Journal article
The small world of Shakespeare's plays
- Abstract:
- Drama, at least according to the Aristotelian view, is effective inasmuch as it successfully mirrors real aspects of human behavior. This leads to the hypothesis that successful dramas will portray fictional social networks that have the same properties as those typical of human beings across ages and cultures. We outline a methodology for investigating this hypothesis and use it to examine ten of Shakespeare's plays. The cliques and groups portrayed in the plays correspond closely to those which have been observed in spontaneous human interaction, including in hunter-gatherer societies, and the networks of the plays exhibit "small world" properties of the type which have been observed in many human-made and natural systems.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
Actions
Authors
- Publisher:
- Walter de Gruyter, Inc.
- Journal:
- Human Nature More from this journal
- Volume:
- 14
- Issue:
- 4
- Pages:
- 397-408
- Publication date:
- 2003-12-01
- DOI:
- EISSN:
-
1936-4776
- ISSN:
-
1045-6767
- Language:
-
English
- Keywords:
- Subjects:
- UUID:
-
uuid:bfb6c0e3-201e-48cb-afdc-ae6017691e99
- Local pid:
-
ora:4578
- Deposit date:
-
2010-12-08
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Walter de Gruyter
- Copyright date:
- 2003
- Notes:
- The full-text of this article is not currently available in ORA, but the original publication is available at springerlink.com (which you may be able to access via the publisher copy link on this record page). N.B. Professor Dunbar is now based at the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Oxford.
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