Quantitative Drama History of Lovers:Analyzing the Semantics of Figure SpeechMarcus Willand, Nils Reiter

Stuttgart UniversityGermany

HERMENEUTICALPERSPECTIVES:SHAKESPEARE (1750-1800)

Marcus Willand

Comparatist’s View on Shakespeare

Comparatist’s View on Shakespearea) Europe Germany (e.g. Kob 2014)b) Germany Europec) Simultaneous Reception, more intense in Germany than in France

Theories of Drama1747: J.E. Schlegel: Gedanken zur Aufnahme des dänischen Theaters1759: Lessing: 17. Literaturbrief1766/67: Gerstenberg: Briefe über Merckwürdigkeiten der Litteratur1771: Goethe: Rede zum Schäkespears Tag1773: Herder: Von deutscher Art und Kunst1774: Lenz: Anmerkungen übers Theater1809–1811: A. W. Schlegel: Wiener Vorlesungen über dramatische

Kunst und Literatur

1747: J.E. Schlegel: Gedanken zur Aufnahme des dänischen Theaters1759: Lessing: 17. Literaturbrief1766: Wieland: Romeo und Julietta1766/67: Gerstenberg: Briefe über Merckwürdigkeiten der Litteratur1771: Goethe: Rede zum Schäkespears Tag1773: Herder: Von deutscher Art und Kunst1774: Lenz: Anmerkungen übers Theater1809–1811: A. W. Schlegel: Wiener Vorlesungen über dramatische Kunst und Literatur

Theories of Drama

AUTOMATIC PROCESSINGNils Reiter

Computational Linguistics• Processing and understanding of natural language• Natural Language Processing, NLP• Experimental science

• Quantitative drama analysis– Today: Analysis of figure speech

AnnotationAuto-matisation

Evaluation

Quantitative Linguistics• Zipf’s Law (y = 1/x)

– Few frequent words– (Infinitely) many rare words

• Frequent words– Determiner (the, a, …)– Prepositions (in, on, of, …)– Conjunctions (and, but, ...) 0

10000

20000

30000

40000

50000

60000

1 7 13 19 25 31 37 43 49 55 61 67 73 79 85 91 97

Types and Tokens• #Tokens: Number of words in a text• #Types: Number of different words in a text• TTR = #Types/#Tokens• Measures the richness of the vocabulary

– “X % of the words are new words”• Longer texts -> lower TTR

– Normalization over n=100, 1000, … tokens

How to Find Interesting Words?• Removal of function words (“stop words”)

– No clear definition– Depends on text(genre) and goal

• Absolute frequencies fa– “Freund”Figure Abs. Freq.Julietta 3Romeo 7Capulet 5

How to Find Interesting Words?• Relative frequencies

– Normalization with the text length fr = fa/n

• Words and Content– Talking about a topic requires use of topical words– If certain words appear, text is about certain topics

Figur Abs. Freq. n frJulietta 3 5745 0.0005 Romeo 7 6021 0.0011Capulet 5 2773 0.0018

Words and Content• Talking about a topic requires the use of topical words• Reversed:If certain words appear in the text, it must be about certain topics

– Interpretation on a birds-eye view– Distant reading

Words and ContentWord fr in Text 1 fr in Text 2bank 0.010 0.010account 0.005 0.001shore 0.001 0.005sand 0 0.009finance 0.011 0… … …

• Words are ambiguous• Words have context• Context words are not random

Semantic Fields

• Semantically related words• Robust identification in texts• Transparent and traceable• Tailored to the text genre and era

Field Examplessand bank bank, shore, river, sand, flow, water, … Familie Mutter, Braut, Anverwandter, Heyrath, heiraten, …Religion Gott, Kirche, evangelisch, Pfaffe, beten, …Ratio Gesetz, Kopf, närrisch, Urteil, Gründe, Pflicht, …Liebe Kuß, Angebetete, begehren, Empfindsamkeit, Engel, Herz, …

Analysing Dramatic Texts• Convert TEI XML variants into unified text format• Collect all utterances by one figure• Language processing

– PoS-Tagging, Lemmatisation, NER• https://github.com/quadrama/DramaNLP

• Beta-Web application for quantitative analyses– http://tinyurl.com/ddrraammaa (v0.1)

The Corpus

Today: Plays from 1746 to 1836 with the Figure-Type Lover (e.g. Romeo and Julia)

Semantic Word fields Religion and Reason in figure speech (in plays from 1746 to 1836)

The Tool1: Overview

The Tool2: Plain Text

The Tool3: Figure Presence Chart

The Tool4: Figure Speech Table

The Tool5: Semantic Fields of Figure Speech

Our Focus today: Figure Speech and four Semantic Fields (Family, Love, Reason, Religion)

ANALYSES & INTERPRETATIONMarcus Willand, Nils Reiter

Shakespeare: Romeo und Julietta (transl. Wieland 1766)

Shakespeare: Romeo und Julietta (transl. Wieland 1766)

• Generic Pattern of the Figure Type Lover?• Why does Julietta speak in Family Semantics and Romeo doesn’t?

Shakespeare: Romeo und Julietta (transl. Wieland 1766)

Shakespeare: Romeo und Julietta (transl. Wieland 1766)

Shakespeare: Romeo und Julietta (transl. Wieland 1766)

In total, Julietta’sparents speak much more than Romeo’s. And they are co-present on stage with Julietta

Shakespeare: Romeo und Julietta (transl. Wieland 1766)

A parent’s pattern?

Shakespeare: Romeo und Julietta (transl. Wieland 1766)

Before Wieland’s Shakespeare Schlegel: Die stumme Schönheit (1747)

Enlightenment‘s concept of marriage:„Wählet eine Person, dazu ihr Zuneigung habt, oder von deren Gegenwart und vertrauten Umgang ihr wenigstens keinen Widerwillen empfindet. Ich verstehe hier unter Zuneigung nichts weiter, als eine solche Gesinnung, vermöge welcher ihr […] lieber […] verehlicht zu seyn, als überhaupt unverheiratet zu leben wünscht“.Johann Bernhard Basedows PractischePhilosophie für alle Stände (1758)

After Wieland’s Shakespeare Domestic Tragedy: Lessing (1772), Schiller (1784), Iffland (1785)

Mixed Characters instead of prototypical lovers?

Gefühlkult vs.Das ausgewogene Mittelmaß der Affekte

Semantic Fields of Figure Speech perfectly depict the transformation of Lessing’s Poetics of Dramatic Figure: From the extremes (Miss Sara Sampson, left) to the average (Emilia Galotti, right)

After Wieland’s Shakespeare Sturm und Drang:Leisewitz (1774), Lenz (1776)

Shakespeare’s influence on the Sturm & Drang plays? Extreme and individual Figure Types (instead of Lessing’s ausgewogenesMittelmaß der Charactere) But: A Domestic Tragedy's Figure Type is still on stage: The Tender Father(der zärtliche Vater).

Thank you