Questions for a study of a dramatic text

Think about these questions and support your answers with evidence from the playtext.
Read all the questions first, as they are often interrelated.

Intrinsic elements of drama

Action, structure

• What  conflicts or tensions do you find in the play?
• What is the central conflict of the play? How is it resolved?
• Is the action or story presenting a conflict or struggle against nature, another person, society, destiny, against other elements within the individual, or a combination of these?
• How are the conflicts motivated (adequately, arbitrarily, in a contrived way)? Are the causes of the conflicts intentional?
• Are the motivations persuasively or convincingly presented? How motivated / likely / justified do you find the events succeeding one another in the play?
• Is the action or story of the play (the abstract succession of events in their chronological sequence) different from the actual plot (arrangement and presentation if events in the text)?
• Is the main drive of the plot based on action, character, thought or thesis?
• Is it a single-plot or a multiple-plot play?
• If it is a multiple-plot play, what different plots does it show? What is the relationship among them in terms of dramatic importance?
• How are the different plots interrelated in terms of content?
• What is the dramatic function of the sub-plot(s), what do they contribute to the structure and meaning of the play?

• Is the play using recurrent type-scenes or situations (judgement, triumph, siege, council, deathbed, farewell, wooing, conversion or ‘talking-over’-scenes)?

Structure (development of the dramatic conflict)

• At what points in the play do you identify the exposition, complication and resolution stages of the action?
• What is (are) the climatic moment(s) of the play?
• In what moments does the play use dramatic irony? what is their function?

Space (setting) and time

• What are the time and place of the play?
• How are the events organized in terms of space? What location does each scene have? Is the space outdoors or indoors, public or private?
• How important is the setting and location of the action? Could the play be equally located in another place and time?
• How are the events organized into temporal sequences? How do these sequences compose an overall time structure?
• How much text time (how many lines) is devoted to temporal sequences?
• What rhythms are created by the contrast between of story time and text time?
• Does the play follow the classical unities?

Content, theme(s)

• How would you express in one sentence what the play is ultimately about (its theme or themes)?
• Are there any secondary themes or issues? How are they related to the main theme?
• Is the play using topoi or common places? (contempt for the world, the world upside down; appearance and reality; all the world is a stage; Carpe diem; tempus fugit)
• What opposite elements or ideas can provide a structure to the play?
• Does the title reveal anything about the play? Would you give it another title?

• What moral questions does the play raise?

Social issues

• What social organization does the play show? How is it related to the theme(s) of the play?
• What contemporary social, political, ideological issues are present in the play?

Atmosphere, tone

• What dominant mood or feeling does the play convey?
• Are there atmospheres, are there shifts in tone and mood? Where? Why?
• Is the atmosphere created by the tone or attitude, diction, setting, plot,

Mode

• - What conventions in subject matter, theme, tone, values, attitude does the play combine as expressed in a specific mode (comic, tragic, elegiac, satiric, heroic)?

Genre

• What is (are) the genre(s) of the play? (= comedy, tragedy, farce, melodrama, tragicomedy; satirical comedy, romantic comedy, intrigue comedy, citizen or city comedy, comedy of manners; revenge tragedy, horror tragedy; Aristophanic comedy (Old Comedy vs. New Comedy), Plautian comedy, Senecan tragedy, Shakespearian comedy, Shakespearian tragedy, Shavian comedy)
• What conventions (in terms of subject matter, tone, formal structure, size, occasion, style) does the play use that lead you to judge it as a specific genre (or genres)?
• Is the generic classification important, controversial?

Characters

• Who is the protagonist of the play? What kind of person is he or she?
• What character speaks most lines?
• Is the antagonist a character, a social force, an environment?
• Are the main characters round of flat? Static or dynamic?

• Any type characters of stock characters? (the braggart soldier [miles gloriosus], the witty servant, the miser, the lecherous old man, the wrathful old man [senex iratus], the wise old man, the fool or buffoon, the clown, the vice or devil, the parasite, the femme fatale, the shrew, the nurse, the fop, the trickster, the rake; )
• To what do secondary characters contribute? Do they give background information, constitute a 'foil' to the main character, do they oppose, criticize, parallel the main characters? do they help develop the main characters
• What actantial roles do the characters play?
• Can the role be doubled, and how?

Language, style

• How would you define the play's overall style: highly or barely rhetorical, bombastic, patterned, conversational, self-conscious, close to or far from ordinary speech, close to or far from narrative poetry or operatic speech, ...?
• Are there linguistic or stylistic variations throughout the play?
• Is decorum being observed?
• How do stylistic variations contribute to the structure of the play? Do they indicate social class, gender or occupation?
• Are characters speaking in different styles?
• How does language contribute to characterization?
• How does language contribute to the tone and atmosphere of the play or of moments in the play?

