Unit 4: Reading & Writing About Drama

Question # 00115381 Posted By: kimwood Updated on: 10/09/2015 08:32 PM Due on: 11/08/2015
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This essay should be a 500-750 word essay focusing on the plays we have read in Weeks 5 and 6. It is due at the end of Week 6.
This should be a close reading essay, and should use as evidence mostly passages from the play that you discuss. While it is fine to do a little background reading on the history related to the play you're writing on, this should use as evidence mostly passages from the play that you discuss. If you need to bring in historical context at all, do your best to limit the context to "common knowledge" information (information that appears in more than 4 sources, and might have appeared in newspapers at the time, for instance). Try to avoid using ANY outside sources unless you discuss with the instructor first. If you do use sources, make sure to cite them if you quote or paraphrase them, even if you are quoting or paraphrasing common knowledge information.
The essay should be in MLA essay format and should have the student/teacher cover letter as the first page.
See this document for the cover letter questions and final draft checklist, and the sample essay for an example of an MLA formatted essay.
The essay grading rubric can be found here.

Choose 1 of the following topics, and write a thesis-driven essay in response to that topic:
Unrealistic Elements in Reed's The C Above C Above High C: Ishmael Reed's The C Above C Above High C is full of unrealistic elements--inserted scenes, superimposed characters, slide images as backdrops--that can be confusing, especially when one is reading the play. Pick 1 scene that makes use of unrealistic elements, and create an argument about how the use of that element affect the scene. Why do you think Reed made the choice to write the scene using unrealistic elements instead of writing it in a more realistic way? Do unrealistic elements open up specific possibilities that would not be available in a more realistic play?

Classifying The Merchant of Venice: The Merchant of Venice is a troublesome play to classify in the usual Shakespearean categories of comedy, history, or tragedy. Though it ends with several marriages, and therefore matches the usual pattern of a comedy, it also contains some very dark and problematic elements, such as Shylock's essentially forced conversion to Christianity. How do you think that we should view this play? Is it really a comedy? Is there any way to argue that it is a tragedy? Be sure to clearly define your understanding of tragedy and comedy; for some helpful sites, see Comedy and Tragedy by David L. Simpson of DePaul University, and the Comedy and Tragedy pages by Lisa Schnell of the University of Vermont.

Social Issues in Reed's The C Above C Above High C: Reed's play is focused on major social issues of the 50s, not only those pertaining to race, but also those pertaining to sex and gender, and he approaches those issues from some interesting directions. Choose 1 social issue other than race that Reed engages and analyze his presentation of that issue through the particular characters and non-historical encounters that he depicts. Why does he approach the issue using these particular characters and their concerns? Is his approach effective? Make sure that you specifically define the social issue and characters being used, and if necessary, do some historical research on that issue to better inform your view.

Satire in The Importance of Being Earnest: Oscar Wilde is known for his satire, and The Importance of Being Earnest is no exception to Wilde's usual mode of satirical writing. The effect of satire will change, however, depending upon the audience, and one of the fascinating things about this play is that the people Wilde satirizes are also the people he expects to be watching the play. Why does Wilde satirize the viewers who will be buying the tickets? What kind of reaction might he be aiming to evoke in his audience?



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“A

ll the world’s a stage,” wrote Shakespeare, and on that stage we witness the joys and sorrows, the tragedy and comedy, the reality and romance of life. While one traditional purpose of drama is to “suspend your
sense of disbelief” so that you can respond emotionally to what you experience, thinking about and describing drama gives you a far deeper understanding of it. Learning about tragedy, comedy, tragicomedy, melodrama, and
other types of plays will help you understand the conventions of dramatic literature and playwriting, and through this process, help you to not only experience the world of the play, but aid you in understanding why you experience
it the way you do.

