges Guetary, Gene Kelly, and Oscar Levant HENRI BAUREL The waltzes of Mittel Europa They charm you and warm you within While each day discloses What Broadway composes Is emptiness pounding on tin. JERRY MULLIGAN: ADAM COOK: Mein Herr! Mein Herr! Bitte, bitte! Denke, danke! Aufwiedersehen! Aufwiedersehen! HENRI BAUREL: How can I be civil When hearing this drivel? It's only for night-clubbing souses. Oh give me the free 'n easy Waltz that is Viennes-y And go tell the band If they want a hand The waltz must be Strauss's ALL Ya ya ya Give me oom pah pah...

Stage Directions

Both between and within the speeches of a written performance text, it is normal practice to include a wide variety of descriptive directions to indicate non-verbal action. The following elements are provided to represent these:

A satisfactory typology of stage directions is difficult to define. Certain basic types such as entrance, exit, setting, delivery, are easily identified. But the list is not a closed one, and it is not uncommon to mix types within a single direction. No closed set of values for the type attribute is therefore proposed at the present time, though some suggested values are indicated in the list below, which also indicates the range of possibilities. The throne descends. Music Enter Husband as being thrown off his horse. Exit pursued by a bear. He quickly takes the stone out. To Lussurioso. Aside. Not knowing what to say. Disguised as Ansaldo. At a window. Having had enough, and embarrassed for the family.

The meaning of the values used for the type attribute on stage elements may be defined within the tagUsage element of the TEI header (described in section ). For example: This element is used for all stage directions, editorial or authorial. The type attribute on this element takes one or more of the following values: setting describes the set blocking describes movement across stage, position, etc. business describes movement other than blocking delivery describes how the line is said motivation describes character's emotional state or through line

This approach is purely documentary; in a real project it would generally be more effective to define the range of permitted values explicitly within the project's schema specification, using the techniques described in chapter . For example, a specification like the following might be used to produce a schema in which the type attribute of the stage element is permitted to take only the values listed above: describes the set describes movement across stage, position, etc. describes movement other than blocking describes how the line is said describes character's emotional state or through line

The stage element may appear both between and within sp elements. It may contain a mixture of phrase level elements, possibly combined into paragraphs, as in the following example:

Scene. — A room furnished comfortably and tastefully but not extravagantly ... The floor is carpeted and a fire burns in the stove. It is winter.

A bell rings in the hall; shortly afterwards the door is heard to open. Enter NORA humming a tune ...

Nora

Hide the Christmas Tree carefully, Helen. Be sure the children do not see it till this evening, when it is dressed. To the PORTER taking out her purse How much?

The stage element may also be used in non-theatrical texts, to mark sound effects or musical effects, etc., as further discussed in section .

The move element is intended to help overcome the fact that the stage directions of a printed text may often not provide full information about either the intended or the actual movement of actors on stage. It may be used to keep track of entrances and exits in detail, so as to know which characters are on stage at which time. Its attributes permit a relatively formal specification for movements of characters, using user-defined codes to identify the characters involved (the who attribute), the direction of the movement (type attribute), and optionally which part of the stage is involved (where attribute). For stage-historical purposes, a perf attribute is also provided; this allows the recording of different move elements as taken in different performances of the same text.

The move element should be located at the position in the text where the move is presumed to take place. This will often coincide with a stage direction, as in the following simple example: Bellafront Enter Bellafront mad.

The move element can however appear independently of a stage direction, as in the following example: Lady Macbeth First Gentleman Gent.

Neither to you, nor any one; having no witness to confirm my speech. Lo you! here she comes. This is her very guise; and, upon my life, fast asleep.

Speech Contents

The actual speeches of a dramatic text may be composed of running text, which must be formally organized into paragraphs, in the case of prose (see section ), verse lines or line groups in that of verse (see section ), or seg elements, in case of doubt as to whether the material should be treated as verse or prose. The following elements, all of which are defined in the core, are particularly useful when marking units of prose or verse within speeches:

Like other milestone elements, the element lb additionally bears the attributes ed and edRef, from its membership in the class att.edition:

As a member of the classes att.typed and att.divLike, the lg element also bears the following attributes:

When the verse module is included in a schema, the elements l and lg also gain additional attributes through their membership of the class att.metrical:

In many texts, prose and verse may be inextricably mingled; particularly in earlier printed texts, prose may be printed as verse or verse as prose, or it may be impossible to distinguish the two. In cases of doubt, an encoder may prefer to tag the dubious material consistently as verse, to tag it all as prose, to follow the typography of the source text, or to use the neutral ab element to contain the speech itself. When this question arises, the tagUsage element in the encodingDesc element of the header may be used to record explicitly what policy has been adopted.

