Outline of Critical/Theoretical reading of A Phoenix Too Frequent

Nathan Ray
Brief Summary of Play (will be much more detailed in the essay)
- A much more sincere take on a bawdy story
- Dotto and Dynamene in tomb of Dynamene’s husband
- They intend to grieve themselves to death
- Tegeus enters and tries to convince the two women to live
- Offers them food and wine
- Dotto accepts and gets drunk
- Dynamene hesitates but eventually eats and drinks too
- Tegeus later exits and notices the body he has been guarding is missing
- Cue group freak out
- Dynamene and Tegeus eventually realize they have been falling in love
- Dynamene saves Tegeus by offering to replace the missing body with the corpse of her
dead husband
- Happily ever after
Explanation of Critical Theories
- Incongruity Theory
o “Comic violation of the expected”
o “moment of freedom in the absurd”
- Superiority Theory
o “Laughing down”
o Seeing comedy in people we consider inferior
- Release Theory
o Laughter is the release of our base desires and energy that we have kept in check
o Aggressive “vital” energy
o What about the release of giving into a love for life and the pleasures of being
alive? Of releasing ourselves from the constraints of duty
Analysis of Play
- Dotto as a conduit for Superiority theory
o We laugh at her, and we laugh WITH her at the two lovers
- Plot twists for incongruity theory
o Use the dead husband to replace the dead body
- Release theory
o Not so much allowing the audience to express their base desires, as evoking
sympathy in the audience by way of the characters giving into the base desire of
love.
 o The audience feels happy because the characters finally allow themselves the
release of love
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