THE ELEMENTS OF DRAMA
Tragedy and comedy are the best-known categories of dramatic writing perhaps because they were the first to be defined, and have a long, if somewhat
erratic, tradition. Aristotle, in his Poetics, describes and defines the nature of
tragedy, albeit his view was limited because he based it upon tragedy written
during the “golden age” of Greek drama, and obviously could not foretell the
evolution of the drama through the millennia to follow. But the prolific writings of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides—the three Greek tragedians
whose plays remain extant—provided Aristotle with enough samples to devise a theory of tragic form. For Aristotle, tragedy focused on a hero (male or
female) of noble birth, who, through a misdeed or hamartia, underwent a decline in stature that led to tragic consequences whether in the realm of material prosperity, physical well-being, or moral rectitude, or a combination of
these, as in the case of Oedipus Rex. Even the titles of many Greek tragedies are
the royal personages upon which the plays focus, such as Antigone, Electra,
and Agamemnon.
The development and subsequent action of true tragedy usually derives
from one or more of three possible modes of conflict: an internal conflict that
the protagonist, or main character, must resolve within himself or herself; a
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conflict between a protagonist and an outside antagonist; or one between the
protagonist and the society-at-large. Although the play A Raisin in the Sun by
Lorraine Hansberry might not be classified as a classic tragedy, it embodies all
those conflicts that make tragedy possible. Walter Younger is confronted by
several simultaneous conflicts. He is at odds with his family who have different ideas concerning how to spend his father’s life insurance benefits. He is in
conflict with society-at-large in the guise of Mr. Linder, who offers to buy back
the home in a white neighborhood that the Younger family has just purchased, rather than allow the African-American family to move in. Finally, he
must do battle with his own sense of righteousness and justice, whether to accept the offer that will leave him with enough money to open his liquor store,
and tacitly accept the racist motivation behind it; or keep the newly purchased
house, and struggle to make a decent life for his family. Most drama that has
been acknowledged through history as the finest examples of the playwright’s
art (such plays as A Doll’s House, Oedipus, and Death of a Salesman, as well as
most of the works of Shakespeare) interweave these three elements of conflict.
On the stage today, we rarely see a contemporary tragedy that rigidly conforms to the genre as it was first defined by Aristotle. First of all, few of us
truly would be shocked by flaws in so-called great personages, as we have
come to consider even the loftiest world leaders as human and subject to the
same weaknesses as the rest of us. Tabloids are filled with sordid tales of great
men and women and we have grown to take them for granted. Second, playwrights, beginning in the nineteenth century, have broadened their perspective to focus attention on the conflicts and actions of the lower and middle
classes, not just the mighty and powerful. One might call this the democratization of tragedy, and this inclination has followed the same trends that have occurred in other art forms, for example, painting, poetry, architecture, and so
on. Take for example the very name of the main protagonist in Arthur Miller’s
Death of a Salesman—where “Low-man” suggests his humble status.
Coinciding with the reduction in the stature of characters in tragedy has
come a hybrid form that has come to be known as tragicomedy, that is, works
of drama that combine the tragic and comic together. A Raisin in the Sun combines elements of both tragic and comic form as do David Hwang’s Family Devotions and Susan Glaspell’s Suppressed Desires. While these plays address issues such as intergenerational and intercultural conflict, rancor, jealousy, even
murder, the playwrights have managed to inject moments of humor that add
dimension to human experience.
We do not have a comprehensive theory of comedy from Aristotle (although he planned to write one), but we do have many early extant Greek
comedies by the playwright Aristophanes who poked fun at Greek mores, politics, and society. Perhaps his most famous play is Lysistrata, which satirizes
the absurdity of war as well as the “war between the sexes.” Today, political
satire is alive and well in film and television, and as you probably know, is a
major subject for contemporary stand-up comedians.
The two Roman comic writers whose works are extant are Terence and Plautus. They helped to initiate the type of theater we know as comedy. Influenced

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by the Greeks, Plautus’ plays satirized Roman life, using such devices as
bungling behavior, reversals of expectations, and mistaken identity to keep his
audience laughing. His most famous play, The Menaechmi Twins, was the inspiration for Shakespeare’s first play, The Comedy of Errors. And today we still see the
influence of Roman comedy in such forms as farce and slapstick in the theater
and situation comedies on TV. Terence’s comedies, on the other hand, did not go
for the broad laugh, and just as is true among today’s audiences, his more subtle
comedies and humanistic themes were not as popular as Plautus’, whose work
inspired more belly laughs.
Melodrama is a type of drama which, although derived from tragedy,
stands apart from it because the conflicts that the characters must confront are
contrived or merely clever and the characters are usually less fleshed out than
three-dimensional dramatic characters, and they seem to resolve their conflicts
in interesting, yet concocted ways. While melodrama is not found as much on
the stage today as it was in the nineteenth century, the form is alive and well
in many contemporary action-adventure movies like the Indiana Jones films
and Romancing the Stone, where men and women are saved from disaster in
the nick of time, much as they are in the old cliché of the damsel in distress
who is tied to a railroad track as a speeding train approaches, only to be
whisked away at the last moment by a valiant hero.
With the proliferation of drama portraying the common person, many audience members have become accustomed to associating plays with realistic portraits of life and with rather conventional ways of depicting such portraits, as
though the theater were a place to see a mirror or reproduction of real life. This
couldn’t be further from the truth, however. Many so-called schools and movements of drama have depicted life in unrealistic manners. Playwrights such as
Eugene Ionesco and Samuel Beckett portray a world that is quite unlike the one
with which we are familiar. Plays representing life with an unreal quality include depictions of life as romantic as in Lady Gregory’s The Rising of the Moon;
or absurd as in Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape; or magical as in Langston
Hughes’ Soul Gone Home. Even the contemporary classic Death of a Salesman has
many scenes of unreality, when, for example, Willie’s brother seems to magically appear on stage much in the same way as the ghost appears in Hamlet.