Even where they can reliably be distinguished, a single speech may frequently contain a mixture of prose (marked as p) and verse (marked as l or—if stanzaic—lg).

The part attribute which both l and lg elements inherit from the att.fragmentable class provides one simple way of indicating where the boundaries of a speech and of a verse line or line group do not coincide. The encoder may simply indicate that a line or line group is metrically incomplete by specifying the value Y or N, as in the following example: FaceYou most notorious whelp, you insolent slave Dare you do this? SubtleYes faith, yes faith. FaceWhy! Who Am I, my mongrel? Who am I? SubtleI'll tell you,

Alternatively, where the fragments of the line or line group are consecutive in the text (though possibly interrupted by stage directions), the values I (initial), M (medial), and F (final) may be used to indicate how metrical lines are constituted: FaceYou most notorious whelp, you insolent slave Dare you do this? SubtleYes faith, yes faith. FaceWhy! Who Am I, my mongrel? Who am I? SubtleI'll tell you,

In dramatic texts, the lg or line group element is most often of use for the encoding of songs and other stanzaic material. Line groups may be fragmented across speakers in the same way as individual lines, and the same set of attributes may be used to record this fact. The element spGrp is provided in order to simplify the situation, very common in performances, where performance of a single entity, such as a song, is shared amongst several performers, as in the following example: Song — Sir Joseph I am the monarch of the sea, The ruler of the Queen's Navee. Whose praise Great Britain loudly chants. Cousin Hebe And we are his sisters and his cousins and his aunts! Rel. And we are his sisters and his cousins and his aunts!

This encoding however does not indicate that the three lines of Sir Joseph's song and the two lines following it together constitute a single verse stanza. This can be indicated by using the part attribute, as follows: Song — Sir Joseph I am the monarch of the sea, The ruler of the Queen's Navee. Whose praise Great Britain loudly chants. Cousin Hebe And we are his sisters and his cousins and his aunts! Rel. And we are his sisters and his cousins and his aunts!

Embedded Structures

Although primarily composed of speeches, performance texts often contain other structural units such as songs or strophes which are shared among different speakers. More generally, complex nested structures of plays within plays, interpolated masques, or interludes are far from uncommon. In more modern material, comparably complex structural devices such as flashback or nested playback are equally frequent. In all kinds of performance material, it may be necessary to indicate several actions which are happening simultaneously.

A number of different devices are available within the TEI scheme to support these complexities in the general case. Texts may be composite or self-nesting (see section ) and multiple hierarchies may be defined (see chapter ). The TEI encoding scheme provides a variety of linking mechanisms, which may be used to indicate temporal alignment and aggregation of fragmented structures. In this section we provide a few specific examples of the application of these techniques to performance texts: the use of the floatingText element the use of the part attribute on fragmentary lg elements the use of the next and prev attributes on fragments of embedded structures to join them into a larger whole the use of the join element to define a virtual element composed of the fragments indicated

When the whole of a song appears within a single speech, it may require no special treatment if it is considered to form a part of the speech: Kelly (calmly).

Aha, so you've bad minds along with th' love of gain. You thry to pin on others th' dirty decorations that may be hangin' on your own coats.

(He points, one after the other at Conroy, Bull, and Flagonson. Lilting) Who were you with last night? Who were you with last night? Will you tell your missus when you go home Who you were with last night? Flagonson (in anguished indignation).

This is more than a hurt to us: this hits at the decency of the whole nation!

If however, the song is to be regarded as forming a distinct item, perhaps with its own front and back matter, it may be better to regard it as a floating text: Kelly (calmly).

Aha, so you've bad minds along with ...

(He points, one after the other at Conroy, Bull, and Flagonson. Lilting): Kelly's Song Who were you with last night? Who were you with last night? Will you tell your missus when you go home Who you were with last night?

When an embedded structure extends across more than one sp element, each of its constituent parts must be regarded as a distinct fragment; the problem then facing the encoder is to reconstitute the interrupted whole in some way.

