Séance conjointe PEMS / ShakeS (Shakespeare en Sorbonne), organisée par : Sorbonne Université
14 avril 2023, 16 h 30 – 18 h 00
Lieu: Maison de la recherche de Sorbonne, rue Serpente (75006), salle D 323. Also on Zoom – please write to our secretary for the link: mathilde.alazraki@hotmail.fr )
“Early Modern Stage Directions and the Encoded Playbook: Text or Markup?”
How we encode, render, and count stage directions in a digital edition depends on the relationship between stage directions and the rest of the text. Are stage directions paratexts or are they part of the text of the playbook? What information do we need to capture when we encode stage directions? Where and how should we display them in our digital interface? And how should we number them in order to make them linkable and citable? This paper begins by showing the shifting placement of stage directions relative to the text block in the period 1500 to 1700 and briefly summarizing the recent burst of scholarship on stage directions, their purpose, authorship, and intended user. Then the paper turns to the challenge of encoding stage directions in the XML markup language of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) and reflects on the applicability of the <stage> element specification to early modern drama. Finally, the paper turns to how the Linked Early Modern Drama Online (LEMDO) project proposes to handle the rendering and numbering of stage directions both in our digital editions and in the LEMDO Hornbooks print-on-demand series. (This paper draws on research jointly conducted with Jamie Cassels Undergraduate Research Award student Mahayla Galliford.)
Janelle Jenstad is Professor of English at University of Victoria. She directs The Map of Early Modern London (MoEML) and Linked Early Modern Drama Online (LEMDO), and co-coordinates The New Internet Shakespeare Editions (NISE) and Digital Renaissance Editions (DRE). With Jennifer Roberts-Smith and Mark Kaethler, she co-edited Shakespeare’s Language in Digital Media (Routledge). With Kaethler, she is co-general editing the MoEML Mayoral Shows Anthology (MoMS). She is editing in particular John Stow’s A Survey of London (1598 and 1633 texts) for MoEML; The Merchant of Venice with Stephen Wittek for the NISE; and Heywood’s 2 If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody for DRE. Her articles have appeared in Digital Humanities Quarterly, Shakespeare Bulletin, Renaissance and Reformation, Scholarly Editing, and Digital Studies/Champs Numeriques. Chapters appear in Teaching Early Modern Literature from the Archives (MLA); New Directions in the Geohumanities (Routledge); Early Modern Studies and the Digital Turn (Iter); Placing Names: Enriching and Integrating Gazetteers (Indiana); Early Modern Studies and the Digital Turn (Iter); Making Things and Drawing Boundaries (Minnesota); Rethinking Shakespeare Source Study (Routledge); and Civic Performance: Pageantry and Entertainments in Early Modern London (Routledge).
