Medieval Drama

• Liturgical plays, a.k.a. cycle drama

• Morality plays: the individual's struggle with sin

• Everyman (1500)

• cf. Worthen, p. 149-54

Renaissance (or Elizabethan) Drama

• 1535: Church of England

• 1558-1603: Elizabeth I

• 1564-1616: William Shakespeare

• 1567: Red Lion (John Brayne)

• 1572: "Act for the punishment of Vagabonds" prohibits itinerant players, giving rise to the public theater

• 1576: Last cycle performance

• 1581-1602: Population of London doubles

• 1592-94: Plague closes London theaters

• 1593: Lord Chamberlain's Men

• 1598: Performance restricted to Lord Chamberlain's Men and Lord Admiral's Men

• 1600: Hamlet; restriction of public theaters to Globe and Fortune

• 1603-1625: James I

• 1603: King's Men

• 1613: Globe Theatre fire

• 1625-1642: Charles I

• 1623: Shakespeare's plays published by actor friends John Heminges and Henry Condell (First Folio)

Restoration Drama

• 1642: Civil War; England's theaters closed

• 1649: Charles I beheaded

• 1656: The Siege of Rhodes (again1658 and 1659), an opera

• 1653-58: Puritan Cromwell

• 1660: Reopening of theaters (Restoration)

• 1666: London's great fire

• 1677: The Rover

• cf. Worthen 155-70, 270-75
  

Types of Drama

L. 9: Hamlet, I-II

1. Why does Hamlet begin with the exchange of the guards and Marcellus?

2. Why is Act II, scene i (between Laertes and Reynaldo [G. Depardieu]) included?

3. What is meant by the famous line, “Words, words, words” (II.i.190)?

4. How might the discussion of the players (200/II.ii.335) relate to theater in London?

Interpretive Questions:

A. Why does Hamlet not immediately kill Claudius upon vowing revenge for his father’s death?

B. Compare Hamlet to Oedipus, and Hamlet to Oedipus. Is there a more than superficial connection between the two plots and characters? That is, can one justify constructing a psychoanalytic reading from these two examples of dramatic literature?

L. 10--Act III of Hamlet

INTERPRETIVE QUESTIONS

A. How do the characters present themselves as “actors” and “audience”? What meanings might emerge from this way of reading the play? Why might such self-conscious performances be considered dangerous? How might Hamlet be read, as Mel Gussow suggests, “an exceptional actor”?

B. What kind of mother is Gertrude? Colmpare her to Jocasta and Medea. How does the presence of her character contribute to, or even obfuscate, the production of meaning in the play?

Acts IV and V of Hamlet

Content Questions:

1. What happens to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern?

2. How old is Hamlet? (135-140/222)

Does our opinion of him change when we find out?

3. Why isn’t Hamlet king? 3.2.320/208; 4.5.100/216-7; 4.7.15/218; 5.2.65/224

INTERPRETIVE QUESTIONS

1. Why does Ophelia go mad? What is the role of madness in the play?

2. What is Horatio’s role as watcher and witness in the play?

3. Reconstruct Hamlet from another character’s point of view. For ex., how might the play be performed from Gertrude’s point of view? From the ghost’s?

L. 12--Dryden and Act I of The Rover

"Preface to Troilus and Cressida, Containing the Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy" (1679), p. 378

- What is Dryden’s critique of Shakespeare?

- How does he revise Shakespeare?

Interpretive Questions:

1. How does Dryden’s definition of tragedy compare to Aristotle and Sidney’s?

2. On what basis can Dryden consider Shakespeare a ‘masculine’ tragedian?

1. What’s odd about the prologue?

2. What’s the conflict in the beginning of the play?

3. What reasons does Hellena give for defending her sister’s marriage choice? (1.1.110/341; 1.1.145/342; 1.1.130/342)

4. What’s Blunt’s initial thought on women? (1.2.50/343)

5. How does Willmore’s name describe his character? (1.2.90-100/343; 1.2.325)

6. Why is the play’s setting—Carnival, Venice—important for the characters’ interactions? (1.1.187/342; 1.2.125/344)

7. What do you anticipate will be Hellena’s role in the play? (1.2.210/344)

L. 13    Aphra Behn         The Rover or The Banished Cavaliers (1677)

1. What is the function of the carnival for the male figures? (2.1.1-3/346; 2.1.20) How does it compare to the women’s use of the carnival?

2. Angellica and Blunt are sort of outside the ‘main action’ of the play. What is their function? What morals do they reflect as counter examples? 2.1.145/347; 2.1.275/349; 2.2.55-75/350; 2.2.90/350; 3.2/354-55; 5.1.325/369

3. Why are there traditionally 2 couples in comedy? What do Willmore/Hellena and Belville/Florinda teach the audience in juxtaposition? 3.1.95-240/353

 4. Florinda’s independent choices in love lead her to some compromising positions. What do you think Behn wants to teach her audience through these scenes? 4.3.150/364-65; 5.1.28/366

5. For a comedy, The Rover has several moments of averted tragedy and violence. How do you interpret these violent scenes? How do they still remain comic and not tragic? (2.1.205/348; 4.3.135/364; 5.1.100/366; 5.1.325/369)

INTERPRETIVE QUESTIONS

1. How do the couples match up? Are their unions inevitable, or are they conveniences of the comic plot?

2. Compare and contrast male behavior with female behavior in this play. What behaviors are socially sanctioned for men but not for women?

3. Is The Rover a feminist play?

The Restoration Actress

Samuel Pepys visited the Theatre Royal in Bridges Street in 1667, got a “backstage pass” to visit the actors, and wrote the following about the experience:

Nell Gwyn “was dressing herself and was all unready; and is very pretty, prettier than I thought; and so walked all up and down the House above, and then below into the Scene-room . . . But Lord, to see how they were both painted would make a man mad—and did make me loath them—and what base company of men comes among them, and how lewdly they talk—and how poor the men are in clothes, and yet what a show they make on the stage by candlelight is very observable” (qtd. in Diamond 523).

On this passage, Elin Diamond writes

“For Pepys and other Restoration commentators, the actress’s sexuality tended to disavow her labor. Rather than produce a performance, she is a spectacle unto herself, a painted representation to lure the male spectator. In her professional duplicity, in her desirability, in her often public status of kept mistress, she is frequently equated with prostitutes or ‘vizard-masks- who worked the pit and galleries of Restoration theaters during and after performances” (Diamond 523).

Diamond, Elin. “Gestus and Signature in Aphra Behn’s The Rover.” ELH. 56.3 (Autumn 1989): 519-41.

~ * ~

Interpretive Questions

1. For a comedy, The Rover has several moments of averted tragedy and violence. How do you interpret these violent scenes? How do they still remain comic and not tragic? (2.1.205/348; 4.3.135/364; 5.1.100/366; 5.1.325/369)

2. In what ways do characters in The Rover have to play roles? How might Behn be commenting on the predicament of the Restoration actress? 

3. Is there a difference between the female characters of Behn’s play and those of Hamlet? In other words, is it possible to perceive a distinction between female roles written for boy-actresses and those written for female players, as Maus suggests? Between these roles as written by men and those written by a woman?

4. If the world of The Rover were presented today as a documentary, what would be the resulting image of Restoration society? How does this fictive representation compare to a historical outline?