Revision lecture
EN302: European Theatre
O What’s the rubric for the exam?
O Can I write about the same texts in the exam
O
O
O
O
O
O
as I did in my coursework essays?
Can I write about texts we haven’t studied
on the module?
Can I bring the texts into the exam?
How should I organise my time during the
exam?
How will the exam be marked?
What sorts of topics will the exam cover?
Where can I find past papers?
What’s the rubric for the
exam?
O The rubric will read as follows:
O Time allowed: 2 hours
O Answer TWO of the following questions.
O Read carefully the instructions on the answer
book and make sure that the particulars are
entered on each book.
O Do not substantially repeat material from
assessed essays, or between sections on the
exam
What’s the rubric for the
exam?
O Please note: You may be penalised up to 20
marks from your overall exam mark if it is
evident that you are in violation of the rubric of
the exam paper.
O Pay attention! Some questions will ask for
discussion of “two or more plays”, while others
will ask you to consider “two or more
dramatists”. Others will be more specific, asking
you to consider, for example, only Greek plays, or
only Naturalist dramas.
O Answer the question that is asked, not the
question you wanted to answer!
Can I write about the same texts in the exam
as I did in my coursework essays?
O Technically, yes – but we strongly advise against
it. What you cannot do is “substantially repeat
material from assessed essays”. Under the
pressure of exam conditions, you might not
remember exactly what you wrote in your essays.
O Bear in mind that if your overall degree mark
falls on a borderline between degree
classifications, your entire body of assessed
work will be sent to the external examiner. An
examiner might look less favourably on a
student who keeps writing about the same texts!
Can I write about texts we haven’t
studied on the module?
O As long as the question allows it. Some
questions specify that you should write
about “plays by writers on this module” –
others do not. Do bear in mind that the
module is about European theatre, though!
Can I bring the texts into the
exam?
O No, you are not permitted to bring the texts into
the exam. Memorising some key quotations will
therefore be helpful, but committing huge
chunks of the texts to memory may not be the
best use of your revision time! The same goes
for secondary sources.
O Students whose first language is not English are
permitted to use a bilingual dictionary. For
further details, see
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/academic
office/quality/categories/examinations/policies
/a_materials/
How should I organise my
time during the exam?
O You have two hours: that’s one hour for each
question. Both questions carry an equal number
of marks, so you would be ill-advised to spend
longer on the first question than you do on the
second!
O Planning is everything. Spend an appropriate
amount of time brainstorming ideas and working
out a rough structure for your argument before
you start writing the essay. You can cross
through any work you do not wish to be marked.
How will the exam be marked?
O The exam will be marked anonymously, according to the same
criteria as your essays.
O Third class:
O
Some relevant knowledge, some accurate repetition of
lecture/class notes/work. Partial or pedestrian description.
O 2.2:
O
Conscientious work, attentive to subject matter and title/task set;
a focused response to the task demonstrating good knowledge,
balanced more towards the descriptive than the analytical. Good
knowledge, reasonable understanding of material and task.
Descriptive rather than analytical.
How will the exam be marked?
O 2.1:
O
Highly competent in organisation and presentation, evidence of
individual research; appropriate and intelligent use of primary and
secondary material, good understanding of subject matter allied
with perceptive analysis.
O First class:
O
Very high quality work, with full understanding of the subject
matter. Work that demonstrates intellectual maturity, and is
perceptive with highly developed organisation. An ambitious
project carried out successfully, with sophisticated handling of
primary and secondary material, reasoned, analytical argument.
Some degree of originality, independent research and thought.
What sorts of topics will the
exam cover?
O Social and/or religious ethics
O The relationship between theatricality and life
O Dramatic genre, especially tragedy and/or comedy
O Naturalism and post-Naturalism
O Political theatre and/or the politics of theatre
O Adapting the drama of the past/intertextuality
O Representations of gender
O The relationship between language and the visual
O Specific productions
O ‘Topics’
Drama and ethics
O ‘Playwright’ was synonymous with ‘teacher’ in Ancient Greek
(didaskalos).
