Shakespeare with Three Words

“If”, “and” and “but”: Understanding Shakespeare with Three Words with Michael Witmore

Fun fact: April 23 is Shakespeare’s birthday!

In 1623, two of Shakespeare’s friends published 36 of his plays in a volume that has come to be known as the “First Folio.” Published posthumously, this remarkable book presents Shakespeare’s plays as a collection for the ages, dividing the theatrical works up into three groups: Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies. For anyone interested in computational approaches to literature and text corpora, this single act of classification is a gift. John Heminges and Henry Condell, the men who decided on the groupings, were domain experts: they were fellow actors who knew Shakespeare well. If we take these groupings as an historic ground truth, we find that it is almost trivially easy to reproduce the Folio genre groupings using only a small set of features. In this talk, Michael Witmore will briefly describe how three common words, “if” “and” and “but,” can be used to identify two of the three types of plays, shedding light on the constraints that led Shakespeare to repeat certain patterns in his comedies and histories. The talk will open out onto larger questions about what counts as knowledge in the humanities.” Registration required.

About Michael Witmore

A resident of Longmont since 2024, Michael Witmore is a scholar of Shakespeare and rhetoric, a digital humanist, and former director of a library and cultural institution. He served as the director of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., from 2011 to June 2024, during which the Folger Shakespeare Library conceived and completed an $81.5 million, four-year renovation project. He currently consults on digital preservation and cultural accessibility.