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Sad Stories of the Death of Kings

‘Sad Stories of the Death of Kings’: A Computationally Assisted Approach to Mourning in Shakespeare’s History Plays (research paper)

Ross Deans Kristensen-McLachlan, David Hasberg Zirak-Schmidt

Using an innovative approach to sentiment analysis, a computational method for extracting emotions from a text, we show that emotions associated with mourning (i.e. “grief”, “sorrow”, and “weeping”) are more frequent in Shakespeare’s history plays compared with history plays by other dramatists. Grief, sorrow, and weeping are not emotions traditionally associated with tragedy, which Aristotle famously said arouses “fear and pity” in the spectator. Hence, it is clear that something different is going on in the early modern history play. Following recent work by literary historians, we suggest to read Shakespeare’s history plays as what German literary theorist, Walter Benjamin, has called Trauerspiel, or mourning play. This different conceptual approach opens up for a reevaluation of Shakespeare’s dramatic historiography and the history play as a genre.