Plot
As in fiction, plot is essential to nearly all drama, in fact, possibly more so than
to other forms of literature. Plot is a skeleton of the action in a play. It is what
happens to characters under the circumstances the playwright has devised.
One reason plot is so important in drama is that since plays are meant to be
performed and seen, an audience will have little tolerance for pauses in the action. In fiction, on the other hand, action may be interwoven with physical description or characters’ thoughts. In drama, what you see is what you get, so to
speak. And it is the playwright, in his or her division of acts and scenes, who
will determine the pauses in the action, whereas a reader is free to stop and
start reading where he or she pleases.

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Writing about Drama

To keep the plot of a drama interesting to its audience, most playwrights
try to maintain a heightened level of action through the development of conflicts and obstacles that occur far more readily and densely than they do in
real life. It is through such conflict that the plot moves forward. And the
greater the stakes involved in these conflicts, the more riveting the play will be
and the more you will care about how the conflict is resolved. Take for example an early scene in A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen. Nora, the protagonist, is
having a discussion with Krogstad, a man from whom she borrowed money
to keep her family intact during a stressful and tenuous period. Krogstad, a
bank clerk, fearing that he will be passed by for a promotion by his superior,
Helmer (Nora’s husband), threatens to blackmail Nora by revealing that she
borrowed money from him without her husband’s knowledge.
KROGSTAD: . . . My sons are growing up; for their sake, I must try to regain
what respectability I can. This job in the bank was the first step on
the ladder. And now your husband wants to kick me off that ladder into the dirt.
NORA:
But my dear Mr. Krogstad, it simply isn’t in my power to help you.
KROGSTAD: You say that because you don’t want to help me. But I have the
means to make you.
NORA:
You don’t mean you’d tell my husband that I owe you money?
KROGSTAD: And if I did?
NORA:
That’ be a filthy trick!

Nora counters that her husband will merely pay back the money that is
owed, which would at first glance seem to defuse Krogstad’s threat. But
Krogstad retaliates and increases the stakes and the conflict by dangling a
damaging secret about Nora’s loan before her. Several lines later, the following exchange occurs:
KROGSTAD: I promised to get you the money in exchange for an I.O.U., which
I drew up.

NORA:
Yes, and which I signed.
KROGSTAD: Exactly. But then I added a few lines naming your father as secuNORA:

rity for the debt. This paragraph was to be signed by your father.
Was to be? He did sign it.







KROGSTAD: Tell me, Mrs. Helmer, do you by any chance remember the date
of your father’s death? The day of the month, I mean.

NORA:
Papa died on the twenty-ninth of September.
KROGSTAD: Quite correct; I took the trouble to confirm it. And that leaves me
with a curious little problem—[Takes a paper.] which I simply cannot solve.
NORA:
Problem? I don’t see—
KROGSTAD: The problem, Mrs. Helmer, is that your father signed this paper
three days after his death.

This building and relaxing and building again of tension is what moves the action of the play forward, giving shape to the plot.

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While the building up of tension in this example is fairly clear, what seems
to be mere conversation in a play often contains the seeds of conflict that will
have an impact on the later action. This is particularly true of more contemporary plays that portray human action in subtler terms. Take for example one of
the many conflicts that beset the Younger family in A Raisin in the Sun—the
conflict between Walter’s ambitions and the caution of his wife, Ruth. It is evident even in this bit of morning banter from Act I:
WALTER:
RUTH:
WALTER:
RUTH:
WALTER:

You know what I was thinking ’bout in the bathroom this morning?
No!
How come you always try to be so pleasant?
What is there to be pleasant ’bout?
You want to know what I was thinking ’bout in the bathroom or
not?
RUTH:
I know what you thinking ’bout.
WALTER: ’Bout what me and Willy Harris was talking about last night.
RUTH:
Willy Harris is a good-for-nothing loudmouth.

