How Does Linguistic Complexity in Shakespeare’s Plays Relate to the Production History of a Commercial American Theater?

Abstract

Sweller’s Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) prompted educators to analyze the cognitive load they are placing upon their students. A Shakespearean play as performed commercially for modern audiences may be classified as entertainment, but in terms of CLT, the spoken words and actions on stage may be classified as signals, and are therefore subject to analysis. This paper uses a tool to quantify the linguistic complexity (LC) of the spoken text of each play in the Shakespeare Corpus along four dimensions: average syllables per word, average words per sentence, percentage of complex words, and percentage of words not found in a standard dictionary. The plays were ranked from lowest LC score to highest. Then these rankings were compared with the ranked production frequency of a commercial Shakespearean theater, whose mission facilitates a modern audience experiencing the play as Shakespeare originally intended. Results indicate that the plays offered with the highest frequency over the theater’s history were also among the least complex of Shakespeare’s plays. Therefore, there appears to be a relationship between linguistic complexity in the text of Shakespeare’s plays and the commercial viability of offering those plays to a paying audience. As the linguistic complexity of a performed play affects the cognitive load on audience members, it is reasonable that plays with the lowest linguistic complexity will be chosen for production more often than their higher linguistic complexity counterparts for a theater that seeks to successfully entertain patrons and keep them coming back.