Kesson, Andy, PI; Lucy Munro, co-PI; and Callan Davies, research fellow. Before Shakespeare: The Beginnings of London Commercial Theatre, c. 1565–1595
Bibliographic record
Abstract
So often, "the Renaissance" is reduced synecdochically to Shakespeare: books are more likely to sell if they feature Shakespeare's name in the title, "Shakespeare" classes are more likely to fill than "Renaissance Drama" classes are ("What other, non-canonical Renaissance playwrights' works are worth reading besides Shakespeare?"students may ask), and the cultural capital of Bardolatry in the anglophone world, including general knowledge of the body of work known as "Shakespeare, " still holds tremendous value-for reasons early modern critical race studies (EMCRS) scholars and those whose work embraces the study of gender, sexuality, disability, and intersectional identities invite us to scrutinize, because these works have historically privileged certain groups over others.Such long-standing cultural and socio-political forces encourage the misperception that Renaissance drama-or even early drama in general-began with Shakespeare and can only be understood through a Shakespearean lens.Enter Before Shakespeare.As its name succinctly suggests, this iconoclastic digital resource is dedicated to approaching the early modern theatre on its own terms rather than anachronistically through a since-reified, singlenamed author (which, I acknowledge, might be an ironic statement coming from someone who has worked for years on the editorial team of Shakespeare Quarterly).Focusing on the collaborative nature of theatre and taking an expansive view of performance venues, Before Shakespeare itself incorporates a variety of approaches, ranging "from social history to twenty-first century performance, " to explore and investigate the lively early English theatre scene that predates Shakespeare.Another piece of "received knowledge" that Before Shakespeare debunks is that early modern drama began with the establishment of the "first" Theatre in 1576.Instead, Before Shakespeare encourages a broader view of the timeline and spaces that comprised early theatre.What emerges is a more expansive notion of "theatre" that encompasses earlier venues, such as the Red Lion; spaces like inns, including the Cross Keys and Bel Savage; smaller indoor locations,
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.007 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.046 | 0.015 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".