We eventually learn that Willy Harris is involving Walter in a scheme to open
up a liquor store, and this has a dramatic impact on Walter’s actions during
the play, initiating a complex series of conflicts between himself and other
members of his family.
While plays rely on rising action that is a result of tensions that in turn are
caused by a conflict or a series of conflicts, this conflict must somehow be resolved or at least relieved in the end. It is unlikely that you would feel satisfied with a plot that left a major conflict unresolved. As in most plays, the climax to the rising action in A Raisin in the Sun occurs near its end. In this
poignant scene, Walter’s internal and external conflicts are resolved in a showdown with Mr. Linder when the latter pays his final visit to purchase back a
house the Younger family has bought in a white neighborhood:
WALTER: Yeah, Well—what I mean is that we come from people who had a
lot of pride. I mean—we are very proud people. And that’s my sister
over there and she’s going to be a doctor—and we are very proud—
LINDER: Well—I am sure that is very nice, but—
WALTER: What I am telling you is that we called you over here to tell you that
we are very proud and that this—Travis, come here. This is my son,
and he makes the sixth generation our family in this country. And
we have all thought about your offer—
LINDER: Well, good . . . good—
WALTER: And we have decided to move into our house because my father—
my father—he earned it for us brick by brick. We don’t want to
make no trouble for nobody or fight no causes, and we will try to be
good neighbors. And that’s all we got to say about that. We don’t
want your money.

The Younger family’s conflict now resolved, the play ends with them bantering happily about their move, their spirits uplifted. As you read a play, keep
in mind the importance of plot and make notes on how the plot develops. To

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learn more about plot, you may also want to predict how the plot unfolds, and
compare your idea with that of the author’s.

Character
Aristotle suggested and playwrights in general follow the rule of thumb that
“character is action.” Another way of thinking about character is to envision
him or her as determined by the choices he or she makes. Take the character of
Iago from Othello. In the character list he is described as “IAGO, Othello’s ensign, a villain.” This does not tell us very much. However, in the first scene of
Othello, we soon find out what kind of person he is. Othello, it appears, has
passed over Iago for promotion to lieutenant. Iago is enraged, for—as far as he
is concerned—he has the greater experience in matters of war than the candidate Othello has demonstrated. He states his feelings to Roderigo this way:
Preferment goes by letter and affection,
And not by old graduation, where each second
Stood heir to th’ first. Now, sir, be judge yourself,
Whether I in any just term am affined
To love the Moor.

During the course of the play, Iago’s character is revealed as he methodically torments Othello until the latter thinks Desdemona, his wife, has been
unfaithful, resulting in the demise of both Othello and his wife. While most of
us would like to take revenge upon a seemingly unfair boss, few of us would
act upon it as Iago does. Understanding the traits that make character interesting is what allowed Shakespeare to appeal to an audience that was made up of
all social classes. So, despite the fact that Shakespeare is renowned for the
quality of his language, it is his talent for developing character that makes him
a good playwright.
This focus on the relationship between action and character should not
give you the impression that a three-dimensional character is fully developed
through his or her actions alone or that it is easy to develop a dramatic character. For a character to behave plausibly throughout a play, the playwright
must have a strong sense of who that character is, how the character looks,
sounds, dresses, thinks, reacts, and so on. Henrik Ibsen, one of the fathers of
modern drama (perhaps because of his ability to create such well-motivated
characters) said this about the people who inhabited his plays:
Before I write down one word, I have to have the character in mind through
and through, and I must penetrate into the last part of his soul—the individual comes before anything else—the stage set, etc. . . .

The most interesting characters in drama tend to be complex ones, and
their actions although seemingly truthful may not necessarily be anticipated
ones. Who would think that the Sergeant in Lady Gregory’s The Rising of the
Moon would let the fugitive go or that Othello would kill his wife or that Willy
Loman, despite his pathetic nature, would kill himself so his family could be

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sustained by his insurance money, or that Oedipus would blind himself? All
these actions are credible, but unexpected. In writing about character, ask
yourself questions. Most likely they are the same sorts of questions the playwright asked as he or she planned to write. Who is this character? What are
the given circumstances of time, place, social class, and situation that he or she
must respond to? How does he or she respond?
Not all characters in plays are so fully developed that you will feel you
know all about them. Many plays are populated by characters who enter the
stage for a small portion of the play. These are often called “secondary characters.” But a talented playwright will have even secondary characters. For
example, Sylvester, Ma Rainey’s nephew in August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s
Black Bottom, is fleshed out, interesting, and a contributing factor in the action of the play, having been endowed with a puerile personality and a noticeable stutter.

