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.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Barabasi, A.-L., R. Albert, and H. Jong 2000 Scale-Free Characteristics of Random Networks: The Topology of the World-Wide Web. Physica A 281:69–77.
Bate, J. 1997 The Genius of Shakespeare. London: Macmillan.
Bernard, H. R., P. D. Killworth, M. J. Evans, C. McCarty, and G. A. Shelley 1988 Studying Social Relations Cross-Culturally. Ethnology 27:155–179.
Birdsell, J. B. 1968 Some Predictions for the Pleistocene Based on Equilibrium Systems among Recent Hunter-gatherers. In Man the Hunter. I. DeVore, ed. Pp. 229–240. New York: Aldine.
Broder, A. 2000 Graph Structure in the Web. Computer Networks 33:309–320.
Carroll, J. 1995 Evolution and Literary Theory. Columbia: University of Missouri Press.
1999 The Deep Structure of Literary Representations. Evolution and Human Behavior 20:159–173.
Dissenyake, E. 1992 Homo aestheticus: Where Art Comes From and Why. New York: The Free Press.
Dunbar, R. I. M. 1993 Coevolution of Neocortical Size, Group Size and Language in Humans. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16:681–735.
Dunbar, R. I. M., N. Duncan, and D. Nettle 1994 Size and Structure of Freely Forming Conversational Groups. Human Nature 6: 67–78.
Dunne, J. A., R. J. Williams, and N. D. Martinez 2002 Food-Web Structure and Network Theory: The Role of Connectance and Size. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 99:12917–12922.
Graesser, A. C., C. Bowers, B. Olde, K. White, and N. K. Person 1999 Who Knows What? Propagation of Knowledge among Agents in a Literary Storyworld. Poetics 26:143–175.
Hill, R. A., and R. I. M. Dunbar 2003 Social Network Size in Humans. Human Nature 14:53–72.
Hutton, J., ed. 1982 Aristotle’s Poetics. New York: Norton.
Kott, J. 1974 Shakespeare our Contemporary. New York: Norton.
Layton, R. 1986 Political and Territorial Structures among Hunter-gatherers. Man 21:18–33.
Liljeros, F., R. Christopher, C. R. Edling, L. A. Nunes Amaral, H. Eugen Stanley, and Y. Aberg 2001 The Web of Human Sexual Contacts. Nature 411:907–908.
Montoya, J. M., and R. V. Sole 2002 Small World Patterns in Food Webs. Journal of Theoretical Biology 214:405–412.
Newman, M. E. J. 2001 The Structure of Scientific Collaboration Networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 98:404–409.
Riches, D. 1995 Hunter-gatherer Structural Transformations. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 4:679–701.
Storey, R. 1995 Mimesis and the Human Animal. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press.
Strogatz, S. H. 2001 Exploring Complex Networks. Nature 410:268–276.
Watts, D. J. 1999 Small Worlds. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Williams, R. J., E. L. Berlow, J. A. Dunne, A.-L. Barabasi, and N. D. Martinez 2002 Two Degrees of Separation in Complex Food Webs. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 99:12913–12916.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
James Stiller has an M.Sc. in evolutionary psychology from the University of Liverpool. He is currently studying for a Ph.D. in psychology at the University of Gloucestershire, where he is conducting research into the perception of social patterns.
Daniel Nettle is a lecturer in biological psychology at the Open University. His research interests include the evolution of language and culture, evolutionary psychology, and individual differences.
Robin Dunbar (B.A., Ph.D.) is British Academy Research Professor and a professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of Liverpool. His research interests span mammalian behavioral ecology, including humans; cognitive mechanisms; and Darwinian psychology.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Stiller, J., Nettle, D. & Dunbar, R.I.M. The small world of shakespeare’s plays. Hum Nat 14, 397–408 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-003-1013-1
Received:
Revised:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-003-1013-1