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Huyghebaert Special English

10th Grade

Approaching Drama

What is drama?
“Drama is something intended specifically for performance on stage in front of an audience.”
Usually, drama is written in order to be seen rather than to be read and its meaning can only be fully
appreciated when seen on stage. This makes it a much more public form than prose or poetry, in that
the experience of the play in performance is a shared experience. This essential aspect of drama is
easy to lose sight of when sitting in a classroom, or on your own, grappling with the language of a
drama text.

With this key point in mind, let us consider some aspects of plays that you will need to examine in
the texts that you study. Some of these aspects may be more familiar to you from television or film
productions.

Opening scenes
The way that a play opens is obviously crucial to engaging the audience’s attention and writers can
take many options there depending on the effects that they wish to achieve. In looking at an opening
scene, there are some key questions that are worth asking : “What effect does the writer want this
scene to have on the audience?” and “What purpose does the scene serve in the play as a whole?”.
Here are some possible answers :
- The scene provides an explanation of the situation, background information, and details the
audience needs in order to understand what is going on. This is sometimes called
exposition. An example would be the opening of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, where significant
characters explain the current situation and some important background.
- The scene creates a setting or background against which the play is set, as in William’s A
Streetcar Named Desire.
- The scene creates a mood or creates tension which captures the audience’s attention
immediately (the opening scene of Hamlet is a good example of this).
- The scene introduces characters, situations, and relationships, as in King Lear.
- The scene provokes a sense of intrigue which captures the audience’s attention and makes
them want to know more, as in Macbeth.

Presenting characters
A key element in the impact of a dramatic production is the extent to which the playwright achieves
a convincing sense of character. However, the nature of drama is such that the playwright employs
very different methods of characterization from those employed by a novelist. Novelists can provide
the reader with a much background information as they wish. They can enter the minds of the
characters, let their readers know what characters think, feel, and are planning to do. A playwright
does not have all these options.
Perhaps the most straightforward way in which a playwright can define exactly how he or she
intends a character to appear to the audience is through detailed and explicit stage directions. So it is
important that when you begin to study a play you pay close attention to this information. When
watching the play on stage, of course, you will not be reading stage directions but you will be
seeing them in performance.
Some playwrights give a great deal of information through their descriptions of how characters are
meant to appear (for example, A Streetcar Named Desire).

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Some playwrights provide little or no such direct guidance on how to interpret their characters, but
rely on other methods to convey a sense of character. These include:
- how characters speak (also sometimes embedded in stage directions);
- how characters are described by other characters;
- what the characters say and do;
- how other characters respond to or interact with them.
Most playwrights use a combination of all these methods in order to give a sense of fully developed
characters, although in some cases playwrights deliberately create stereotypical characters in order
to achieve their particular effect.

Asides and soliloquies

To succeed in creating a convincing character, the dramatist needs to give the audience some sence
of deeper, inner thoughts and feeling. Unlike the novelist, however, who can describe these as fully
as desired to the reader,the dramatist has much more limited means at his or her disposal.
Two methods that are often used to provide some insight into characters’ minds are the aside and the
soliloquy. The aside is a kind of “stage whisper”, a behind-the-hand comment. Sometimes, it is
directed to another character but often it is aimed at the audience, or characters “speak to
themselves”. Asides tend to be short, often a single sentence or a single word. They are used by the
playwright to convey small pieces of information concerning the plot or character to the audience
(for example, in Othello).
Soliloquies, too, are also often used by playwrights to convey both information and inward emotion
to the audience. The soliloquy is one key way in which the playwright lets us, the audience, know
what a character is really like. Through a soliloquy characters tell us directly about themselves and
can inform us about a whole range of issues, such as what is in their minds, why they are acting as
they are, and what they intend to do in the future.
Soliloquies are frequently used at some special moment in the play or when a character is
undergoing some kind of emotionally or psychologically heightened experience – for example,
when a character is distressed or suffering some kind of confusion of mind or alternatively when a
character is feeling exultant or wants to work through his or her own thoughts and feeling.
It has often been noted that both the aside and the soliloquy are artificial devices and that in “real
life” people do not go around delivering speeches to themselves. In fact, they are just two of many
conventions that we accept when watching a play which can be termed “dramatic licence”. In the
context of the theatre, we forget their artificiality and accept them quite naturally.

Issues and themes

Complex though the formation and development of characters may be, they are themselves part of a
more complex web that makes up the play as a whole. Within this web the playwright will have
interwoven certain themes and issues. In studying a play, you will need to be able to identify these
and to look at how the playwright explores them through the drama. Such ideas can be presented to
the audience in two key ways. First, we can detect ideas, issues, thoughts, etc. Expressed by the
characters in a play. Secondly, we can detect themes, issues, or ideas that the playwright wants the
play as a whole to project.
Sometimes a playwright will have major characters hold views or follow a philosophy that
ultimately is shown to be counter to the message that the play as a whole conveys. This is often
done to show problems caused by or shortcomings of certain courses of action or philosophies. The
issues that a play might raise can be many and varied but they are almost always presneted via
action cnetring on human relationships and conflicts.

