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Running Head: First Female Playwrights

First Female Playwrights

Jakeline Dominguez

University of Texas at El Paso

Dr. Donovan

RSW 1302 Rhetoric & Composition

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First Female Playwrights

Female playwrights are often an overlooked topic in popular culture, finding any

information on them always proves a challenge; there are no movies about them, no

billboards, no songs, no podcasts, and no posters. The most that can be found is usually

performances of their plays and works. And if finding information on female

playwrights as a broad topic isnt difficult enough, finding information on one of the

earliest female playwrights is even harder. Luckily enough can be found to get a good

view into the lives of these women. For example the very first known female playwright

was Hrotsvitha, a nun who lived in 10th century Germany. And the first female

playwright to ever publish a play under her own name was Elizabeth Cary, a passionate

and poet reader from the United Kingdom.

Since there is such little information available about Hrotsvithas plays, this

analysis will cover a poster and a movie about Elizabeth Carys play The Tragedy of

Mariam, Fair Queen of Jewry. Both of these genres main goal is to inform the viewer of

Carys play in two different ways. The movie, The Tragedy of Mariam, Fair Queen of

Jewry by Elizabeth Carey, does so through a demonstration of the play itself. While the

poster, printed by Thomas Creede does so through pure information about the play.

Audience and Purpose

The movie, which is available for free on YouTube, was directed by Elizabeth

Schafer and performed by an undergraduate class of the University of London in

October 1995. (Schafer, 2016) Simply based on the quality and the source of the movie it

can very easily be concluded that it was made as a teaching tool for the university

students. This means that the intended audience of this movie was an undergraduate
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university class and professor who might want to use it as a tool. The purpose of the

movie can be concluded to simple be to bring awareness of the play to the viewer.

The poster is actually a print of the first page from the original print of the play,

on the page it states that it was printed by Thomas Creede in 1613. The main goal of the

poster is to inform the viewer of the new play that had just been published. It doesnt

have much information on the play, mostly only stating the name of the play, the author,

and the publishing information. The main purpose of the poster is also to bring

awareness of the play to the viewer and inform them of its publication. (Creede, 1613)

The target audience for this poster was probably anybody living in the city/country

where the play was published who could afford to buy a copy of the play. In an indirect

way the audience of the poster was the audience for whom Elizabeth Cary wrote the

play, other upper class women from the United Kingdom.

Structure and Delivery

The movie, The Tragedy of Mariam, Fair Queen of Jewry by Elizabeth Carey, is

a recording of a live performance of the play by the same name. It was originally filmed

in 1995 so compared to the modern technology most movies are made with today this

movie has a very bad quality. The actors were not using microphones while being filmed

so it is very difficult to hear them unless the volume is turned up very loud but then the

music of the film can be too loud. The actual footage itself is also very low quality

compared to what most films look like today, the images look blurry and pixelated,

disrupting the clarity of the information being conveyed. (Schafer, 2016) Aside from the

quality this movie is actually put together very well in other aspects. The actors all speak

with dialects and dress very appropriate for the time the play was written; the way that
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the production is presented conveys the information about the play and playwright very

accurately.

The poster is almost the opposite of the movie, the quality of the image is very

good and clear but the information on the poster doesnt actually give many clues about

the play or the playwright aside from the names. (Creede, 2016) From the poster the

only information that could be concluded would be the general time period of the play,

the name and gender of the playwright, the publication year, and the name of the play.

To find out anything else about the playwright the viewer would have to look at another

source of information.

Over all the two genres dont have very many similarities aside from sharing the

same subject. They do, however, have a lot of differences. The poster is purely a visual

medium that is only meant to give direct information about the topic and nothing else;

while the movie can give a deep insight into who the playwright was, what she was

experiencing as she wrote the play, and what her culture was like at the time she wrote

the play. Although the movie can give all of that deep information on who the playwright

was it doesnt provide any technical/detail information, such as exactly when the play

was published or where.

Rhetorical Issues

Both of the genres exhibited different levels of rhetorical issues, one only

touching on two categories and the other covering all three.

Ethos
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At first the quality of the movie can be a bit off putting and affect its own

credibility, but the fact that it is being performed by university students at an official

university London restores the credibility originally lost by the appearance. The fact that

the film was directed by a professor also adds to the credibility because professors can

generally be trusted to give accurate information, the viewer can believe that Professor

Schafers representation of Elizabeth Carys words is relatively accurate.

The poster holds its credibility simply because it is a primary source for the play,

it was published with the play itself during Carys lifetime so it can be assumed that the

information on the poster is accurate. The fact that the poster also has the date and the

name of the publisher also makes it more credible because someone can be held

accountable for the information on it.

Generally both genres are very credible for different reasons but to the same

degree, the poster for being a primary source and the movie for having the back ground

of a trusted university.

Pathos

The movie, just like any live performance, does use emotional appeal to

communicate its message. Emotional appeal was especially used to communicate the

ideas that Elizabeth Cary put into the play. The actors in the movie express the emotions

of the characters well enough for it to actually influence the audience. Within the movie

the use of emotions to portray ideas and information is very strong. In the poster,

however, it is very clear that there was no emotional appeal whatsoever. The colors, font,

and vocabulary used in the poster are very serious and formal, there is nothing about the

poster that suggest they were trying to influence the viewer through emotions.
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Logos

The information in the poster is very reliable because it was published with

the play, it can be assumed that if the information was incorrect Elizabeth Cary would

have tried to get it reprinted with accurate information. The reliability of the

information is based on the fact that the same information has been published several

different times by different people. The movie is also very reliable because it is all

directly from the script written by Elizabeth Cary herself. There is no need to question

the reliability of the information in the movie because it comes from the most reliable

source possible when it comes to this topic.

Conclusion

Overall both genres communicated their information very clearly and efficiently.

The poster could have definitely contained a lot more information than it did but the

information that it did contain was reliable and easy to understand. The movie had a lot

coming directly from Elizabeth Cary herself but it was not necessarily facts and

information like the poster. The first female playwrights might be a commonly

overlooked topic but these genres and more like them can definitely shine more light on

this important topic.

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References

(2016, January 26). Retrieved September 25, 2017, from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOYsjNcG93w

Cary, E. (n.d.). Tragedy of Mariam: The Fair Queen of Jewry (S. J. Wright,

Trans.).

The Tragedie of Mariam, The Faire Queen of Jewry [Photograph]. (1613).

Oxfordshire In T. Creede (Author).