The Spreadsheets
William on Web's spreadsheet analyses of Shakespeare's plays are each one a comprehensive, automated MS-Office 2003 Excel file usable on both Mac and PC computers. They're a unique resource to any companies producing Shakespeare — groups ranging from schools, colleges and amateur clubs to regional theatres, major summer festivals and national theatre companies with multiple plays in rep on several stages.
The examples that follow are for convenience from Romeo and Juliet. Click the images to open a full-scale pop-up image of the spreadsheets.
Each spreadsheet starts with a French scene analysis in section one — one row for every start or end of scene, and for every entrance or exit of any character. Each row shows the stage direction and text line, identifies its speaker and gives the Act, Scene and our unit, French scene, page and line numbers.
There's a column for every role named or implied in the script "Enter the Prince, attended" is taken to include the Prince of Verona, "PRI", and to imply non-speaking, lower-case 1st Attendant "at1" and More attendants "at+". This can significantly enlarge the cast list: R&J actually has 47(!) named and implied characters and three dummy spacer columns. Each column shows the character role name and abbreviating symbol, the actor currently assigned, role "status" (leads, non-speaking), actor and role genders (possible and intended), casting restrictions and group membership (Montagues, Capulets). Several characters can readily be assigned to one actor, to fit your company size and budget.
In the main grid of the cells where these rows and columns intersect, there's definition of the character's involvement in the relevant scene. If the character has lines to speak, the cell contains the number of lines, and its background is coloured from pale yellow to bright red to emphasize the role's importance to the scene. If the role has no lines to speak, symbols may represent fighting, dancing, hiding, sleeping, playing or being dead, and the very probability or possibility of being on stage — Benvolio would certainly hear the Prince's final speech, but servant Peter by then is likely in a Watchman's costume.
Altogether, this first section represents a mass of detail, all necessary to the analysis but a bit overwhelming. The second section of Rehearsal Units reduces the French scenes into practical groupings linked to the script. Five French scenes where, say, Juliet and her Mum are twice momentarily interrupted by a servant, are grouped as one Unit with a title — usually a quote, but you can change it — chosen to characterize the action taking place.
The third section further reduces the analysis to the traditional Scenes; at the foot there's reductions by Acts and of the whole play. These last are coarse sieves but do almost shout things like "Romeo doesn't appear in Act IV".
Multi-role Casting in section four has, in its most useful configurations sorted by role size or its inverse, a table modeled on those triangular map mileage charts where, going by row and column between two cities one finds the distance between them. In this variation, there's a row and a column for each character, and the cell aligned with both is used to display the result of the casting analysis module.
Pressing the casting analysis button opens a form offering various ways of detecting problems such as characters in the same, adjacent or nearby scenes; roles too prominent to multi-cast; roles in enemy or allied groups, and incompatibilities of role and actor gender. Completion of the form triggers an analysis which fills the table with colour-coded levels of detected clashes to advise you.
The Audit Page in section five is used by the system to cross-check the line-counts by row and by column and to display a few system parameters. I wish it was at the bottom of the file, but with only weeks to go before launch I ain't gonna move it now!
The Control Page in section six is the dashboard of the system, with the Sort and Format Control buttons driving the system automation. The sorts offered include role size order and its inverse, Dramatis Personae order, alphabetical order of role or actor name, and order of first appearance in the play, in each Act and in each Part — or audience "act" — as divided by the movable interval(s). The formats offered are ways of selecting, hiding or revealing rows or columns of data or entire sections, in layouts suitable for three-hole binders or margin-less wall posters. They include displays of just Acts I through V, just Parts 1 through 3, just Romeo scenes or just Johnny Ascast scenes in his three roles. As the spreadsheet is very large (I work on a triple-19" screen configuration and wish you the widest you can acquire), column control buttons hide or reveal the main grid, speech/direction, audit and redundant numbering columns. Here too are the self-healing user-controlled sort order fields where you may alter our sorts or improvise your own.
The most valuable tool in the whole system is the Select and Reveal utility, which presents a form with an Actor or Role option, offering to include scenes with (say) Romeo, Juliet, and/or Nurse but exclude scenes with Lord and/or Lady Capulet (maybe he's got a migraine and she's at the dentist).
The Actor NameSet page in section seven is a set of six alternate sets of actor names, with the control buttons to substitute and restore your casting combinations — you may want to compare different versions, you may have differing home-stage and touring casts. We offer at least one multi-role casting possibility and hope soon to include a 25-member reduced cast version here as well.
Read about WoW Play Scripts >>
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