The HTML Writers Guild

The 'teixlite' DTD: - Plays & Drama

This page looks at how plays may be marked up in TEI.

Specialized elements.

Plays can be marked up using the following specialized elements. The definitions are taken from the official TEIlite tutorial (http://www-tei.uic.edu/orgs/tei/intros/teiu5.html )

<sp>

contains an individual speech in a performance text, or a passage presented as such in a prose or verse text. Attributes include:

who

identifies the speaker of the part by supplying an ID.

<speaker>

contains a special form of heading or label, giving the name of one or more speakers in a performance text or fragment.

<stage>

contains any kind of stage direction within a performance text or fragment. Attributes include:

type

indicates the kind of stage direction. Suggested values include entrance, exit, setting, delivery, etc.

Example

Here is what a few lines from "A Mid-summers Night Dream" might look like marked up in TEI.

<stage type="enterance">Enter HELENA</stage>

<sp>
<speaker who="Hermia">HERMIA</speaker>
<l>God speed fair Helena! whither away?</l>
</sp>

<sp>
<speaker who="Helena">HELENA</speaker>
<l>Call you me fair? that fair again unsay.</l>
<l>Demetrius loves your fair: O happy fair!</l>
<l>Your eyes are lode-stars; and your tongue's sweet air</l>
<l>More tuneable than lark to shepherd's ear,</l>
<l>When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear.</l>
<l>Sickness is catching: O, were favour so,</l>
<l>Yours would I catch, fair Hermia, ere I go;</l>
<l>My ear should catch your voice, my eye your eye,</l>
<l>My tongue should catch your tongue's sweet melody.</l>
<l>Were the world mine, Demetrius being bated,</l>
<l>The rest I'd give to be to you translated.</l>
<l>O, teach me how you look, and with what art</l>
<l>You sway the motion of Demetrius' heart.</l>
</sp>

<sp>
<speaker who="Hermia">HERMIA</speaker>
<l>I frown upon him, yet he loves me still.</l>
</sp>

<sp>
<speaker who="Helena">HELENA</speaker>
<l>O that your frowns would teach my smiles such skill!</l>
</sp>

<sp>
<speaker who="Hermia">HERMIA</speaker>
<l>I give him curses, yet he gives me love.</l>
</sp>

<sp>
<speaker who="Helena">HELENA</speaker>
<l>O that my prayers could such affection move!</l>
</sp>

<sp>
<speaker who="Hermia">HERMIA</speaker>
<l>The more I hate, the more he follows me.</l>
</sp>

<sp>
<speaker who="Helena">HELENA</speaker>
<l>The more I love, the more he hateth me.</l>
</sp>

<sp>
<speaker who="Hermia">HERMIA</speaker>
<l>His folly, Helena, is no fault of mine.</l>
</sp>

<sp>
<speaker who="Helena">HELENA</speaker>
<l>None, but your beauty: would that fault were mine!</l>
</sp>

<sp>
<speaker who="Hermia">HERMIA</speaker>
<l>Take comfort: he no more shall see my face;</l>
<l>Lysander and myself will fly this place.</l>
<l>Before the time I did Lysander see,</l>
<l>Seem'd Athens as a paradise to me:</l>
<l>O, then, what graces in my love do dwell,</l>
<l>That he hath turn'd a heaven unto a hell!</l>
</sp>

The next few pages look at how an actual book is marked up in TEI.