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An Experiment with an Air Pump

Context & Key Facts Quiz

Please write TRUE or FALSE. Do not write T or F, and spell the words correctly or it will be wrong.

1. The plot structure of ‘An Experiment with an Air Pump’ is linear.

2. Shelagh Stephenson was very much influenced by Aristotle’s ideas.

3. Stephenson had many female directors and writers to look up to during her time studying Drama in
Manchester in the 1978.

4. Stephenson’s style of drama was often concerned with social responsibility, women’s autonomy, and
episodic structure.

5. Brechtian Epic Theatre was concerned with making the audience more socially conscious and getting
them to think about important issues by using a lot of non-realism techniques.

6. After the passage of the Anatomy Act of 1832, the only corpses available for medical dissection in
Britain were those of executed criminals, and thus there was a high demand for bodies for use in
educational dissections.

7. There were significant advances in genetics during the late 20 th century, including the cloning of Dolly
the sheep in 1997.

8. Moral issues have only arisen with scientific advancement in the recent 20 th and 21st centuries.

9. The Age of Enlightenment saw an increase in religious passion and a decreased interest in science.

10. The bird in the air pump parallels to Isobel suffocating in a constricted social environment as a
servant who is very intelligent.

11. The air pump experiment parallels how vulnerable people and things (the poor, the mentally
challenged, animals etc.) may be sacrificed for scientific advancement.

12. The play echoes the common belief of how scientific advancement during the 18 th century
Enlightenment illustrated Science separating from Nature.

13. Monopolies, government price-fixing to control food production as a side-effect of Adam Smith’s
Enlightenment economics, and results of industrial revolution caused such riots as seen outside
Fenwick’s house in Scene 1 of the play.

14. Stephenson’s dual time frame asserts the importance of history by illuminating the social concerns of
the present and the future.

15. Intellectual Societies, including philosophical and scientific debating societies (such as the one
Fenwick, Armstrong and Roget belonged to), were viewed as dangerous in how they cultivated
radical thought.