As already noted above, the spGrp element may be used to group together consecutive speeches which are grouped together in some way, for example constituting a single song. Alternatively the part attribute, typically used to indicate that an l element contains a partial, not a complete, verse line, may also be used on the lg element, to indicate that the line group is partial rather than complete, thus: Kelly (wheeling quietly in his semi-dance, as he goes out): Goodbye to holy souls left here, Goodbye to man an' fairy; Widda Machree (wheeling quietly in her semi-dance, as she goes out): Goodbye to all of Leicester Square, An' the long way to Tipperary.

When the fragments of a song are separated by other intervening dialogue, or even when not, they may be linked together with the next and prev attributes defined in section . For example, the line groups making up Ophelia's song might be encoded as follows: Elsinore. A room in the Castle. Enter Ophelia, distracted. Ophelia

Where is the beauteous Majesty of Denmark?

Queen

How now, Ophelia?

Ophelia Singing How should I your true-love know From another one? By his cockle hat and staff And his sandal shoon. Queen

Alas, sweet lady, what imports this song?

Ophelia

Say you? Nay, pray you mark.

Sings He is dead and gone, lady, He is dead and gone; At his head a grass-green turf, At his heels a stone.

O, ho!

The next and prev attributes are discussed in section : they form part of the module for alignment and linking; this module must therefore be included in a schema if they are to be used, as further discussed in section .

The fragments of Ophelia's song might also be linked together using the join mechanism described in section . The join element is specifically intended to encode the fact that several discontiguous elements of the text together form one virtual element. Using this mechanism, the example might be encoded as follows: Elsinore. A room in the Castle. Queen

How now, Ophelia?

Ophelia Singing How should I your true-love know From another one? By his cockle hat and staff And his sandal shoon. Queen

Alas, sweet lady, what imports this song?

Ophelia

Say you? Nay, pray you mark.

Sings He is dead and gone, lady, He is dead and gone; At his head a grass-green turf, At his heels a stone.

O, ho!

The location of the join element is not significant; here it has been placed shortly after the conclusion of the song, in order to have it close to the fragments it unifies.

Like the next and prev attributes, the join element requires the additional module for linking, which is selected as shown above.

Simultaneous Action

In printed or written versions of performance texts, a variety of techniques may be used to indicate the temporal alignment of speeches or actions. Speeches may be printed vertically aligned on the page, or braced together; stage directions (e.g. Speaking at the same time) are also often used. In operatic or musical works in particular, the need to indicate timing and alignment of individual parts of a song may lead to very complex layout.

One simple method of indicating the temporal alignment of speeches or actions is to use the spGrp element discussed in section , with an type attribute to specify the reason for grouping, as in the following example: Mangan wildly

Look here: I'm going to take off all my clothes.

he begins tearing off his coat. Lady Utterword

Mr Mangan!

Captain Shotover

Whats that?

Hector

Ha! ha! Do. Do.

Ellie

Please dont.

in consternation Mrs. Hushabye catching his arm and stopping him

Alfred: for shame! Are you mad?

In the original, the stage direction in consternation is printed opposite a brace grouping all four speeches, indicating that all four characters speak at once, and that the stage direction applies to all of them. Rather than attempting to represent the appearance of the source, this example encoding represents its presumed meaning: the stage element is placed arbitrarily after the last relevant speech, and the four speeches with which it is to be associated are grouped by means of the spGrp element. The rend attribute is used to specify the fact that the three speeches were grouped by the brace in the copy text. Producing a readable version of the text which simulates the original printed effect may however require more complex markup and processing.

More powerful and more precise mechanisms for temporal alignment are defined in chapter . These would be appropriate for encodings the focus of which is on the actual performance of a text rather than its structure or formal properties. The module described in that chapter includes a large number of other detailed proposals for the encoding of such features as voice quality, prosody, etc., which might be relevant to such a treatment of performance texts.

Technical Information

Traditional stage scripts may contain additional technical information about such production-related factors as lighting, blocking (that is, detailed notes on actors' movements), or props required at particular points. More technical information about intended production effects may also appear in published versions of screenplays or movie scripts. Where these are presented simply as marginal notes, they may be encoded using the general-purpose note element defined in section . Alternatively, they may be formally distinguished from other stage directions by using the specialized tech element:

Like stage directions, tech elements can appear anywhere within a speech or between speeches.