Setting
Unlike the movies, where you may be transported from New York to California to Tokyo in the blink of an eye, the settings in plays remain rather static
throughout the action, changing perhaps between acts, if at all. And also unlike movies, which can actually show us all the minutiae of life by directly
filming it, settings in drama often only suggest the places they depict, or, if it
is in the playwright’s vision, even distort them. Still other playwrights may
not consider setting important at all, and their plays are often devoid of any
description as to how the stage should be depicted, leaving it up to you, the
reader or playgoer, to fill in the gaps with your imagination.
Besides revealing time and place through props (furniture, everyday objects, and costuming), setting can also exploit stage lighting and special effects
such as rear-projected film and sound effects to enhance the mood of a play.
Dim lighting might suggest a depressing atmosphere; bright lights, an upbeat
one. Advances in theatrical technology have expanded the possibilities of establishing setting, as they have our expectations of how setting is depicted.
The Greeks relied upon the simplest of means to suggest time and place—for
example, a vertical rectangular box that was painted with a tree on one side,
an architectural column on the other (which would be turned according to
whether the scene was set in the city or the countryside). Contemporary playwrights, on the other hand, have often called for fairly elaborate staging so
that the audience actually sees a fair representation of the place it is meant to
depict. In the end, however, the complexity or lack thereof of a setting is usually up to the vision of the playwright. Notice, for example, the opening setting from the contemporary playwright David Hwang’s Family Devotions.
The sunroom and backyard of a home in Bel Air. Everywhere is glass—glass
roof, glass walls. Upstage of the lanai/sunroom is a patio with a barbecue and
a tennis court. The tennis court leads offstage. As the curtain rises, we see a
single spotlight on an old Chinese face and hear Chinese music or chanting.
Suddenly, the music becomes modern-day funk or rock ‘n’ roll, and the lights

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come up to reveal the set. The face is that of DI-GOU, an older Chinese man
wearing a blue suit and carrying an old suitcase. He is peering into the sunroom from the tennis court, through the glass walls. Behind him, a stream of
black smoke is coming from the barbecue.

Another function of setting that may perform an important role in the life
of a play is its ability to suggest the mood of the environment and/or reveal
aspects of the character’s or characters’ interior emotions. Note Lorraine Hansberry’s use of personification in her description of the Younger household at
the start of A Raisin in the Sun, a description that provides you with an insight
into the emotional tenor of the occupants.
Its furnishings are typical and undistinguished and their primary feature now
is that they have clearly had to accommodate the living of too many people
for too many years—and they are tired. . . . Now the once loved pattern of
the couch upholstery has to fight to show itself from under acres of crocheted
doilies and couch covers . . . but the carpet has fought back by showing its
weariness, with depressing uniformity, elsewhere on its surface.

Thus, the setting mirrors the Younger family’s life circumstances and their
interior lives as well, and at the same time provides an introduction to the
play that may rivet your attention and make you want to read more.
The description of setting that introduces Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman produces a similar effect in providing an analogy between Willy’s home
and its environs and Willy’s state of mind in relationship to his environment.
It is interesting to note that Miller’s original title for the play was “The Inside
of His Head.”
We are aware of towering, angular shapes behind it, surrounding it on all
sides. Only the blue light of the sky falls upon the house and forestage; the
surrounding area shows an angry glow of orange. As more light appears, we
see a solid vault of apartment houses around the small, fragile-seeming home.
An air of the dream clings to the place, a dream rising out of reality.

Staging
Plays are meant to be performed and for audiences to view the performances.
If you’ve ever read a play and then gone to see it performed, you probably became aware of the difference between the two experiences. Seeing a performance of a play is what makes it complete. While you can ascertain certain
things from reading plays that you would be hard pressed to do from a performance, for example, arcane references in the dialogue, subtleties of style,
camouflaged symbols and the like, being present at a performance of a play
adds a dimension to your understanding and appreciation of drama that is
impossible from reading.
In staging a...

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