杏吧原创

(Image: Angus Greig)

IT PROMISED to be a . 鈥淢y dream is to understand how Shakespeare moves the brain,鈥� literature professor and psychologist told when they first met. Could Thierry, a neuroscientist, help?

Thierry was initially nervous about braving the sound and fury of Shakespeare scholarship. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a minefield,鈥� he says. But the pair persevered, and joined a small cadre of researchers using quantitative techniques to examine the playwright鈥檚 talents 鈥� be it his vocabulary, subtle wordplay or astute understanding of audience psychology.

Properly controlled statistical analyses have already busted long-standing myths about the Bard. For centuries, scholars had argued that he was fishing from a particularly large word pool compared with his peers. But when at the University of Newcastle in New South Wales, Australia, took into account factors such as the number of plays each writer had produced, he found that Shakespeare鈥檚 vocabulary is no larger than that of his contemporaries Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Middleton and Ben Jonson (). His overall mix of terms is also no more complex than that of his contemporaries, and his rate of coining new words is unremarkable (see diagram).

Cudgel thy brains

So what is the essence of Shakespeare鈥檚 peculiar genius? 鈥淚f I was being a romantic, I would say that one reason for his greatness is that he perfectly captured the way people expect others to speak,鈥� says Craig. Or, as the man himself wrote: 鈥溾��.

It was an idea that motivated Davis and Thierry鈥檚 collaboration. They concentrated on a characteristic feature of Shakespeare鈥檚 style 鈥� his extensive use of 鈥渇unctional shift鈥�, changing the grammatical class of words to fit his purposes. When Iago is convincing Othello of his wife Desdemona鈥檚 infidelity, for example, he tells him 鈥溾��, lasciviously replacing the verb 鈥渒iss鈥� with the noun 鈥渓ip鈥� while using 鈥渨anton鈥�, an adjective, as a noun. 鈥淥ther Elizabethan writers used the device, too, but Shakespeare was addicted to it,鈥� says Thierry.

Thierry was stunned when he saw the tempest this small grammatical twist unleashed in the brain. His EEG and fMRI scans showed that Shakespearean sentences employing functional shift triggered greater activity in areas of the brain normally associated with emotion and autobiographical memory, as well as in the basal ganglia, an area sparked when bilinguals switch between languages (). 鈥淗e was forcing the brain to reason and to function more 鈥� to process information at a deeper level,鈥� says Thierry, who is based at Bangor University in the UK.

鈥淪hakespeare鈥檚 small grammatical twists unleash a tempest in the brain鈥�

Davis, who works at the University of Liverpool just along the coast, was intrigued that the neural activity lingered long after the sentence had finished, and points out that Shakespeare often uses functional shift at a scene鈥檚 turning point. 鈥淚t primes the brain for the 鈥榳ow鈥� moment,鈥� he says. 鈥淚t heightens the drama.鈥�

But it鈥檚 not just the words: Shakespeare鈥檚 stage directions show an acute understanding of the human mind, too. Evolutionary psychologist at the University of Oxford has shown how our real-life social interactions are constrained by keeping track of many people鈥檚 mental states at one time. Only if three people or fewer are present will we gossip about others鈥� thoughts or feelings, seemingly because we can keep track of the reactions of those present while still contemplating the mind of the absent party. With four or more participants, we tend to restrict ourselves to less controversial themes such as the weather. 鈥淵ou need to know if you鈥檙e in like-minded company before you say someone is a complete prat,鈥� explains Dunbar.

In a paper currently under review, Dunbar and his colleague Jaimie Krems at Arizona State University in Tempe have analysed Shakespeare鈥檚 stage directions to show how he constrains his characters鈥� conversations in a similar way. Typically, just two or three people will discuss another character鈥檚 thoughts and feelings 鈥� such as Desdemona鈥檚 fatal affection for Othello鈥檚 lieutenant Cassio 鈥� whereas four or more speakers will talk about more general topics, such as events in a war. 鈥淚t鈥檚 an indication of what a great observer he was,鈥� says Dunbar.

Dunbar suspects other playwrights were less consistent in hitting that sweet spot. New 杏吧原创鈥榮 own back-of-the-envelope analysis of Christopher Marlowe鈥檚 Tamburlaine The Great Part I supports this assertion: just half of the conversations about the feelings of an absent character take place between two or three people, whereas 90 per cent of Shakespeare鈥檚 scenes follow the rule.

A further point of interest is the longer-term chains of understanding Shakespeare builds between different characters. To grasp the plot of As You Like It, for instance, we need to follow that Silvius is in love with Phoebe, who shuns his affections in favour of the cross-dressing Rosalind, who, in turn, is trying to woo Orlando. That takes brain power 鈥� and Dunbar suspects that Shakespeare was particularly good at creating dramas that push us to our limits without overstepping them.

For Dunbar, these musings are the prelude to a three-year project in which he will study the psychology of the theatre. Perhaps such initiatives might bring us closer to Davis鈥檚 goal of understanding how the English-speaking world鈥檚 greatest playwright moves our minds. Certainly he feels his experiments in neuroscience have helped. 鈥淚t鈥檚 offered me a whole new language for thinking about my intuitions and responses to drama,鈥� he says. 鈥淲e literary scholars need to do more experiments that are verifiable and controlled.鈥� Perhaps it is a brave new world of Shakespeare studies.

Read more: 鈥�Shakespeare: Poet, playwright, scientist?鈥�

This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淲ith profits of the mind鈥