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Plot and structure

Obviously plot is central to most play, although there are certain kinds of play (some of Samuel
Beckett’s, for example) where the very lack of a plot, or at least something that we would ordinarily
recognize as a plot, is essential for the effect. At its simplest the plot is the story of the play – what
actually happens. Having said that, there is much more to plot than a simple “story-line”. The whole
notion of plot and its development is bound up with the way that the play is put together, with its
structure. The creation of an order or pattern needs careful planning and the playwright needs to
consider a number of factors. Generally speaking an effective plot should:
- maintain the interest of the audience from beginning to end;
- move the action on from one episode to the next;
- arouse the interest of the audience in character and situation;
- create high points or moments of crisis at intervals;
- create expectation and surprise.
Usually, the structure of a play follows a basic pattern which consists of a number of identifiable
elements.
1. Exposition: this opens the play and often introduces the main characters and provides
background information.
2. Dramatic incitement: the incident which provides the starting point for the main action of
the play and causes some type of conflict to arise.
3. Complication: this usually forms the main action of the play – the characters respond to the
dramatic incitement and other developments that stem from it.
4. Crisis: the climax of the play.
5. Resolution: this is the final section of the play where things are worked out, conflicts are
resolved, and some kind of conclusion is arrived at.

From English A1 for the IB diploma by E. Druce and H. Tyson – Oxford

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Elizabethan Theatre

Let us watch a short video about theatres in theatres under Queen Elizabeth 1st (1558-1603).
Take some notes.

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How did drama start?

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The Tudors1

The Tudors ruled England from 1485 until 1603 and the death of Elizabeth I. During a span of just
over 100 years, there was religious upheaval, increasing political isolation from the rest of Europe,
circumnavigation of the globe by an English sailor and the first settlers in the New World. Henry
VIII introduced the first Act of Royal Supremacy in 1534 and laid the foundations for a different
style of monarch from his medieval predecessors. The Elizabethan age in particular is celebrated for
its literary, musical and artistic brilliance. It was also a time in which the use of the royal image was
used as a central motif and influence.

Elizabeth I

Henry VIII

Movie : Elizabeth – The Golden Age (2007)

1
From British Library – Learning (www.bl.co.uk/learning)

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Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593)

His life

Let us watch a video and take some notes.

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Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe

Ah Faustus,
Now hast thou but one bare hour to live,
And then thou must be damned perpetually.
...
The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,
The devil will come, and Faustus must be damned.
O I’ll leap up to my God! Who pulls me down?
See, see where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament!
One drop would save my soul, half a drop: ah my Christ—
Ah, rend not my heart for naming of my Christ;
Yet will I call on him—O spare me, Lucifer!
...
Earth, gape! O no, it will not harbor me.
You stars that reigned at my nativity,
Whose influence hath allotted death and hell,
Now draw up Faustus like a foggy mist
Into the entrails of yon laboring cloud,
That when you vomit forth into the air
My limbs may issue from your smoky mouths,
So that my soul may but ascend to heaven.
...
O God, if thou wilt not have mercy on my soul,
...
Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years,
A hundred thousand, and at last be saved.
...
Cursed be the parents that engendered me:
No, Faustus, curse thy self, curse Lucifer,
That hath deprived thee of the joys of heaven.
...
My God, my God, look not so fierce on me!
...
Ugly hell gape not! Come not, Lucifer!
I’ll burn my books—ah, Mephastophilis!
(13.57–113)

Analyse the extract using the `structure´ approached in class.

What can you tell me about Faustus?
Why does this extract illustrate a clash between the medieval values and those of the Renaissance?

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William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Here is Shakespeare's epitaph. Can you translate it into Modern English ?

His life

Let us watch a video about Shakespeare's life. Take some notes.

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The Sonnet

The sonnet style was a very popular literary genre in the 16 th century. The origins of the sonnet are
to be found in Italy (Petrarch wrote the first sonnets). The subject is often the following : the poet is
the miserable victim of an impossible love. A man loves an attractive woman whom he cannot have.

Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets classified from 1 to 126 and from 127 to 154.
The earlier sonnets were addressed to a handsome, gifted, probably wealthy young man. “My lovely
boy”. The latter ones are addressed to a Dark Lady.

Why did Shakespeare write these poems? There are various possibilities.

He needed to get patronage, a rich young man to support him, to give him money for the theatre and
- his subsistence. He used the idea that the man was like a lover and Shakespeare, an inferior type of
person. Shakespeare flattered the ego of the young man. He dedicated the sonnets to somebody
called W.H., the Earl of Southampton;
- The Dark Lady was perhaps his muse of inspiration;
- It was written by sb else who used Shakespeare’s name for publication;
- Shakespeare was perhaps a homosexual. This idea is popular in the US, especially among gay
activists.

Analysis

Read the following sonnets. Analyse them using the structure (checklist) we approached in previous
lessons. To whom are they addressed?

My love is as a fever, longing still

For that which longer nurseth the disease,
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
The uncertain sickly appetite to please.
My reason, the physician to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
Hath left me, and I desperate now approve
Desire is death, which physic did except.
Past cure I am, now reason is past care,
And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;
My thoughts and my discourse as madmen's are,
At random from the truth vainly express'd;
For I have sworn thee fair and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.

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Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste.
Then can I drown an eye unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancelled woe,
And moan th' expense of many a vanished sight.
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoanèd moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored, and sorrows end.

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Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare

(written between 1591 and 1595 - published in 1597)

Shakespeare’s principal source for the plot was The

Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet (1562), a
long narrative poem by the English poet Arthur
Brooke, who had based his poem on a French
translation of a tale by the Italian Matteo Bandello
(written in 1554)2.

It is a tragedy.

Summary of the plot

Let us watch a short video summarizing the story. Take some notes.

2
www.britannica.com

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Themes

Themes
and
Characters

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Extract – Analysis

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