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Structure of a Play

Each theatrical work will have its own structure, which will have to be reproduced using internal <div> as necessary in each case.

Since each file contains a complete work, it won’t be necessary to have a single initial <div> , rather, each section or part that makes up the work will go in its own division.

If the internal divisions of a dramatic work occupy more than 70-100vv it is useful to divide them into shorter sections, so as not to show so much text on a single screen in the web application. We follow the same procedure as described in Structure of an Epic Poem.

If the theatrical work contains a list of the initial characters, a <div> with the attribute @type="personae"is inserted first, which must contain the tag <castList> (cf. the chapter on this).

Then, the necessary <div> tags will be inserted, always identified by the @type that corresponds to each one, in English: prologue, scene, episode, choral, strophe, antistrophe, etc.

Thus, the basic structure of a Greek tragedy would be:

<body>
	<div type="personae" xml:id="grc.personae">
		<head>Τὰ τοῦ δράματος πρόσωπα</head>
		<castlist>
			<castitem>
				<role xml:id="grc.Eteocles">Ἐτεοκλής</role>
			</castitem>
			<castitem>
				<role xml:id="grc.Mensajero">Ἄγγελος</role>
			</castitem>
			… etc …
		</castlist>
	</div>

	<div type="prologue" xml:id="grc.prologue">
		<head>Prólogo (1-77)</head>
		<div xml:id="grc.prologue1">
			<head>1-29</head>
			<sp who="#grc.Eteocles">
				<speaker xml:id="grc.Eteocles.1">Ἐτεοκλής</speaker>
					<p>
						<l n="1">Κάδμου πολῖται, χρὴ λέγειν τὰ καίρια,</l>
						<l n="2">ὅστις φυλάσσει πρᾶγος ἐν πρύμνῃ πόλεως</l>
						… etc …
					</p>
					… etc …
			</sp>
		</div>
		<div xml:id="grc.prologue2">
			… contenidos …
		</div>
		… etc …
	</div>

	<div type="choral" xml:id="grc.choral.1">
		… contenidos …
	</div>

	… resto de <div> del texto –
</body>

Since in dramatic works the text consists of direct speeches by the characters, we need to identify them with a group of specific tags contained in <sp>, to indicate the block of text that a character utters (cf. <sp>).

As in epic texts, a character's speech may be divided into "paragraphs", or their text may be divided into sections in the reference edition. To make these internal divisions, use the tag <p> (cf. <p>).

The text itself may also be in verse, so each verse will go inside the <l> (line), with an @n indicating the number of the verse (cf. <l>).

The example above shows a work written in Greek, so the @xml:id of each section into which we divide the text, whether it is canonical or added to create an entry in the document index, must always have the language prefix "grc". The numbering or nomenclature that we add afterwards will depend on the section in question or the number of the verse where the cut is made. This same structure should be conserved entirely in translations, but replacing the language prefix with the one that corresponds to the translation.

At the beginning of a work, we can also add its title (cf. <head>) or the annotations in our reference editions (cf. <stage>), thus:

<div type="title" xml:id="la.title">
	<head xml:id="la.tit">Phoenissae</head>
	<stage xml:id="la.stage1">Scaena primum prope Thebas in uia, deinde Thebis</stage>
</div>

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