Dramatic Structure and Social Status in Shakespeare’s Plays

Abstract

This article discusses ways that dramatic structure can be analyzed through the use of social titles in Shakespeare’s plays. Freytag’s (1863) pyramid of dramatic structure is based on patterns he found in Shakespearean and Greek tragedy; more recently, computational methods are being employed to model narrative structure at scale. However, there has not yet been a study which discusses whether or not specific lexical items can be indicative of dramatic structure. Using Shakespeare’s plays as an example, this essay fills the gap by observing how social titles can be used to explore the viability of narrative structure.