A Diachronic Study of Rhythm in Shakespeare Performance

Theatre for All

“…The work of Miller and Carter-Ényì (2018) analyzes Shakespearean performance on a larger diachronic scope. Their analysis ultimately points to the changing nature of performances of Shakespearean monologues over time, implementing standard measurements for tempo and timing, while a unique analysis technique for rhythm was used (Miller & Carter-Ényì, 2018).…”

“…The work of Miller and Carter-Ényì (2018) analyzes Shakespearean performance on a larger diachronic scope. Their analysis ultimately points to the changing nature of performances of Shakespearean monologues over time, implementing standard measurements for tempo and timing, while a unique analysis technique for rhythm was used (Miller & Carter-Ényì, 2018). A Normalized Pairwise Variability Index (nPVI) was drawn from elsewhere in the field of linguistics to capture the idiosyncratic nature of rhythm that is otherwise difficult to capture.…”

“…Rhythm approaches speech in a manner that considers both individual phonetic segments and the relationship between adjacent phonetic segments, yielding measurements commenting on the performance of each word and the text as a whole. Based on Miller and Carter-Ényì's (2018) work with Shakespearean monologues, an nPVI was applied alongside a mean and standard deviation, isolating syllables within each individual performance of the texts. Melodyne software 7 has increasingly been used in various applications in linguistics and was leveraged here to segment the performances by syllable (Miller & Carter-Ényì, 2018).…”

“…Based on Miller and Carter-Ényì's (2018) work with Shakespearean monologues, an nPVI was applied alongside a mean and standard deviation, isolating syllables within each individual performance of the texts. Melodyne software 7 has increasingly been used in various applications in linguistics and was leveraged here to segment the performances by syllable (Miller & Carter-Ényì, 2018).…”

“…Display Errors -While all recordings from EFL performers displayed as they should based on the work of Miller and Carter-Ényì, both ESL participants had one or more recording display in a different way 8 . While Miller and Carter-Ényì (2018) make reference to MATLAB software, capable of translating files exported from Melodyne to usable data values, the inaccuracies encountered with Melodyne software 9 made MATLAB ultimately unviable as an analysis solution. While some degree of inaccuracy would be present due to human error as a result of manual analysis, it was decided that this method would likely yield better data.…”