Example of COCOA  Markup

Letter categories (T, A, S, C) indicate the referencing structure of the text. The letters are case sensitive and you can choose which letters you want to use, except that L is reserved for the text line number. The value of each category holds true until another instance of that category is encountered. In COCOA format the reference categories can overlap.

In this example the double round brackets (( and )) surround the stage directions, making it possible to process these separately.

<T Merchant of Venice>
<A 1>
<S 1>
((Enter Antonio, Salerio, and Solanio))
<C Antonio>
In sooth, I know not why I am so sad.
It wearies me, you say it wearies you,
But how I caught it, found it, or came by it,
What stuff 'tis made of, whereof it is born,
I am to learn;
And such a want-wit sadness makes of me
That I have much ado to know myself.
<C Salerio>
Your mind is tossing on the ocean,
There where your argosies with portly sail,
Like signiors and rich burghers on the flood,
Or as it were the pageants of the sea,
Do overpeer the petty traffickers
That curtsy to them, do them reverence,
As they fly by them with their woven wings.
<C Solanio> ((to Antonio))
Believe me, sir, had I such venture forth
The better part of my affections would
Be with my hopes abroad. I should be still
Plucking the grass to know where sits the wind,
Peering in maps for ports and piers and roads,
And every object that might make me fear
Misfortune to my ventures out of doubt
Would make me sad.
<C Salerio>
My wind cooling my broth
Would blow me to an ague when I thought
What harm a wind too great might do at sea.
I should not see the sandy hour-glass run
But I should think of shallows and of flats,
And see my wealthy Andrew, decks in sand,
Vailing her hightop lower than her ribs
To kiss her burial. Should I go to church
And see the holy edifice of stone
And not bethink me straight of dangerous rocks
Which, touching but my gentle vessel's side,
Would scatter all her spices on the stream,
Enrobe the roaring waters with my silks,
And, in a word, but even now worth this,
And now worth nothing? Shall I have the thought
To think on this, and shall I lack the thought
That such a thing bechanced would make me sad?
But tell not me. I know Antonio
Is sad to think upon his merchandise.
<C Antonio>
Believe me, no. I thank my fortune for it,
My ventures are not in one bottom trusted,
Nor to one place; nor is my whole estate
Upon the fortune of this present year.
Therefore, my merchandise makes me not sad.
<C Solanio>
Why then, you are in love.
<C Antonio>
Fie, fie.
<C Solanio>
Not in love neither? Then let us say you are sad
Because you are not merry, and 'twere as easy
For you to laugh, and leap, and say you are merry
Because you are not sad. Now, by two-headed Janus,
Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time:
Some that will evermore peep through their eyes
And laugh like parrots at a bagpiper,
And other of such vinegar aspect
That they'll not show their teeth in way of smile
Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable.

Text originally prepared by Susan Hockey for the Micro-OCP Users' Manual, Oxford University Press, 1988.