Dialogue

• Are there specific dialogue patterns used: stychomythia, quick exchange of short speech turns, set speech (monologue, soliloquy)?
• What is the function of the set speech being used (expression of emotions [lament, threat, vow of vengeance, deathbed-speech], a character’s self-introduction, inner reflection, accusation, description, narration of past events, planning of future events, judgement, resolution, review of the situation, exhortation, accusation, appeasement, wooing, petition, invocation, counsel, panegyric, greeting, challenge, triumph)?
• How do characters address each other? Do forms of address reveal something about social class or power relationships between the speakers?
• Do the characters’s speech turns involve explicit information, or do they rely on implicit meanings?
• Are the interlocutors being relevant, ambiguous, too or less informative than expected?
• What do these politness strategies reveal about power relationships?

Stage directions

• What information do the stage directions bear? Are they used to describe setting, characterization?
• Does the text use the “aside” convention? “eavesdropping?

Verse / prose

• If the play uses verse, what versification patterns is it using? What do these versification forms mean, what values do they convey?
• What are the prose segments of the play used for (characters of lower social rank; intimate, informal, humorous or less tense episode)?
• What are the verse segments of the play used for (moments of great tension or emotional impact; solemn or ceremonial situations?
• What do the shifts from verse to prose or vice versa indicate?
• What use and proportion of verse and prose does the play show?
• Do these proportional figures relate to the structure, theme(s) of the play?

Rhetoric

• What rhetorical devices does the text use? For what purpose?
• Is there any rhetorical device that is recurrent? Why?

Images

• What are the main images used in the play? Are there any patterns of images? Are the images common, 'ready-made'? Do they seem artificial, or spring naturally from the speaker and character? Do they express commonplace truisms or unique experiences?
• What is the function of the images: decorative purpose, intensify the expression or the inward experience, present general thoughts in a more condensed form, characterize, create atmosphere, mood? Are specific images associated with one element (character, place) in contrast to other elements?
• Do images seem as if they were 'inserted', as if they could easily be removed (usually images with no organic relation to the context are comparisons using as or like? Are they single metaphors with suggestive and evocative force?
• How related to the situation are the images? Are images made to fit the character of their speaker or are they inappropriate? Do they materialize the potential meaning of the situation or scene?
• Do they point beyond their immediate situation? Do they contribute to the disclosure and preparation of the action?
• Do they have a place in the dramatic structure? Do they represent the play's leading motifs? Do they set up expectations in the audience and create dramatic tension? Do they help connect the scenes? Do they symbolically express correspondences and interrelations underlying the action of the meaning of the play?

Stage conventions

• Is the mode of presentation realistic or non-illusionistic?
• What costumes and make-up, hairstyle do the play call for? What’s their meaning or function?
• What props are necessary for the play? What is their function? Do they have any symbolic meaning?
• What is stage scenery or decor(s) does the play call for? Why?
• What use of lighting does the play need?
• What sound effects or music does the play call for? At what specific moments? Why?
• Are there any metatheatrical references?
• Does the playtext indicate movement of characters on the stage (upstage, downstage, left, right)?
• Does the playtext indicate grouping of characters on the stage? spatial distinction between characters?

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The play in historical context

in relation to author(s), other works, historical circumstances,

Biographical context

• Is there anything in author’s life (experience, emotional or spiritual state, ideas, beliefs, vaues, tastes) that is relevant to the play?
• How was the author socially related to her or his audience? "Was s/he in some way dependent or independent?
  Did s/he make a living from this, or was it a private activity? Did s/he require or hire others to produce and distribute it?" (Pope, English Studies)
  
  

Literary and theatrical context:

Sources, analogues, and influences

• What changes from its sources do you find in the play? Why were they made? How these changes contribute to the shape and meaning of the play?

Genre

• How is the choice of genre(s) related to the genre of contemporary plays? Was the play proposing generic innovations, following genres in vogue?
• Was the choice of genre motivated by ideological, institutional, commercial, literary, personal purposes?

Stage conventions

• Bearing in mind the physical playing space in which the play was first performed, what specific stage conventions does the play use (in relation to scenery, movements on the stage, acting style, sound effects, lighting)?

     Conditions of performance

• What institution(s) (private, public) owned or controlled the production of the play? Did their interests and ideology affect the play in any way?
• Was the play also distributed in other 'literary' or 'artistic' modes  (manuscript, print, film; through libraries, bookshops)? What institutions owned or controlled them?

Historical context:

• Consider the general modes of economic production and social organization contemporary to the play (mainly 'slave', 'feudal', 'bourgeois', 'capitalist').
• Does the play reflect or reveal its contemporary social organization? Is the play representing a society before or after that of author's? "Does this make for a more or less critical perspective on the author's present?" (Pope, English Studies)
  
• Are aspects of the social organization presented as dominant? Are others not represented at all, misrepresented, or under-represented? How are they related to the theme(s) of the play?
• Consider  social, political, ideological issues that were 'hot' at that time: are they represented in the play? how?
• Was the play disrupting or confirming social norms at that time?
• Are there competing value systems or ideologies (some appearing as  dominant, others as residual or emergent? Can we perceive any explicit or implicit commitment oof the author to any ideology?
• "What relevance to your own times and society does the work seem to have? For instance, does it help you see your relations to other people and to the rest of the world clearly or differently?" (Pope, English Studies)
  
  

Other critical approaches

Deconstructing the play

Archetypal criticism

Psychological and psychoanalytical approach

Feminist criticism

Postcolonial approach