1. Home
  2. Important Tags
  3. Spoken Text:

Spoken Text:

Editions of dramatic texts are not only structured on the basis of <div> for each dialogue or choral part, strophes, antistrophes, episodes, etc., but also include the specification of which text is uttered by each of the characters.

To indicate this, the <sp> tag (spoken text) is used, with the following syntax:

<div type="lyric" xml:id="grc.pro.lyr">
	<head>τὰ ἀμοιβαῖα (88-201)</head>
	<sp who="#grc.Serv">
		<speaker>Παιδαγωγός</speaker>
		<p>
			<l n="88">ὦ κλεινὸν οἴκοις Ἀντιγόνη θάλος πατρί,</l>
			<l n="89">ἐπεί σε μήτηρ παρθενῶνας ἐκλιπεῖν</l>
			<l n="90">μεθῆκε μελάθρων ἐς διῆρες ἔσχατον</l>
			<l n="91">στράτευμʼ ἰδεῖν Ἀργεῖον ἱκεσίαισι σαῖς,</l>
			…
		</p>
		…
	</sp>
	<sp who="#grc.An">
		<speaker>Ἀντιγόνη</speaker>
		<p>
			<l n="103">ὄρεγέ νυν ὄρεγε γεραιὰν νέᾳ</l>
			<l n="104">χεῖρʼ ἀπὸ κλιμάκων</l>
			<l n="105">ποδὸς ἴχνος ἐπαντέλλων.</l>
		</p>
	</sp>
	…
</div>

The above example illustrates a dramatic passage, including a lyrical part involving two characters. Each character's speech is enclosed in an <sp>, with its @who attribute indicating the @xml:id we have assigned to the character in the <castList> (cf. Dramatis personae).

The first tag to be included in each <sp> is <speaker>, which will contain the full name of the character(s) who are speaking. The rest of the speech will be structured based on <p> and <l>, according to the reference edition we are following.

How can we help?

en_GBEN