P5: Guidelines for Electronic Text Encoding and Interchange

TEI: The Set Element¶7.1.1 The Set Element

TEI: Prologues and Epilogues¶7.1.2 Prologues and Epilogues

TEI: Records of Performances¶7.1.3 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:

• performance contains a section of front or back matter describing how a dramatic piece is to be performed in general or how it was performed on some specific occasion.

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 7.1 Front and Back Matter 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 3.5.4 Dates and Times. No particular elements for such features as stagehouses, directors, etc., are proposed at this time.

TEI: Cast Lists¶7.1.4 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 3.7 Lists, but for more detailed work the following specialized elements are provided:

• castList (cast list) contains a single cast list or dramatis personae.
• castGroup (cast list grouping) groups one or more individual castItem elements within a cast list.
• castItem (cast list item) contains a single entry within a cast list, describing either a single role or a list of non-speaking roles.

  type	characterizes the cast item.

A castItem element may contain any mixture of elements taken from the model.castItemPart class, members of which (when this module is included) are:

• role contains the name of a dramatic role, as given in a cast list.
• roleDesc (role description) describes a character's role in a drama.
• actor contains the name of an actor appearing within a cast list.

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

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 7.2.2 Speeches and Speakers below.

TEI: Major Structural Divisions¶7.2.1 Major Structural Divisions

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.

For further discussion of the use of numbered and unnumbered divisions, see section 4.1 Divisions of the Body.

TEI: Speeches and Speakers¶7.2.2 Speeches and Speakers

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

• sp (speech) contains an individual speech in a performance text, or a passage presented as such in a prose or verse text.
• speaker contains a specialized form of heading or label, giving the name of one or more speakers in a dramatic text or fragment.

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 20 Non-hierarchical Structures.

The sp and speaker elements are both declared within the core module (see section 3.12 Passages of Verse or Drama).

TEI: Grouped Speeches¶7.2.3 Grouped Speeches

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

• spGrp (speech group) contains a group of speeches or songs in a performance text presented in a source as constituting a single unit or ‘number’.

TEI: Stage Directions¶7.2.4 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:

• stage (stage direction) contains any kind of stage direction within a dramatic text or fragment.

  type	indicates the kind of stage direction. Suggested values include: 1] setting; 2] entrance; 3] exit; 4] business; 5] novelistic; 6] delivery; 7] modifier; 8] location; 9] mixed

• move (movement) marks the actual entrance or exit of one or more characters on stage.

  type	characterizes the movement, for example as an entrance or exit. Suggested values include: 1] entrance; 2] exit; 3] onStage
  where	specifies the direction of a stage movement. Sample values include: 1] L(left) ; 2] R(right) ; 3] C(center)
  perf	(performance) identifies the performance or performances in which this movement occurred as specified by pointing to one or more performance elements.

The stage element may also be used in non-theatrical texts, to mark sound effects or musical effects, etc., as further discussed in section 7.3 Other Types of Performance Text.

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.

TEI: Speech Contents¶7.2.5 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 3.1 Paragraphs), verse lines or line groups in that of verse (see section 3.12 Passages of Verse or Drama), 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:

• p (paragraph) marks paragraphs in prose.
• lb (line break) marks the start of a new (typographic) line in some edition or version of a text.
• l (verse line) contains a single, possibly incomplete, line of verse.
• lg (line group) contains one or more verse lines functioning as a formal unit, e.g. a stanza, refrain, verse paragraph, etc.

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

• att.edition provides attributes identifying the source edition from which some encoded feature derives.

  ed	(edition) supplies a sigil or other arbitrary identifier for the source edition in which the associated feature (for example, a page, column, or line break) occurs at this point in the text.
  edRef	(edition reference) provides a pointer to the source edition in which the associated feature (for example, a page, column, or line break) occurs at this point in the text.

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

• att.typed provides attributes which can be used to classify or subclassify elements in any way.

  type	characterizes the element in some sense, using any convenient classification scheme or typology.
  subtype	provides a sub-categorization of the element, if needed

• att.divLike provides attributes common to all elements which behave in the same way as divisions.

  org	(organization) specifies how the content of the division is organized.
  sample	indicates whether this division is a sample of the original source and if so, from which part.

• att.fragmentable provides an attribute for representing fragmentation of a structural element, typically as a consequence of some overlapping hierarchy.

  part	specifies whether or not its parent element is fragmented in some way, typically by some other overlapping structure: for example a speech which is divided between two or more verse stanzas, a paragraph which is split across a page division, a verse line which is divided between two speakers.

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:

• att.metrical defines a set of attributes which certain elements may use to represent metrical information.

  met	(metrical structure, conventional) contains a user-specified encoding for the conventional metrical structure of the element.
  rhyme	(rhyme scheme) specifies the rhyme scheme applicable to a group of verse lines.

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).

TEI: Embedded Structures¶7.2.6 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 4.3.1 Grouped Texts) and multiple hierarchies may be defined (see chapter 20 Non-hierarchical Structures). 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 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.

The next and prev attributes are discussed in section 16.7 Aggregation: 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 1.2 Defining a TEI Schema.

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

TEI: Simultaneous Action¶7.2.7 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.

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 8 Transcriptions of Speech. 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.

TEI: Technical Information¶7.3.1 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 3.8 Notes, Annotation, and Indexing. Alternatively, they may be formally distinguished from other stage directions by using the specialized tech element:

• tech (technical stage direction) describes a special-purpose stage direction that is not meant for the actors.

  type	categorizes the technical stage direction.
  perf	(performance) points to one or more performance elements documenting the performance or performances to which this technical direction applies.

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