In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

• Measuring Protagonism in Early Modern European Theatre: A Distant Reading of the Character of Sophonisba
• David J. Amelang (bio)

Introduction

Any person taking their first steps into the wide and complex world of early modern comparative theatre history immediately confronts one basic fact: that during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Europe was divided into territories that allowed women to act professionally and territories that banned them from doing so. In the commercial theatres of Shakespeare’s England, most famously, adolescent boys were charged with performing all female roles, whereas at exactly the same time in countries such as Italy, France, and Spain actresses were considered the stars of their industries. This division was not sculpted in stone, with some nations wavering back and forth on how to handle what authorities broadly perceived as a choice between the lesser of two evils: having either women or young cross-dressed men commanding attention on the nation’s public stages. Needless to say, depending on which laws and customs were in effect, dramatists had to adapt and adjust the way they wrote plays to the realities—and limitations—of their cultures of performance. It stands to reason that it would have been quite different to create a role for a young boy who was just getting started in the business of playing than for an established celebrity actress who was broadly seen as the main attraction in the eyes of the theatregoing public. [End Page 367]

Unable to shake this thought, I quickly became fixated with trying to identify and trace the different factors that influenced the prominence of female roles in the plays of early modern Europe. Fall 2021 saw the online release of Rolecall (http://www.rolecall.eu), an open-access database which I developed as a way of charting the plays and characters of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European theatre. Its original purpose was to encourage scholars and students of Renaissance and Baroque theatre comparatively to explore the constellations of characters in early modern Europe’s dramatic corpora, with a particular focus on their gender dynamics. Did the presence or absence of actresses in one or another country affect the type of female characters their dramatic traditions ended up featuring? Did plays written by female playwrights feature lengthier female roles than those of their male counterparts? Is there a considerable difference between the number of female leads in the plays written for the Globe-like amphitheatres of suburban London, in which all female playgoers had to be accompanied by a male chaperone, as opposed to the elite indoor playhouses of the City that allowed for more women in the audience? These are the initial questions this Digital Humanities project was designed to answer.

The first and current iteration of the online platform offers a breakdown of the characters in each dramatic text, presented as either male or female (according to how the original text identifies them), and organized according to the length of each part. As the first stage of the project comes to a close, and after having analyzed approximately 2,800 plays from seven different countries (England, France, Germany Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain), the intention now is to take another step and broaden Rolecall further into a digital venture with the capability to offer greater nuance and understanding. That is, beyond expanding the corpus to include more dramatists from different countries and periods, there is a plan underway to reframe our theoretical infrastructure so as to allow for a more adequate representation of the broader complexities of the gender spectrum. ¹ Furthermore, the intention is to expand our range of measurements beyond role length to include other possible barometers of protagonism. With this latter purpose in mind, this article offers an early glimpse into the development of a selection of quantitative instruments designed to encapsulate a broader range of ways in which a dramatic [End Page 368] character can be deemed a protagonist in an early modern play. The first half of the study outlines the function and functionality of the indicators of dramatic protagonism being considered; the second presents a case study that surveys eleven plays written during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries which...

中文翻译：

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衡量早期现代欧洲戏剧中的主角：对索福尼斯巴这个人物的远读


以下是内容的简短摘录，以代替摘要：

• 
  衡量早期现代欧洲戏剧中的主角：对索福尼斯巴这个人物的远读
•  大卫·J·阿梅朗（简介）

 介绍

任何一个踏入早期现代比较戏剧史广阔而复杂的世界的人都会立即面对一个基本事实：在十六世纪和十七世纪，欧洲被分为允许妇女从事专业表演的地区和禁止妇女从事职业表演的地区。这样做。在莎士比亚时代的英国商业剧院中，最著名的是，青春期男孩被要求扮演所有女性角色，而与此同时，在意大利、法国和西班牙等国家，女演员被视为各自行业的明星。这种划分并不是一成不变的，一些国家在如何处理当局普遍认为的两害相权取其轻的问题上摇摆不定：让女性或年轻的异装男性在国家公共舞台上引起注意。不用说，根据现行的法律和习俗，戏剧家必须根据其表演文化的现实和局限性来调整他们的戏剧创作方式。理所当然地，为一个刚刚开始演艺生涯的小男孩创造一个角色，与为一个被广泛视为戏剧公众眼中的主要吸引力的知名女演员创造一个角色是完全不同的。 。 [完第367页]

由于无法摆脱这个想法，我很快就专注于试图识别和追踪影响早期现代欧洲戏剧中女性角色突出地位的不同因素。 2021 年秋季， Rolecall (http://www.rolecall.eu) 在线发布，这是我开发的一个开放访问数据库，用于绘制 16 世纪和 17 世纪欧洲戏剧的戏剧和角色图表。其最初目的是鼓励文艺复兴和巴洛克戏剧的学者和学生探索现代早期欧洲戏剧语料库中的人物群，特别关注他们的性别动态。一个或另一个国家女演员的存在或缺席是否会影响其戏剧传统最终呈现的女性角色类型？女剧作家创作的戏剧中的女性角色是否比男剧作家的角色更长？为伦敦郊区的环球剧场编写的戏剧中，女主角的数量是否存在相当大的差异，在这些剧场中，所有女性观众都必须有一名男性监护人陪同，这与伦敦市中心的精英室内剧场不同。允许更多女性观众吗？这些是这个数字人文项目旨在回答的最初问题。

该在线平台的第一个也是当前的迭代提供了每个戏剧文本中的角色的详细信息，以男性或女性的形式呈现（根据原始文本如何识别它们），并根据每个部分的长度进行组织。随着该项目的第一阶段接近尾声，在分析了来自七个不同国家（英国、法国、德国、意大利、荷兰、葡萄牙和西班牙）的约 2,800 部戏剧后，现在的目的是再迈出一步，扩大影响范围。 Rolecall进一步进入数字化企业，能够提供更细微的差别和理解。也就是说，除了扩大语料库以包含更多来自不同国家和时期的剧作家之外，我们还正在制定一项计划来重新构建我们的理论基础设施，以便更充分地代表更广泛的复杂性性别谱。 ¹此外，我们的目的是将我们的测量范围扩大到角色长度之外，以包括其他可能的主角晴雨表。考虑到后一个目的，本文提供了对一系列定量工具的发展的初步了解，这些工具旨在概括更广泛的方式，使戏剧性的[结束第368页]角色可以被视为早期现代戏剧中的主角。 。研究的前半部分概述了正在考虑的戏剧主角指标的功能和作用；第二个部分提出了一个案例研究，调查了十六世纪和十七世纪创作的十一部戏剧……