O In his Preface to Phèdre, Racine described classical tragedy as
‘a school in which virtue was taught not less well than in the
schools of the philosophers’:
O
‘It would be greatly to be desired that modern writings were as sound
and full of useful precepts as the works of these poets. This might
perhaps provide a means of reconciling to tragedy a host of people
famous for their piety and their doctrine who have recently condemned
it and who would no doubt pass a more favourable judgement on it if
writers were as keen to edify their spectators as to amuse them,
thereby complying with the real purpose of tragedy.’
O Racine’s view of tragedy is founded upon reason, decorum and
moral utility.
Drama and ethics
O Aristotle on comedy:
O ‘Comedy is, as we have said, an imitation of characters of a lower type, not, however, in the full sense of the word bad; for the ludicrous is
merely a subdivision of the ugly. It may be defined as a defect or
ugliness which is not painful or destructive. Thus, for example, the
comic mask is ugly and distorted, but does not cause pain.’
O Henri Bergson (‘Laughter’, 1900):
O ‘Always rather humiliating for the one against whom it is directed,
laughter is really and truly a kind of social “ragging”. … In laughter we
always find an unavowed intention to humiliate, and consequently
correct our neighbour.’ (1900: 148)
O Moral of Tartuffe:
O ‘Learn to distinguish between virtue, / Real and feigned.’ (p. 72)
Drama and ethics
O Molière’s ‘Preface’ to Tartuffe (23 March 1669)
describes the play as ‘a skilful poem which, by
agreeable lessons, reprimands men’s defects’:
O ‘If the mission of comedy is to correct men’s vices, I fail to
see why some should be privileged. In the State, this one is
of an importance much more dangerous than all the
others; and we have seen that the theatre is a great force
for correction.’
O ‘It is a great blow to vice to expose it to everyone’s
laughter. We can easily stand being reprehended, but we
cannot stand being mocked. We are willing to be wicked,
but we will not be ridiculous.’
Drama and agency
O Do dramatic characters have agency, or are they driven by
unseen forces?
Conflict between gods in classical tragedy;
O Revenge / classical gods / Christian God in The Spanish Tragedy;
O God-as-audience and power of prophecy vs. freedom to ‘overcome
the stars’ (p. 36) in Life Is A Dream;
O Gods and guilt in Phèdre:
O
‘Heaven lit in my heart an ill-omened fire’ (p. 213);
O ‘I know my baseness, and do not belong / To those bold wretches who
with brazen front / Can revel in their crimes unblushingly.’ (p. 184).
O
O
Determinism and entrapment: society, heredity, physiology and
psychology in Naturalism and beyond.
Drama and agency
O Zola published his manifesto on this subject in 1881, in an
essay titled ‘Naturalism on the Stage’.
O He claimed to be reflecting the scientific and rational spirit of
the age in which he lived; ‘the impulse of the century,’ he
argued, ‘is toward naturalism’ (1881: 5):
O
‘I am waiting for someone to put a man of flesh and bones on the
stage, taken from reality, scientifically analyzed, and described without
one lie. … I am waiting for environment to determine the characters and
the characters to act according to the logic of facts combined with logic
of their own disposition. … I am waiting, finally, until the development of
naturalism already achieved in the novel takes over the stage, until the
playwrights return to the source of science and modem arts, to the
study of nature, to the anatomy of man. (1881: 6)
Modern tragedy
O Raymond Williams’ Modern Tragedy (1966)
analyses some of the ways in which various
modern plays might be conceived as having
adapted the conventions of classical
tragedy.
O Williams defines tragedy as ‘the conflict
between an individual and the forces that
destroy him’ (2006: 113).
Liberal Tragedy
O For example, Williams describes Ibsen’s drama
as ‘Liberal Tragedy’:
O ‘…the hero defies an opposing world, full of lies
and compromises and dead positions, only to
find, as he struggles against it, that as a man he
belongs to this world, and has its destructive
inheritance in himself.’ (2006: 124)
O In this view, society is at fault: it is seen as false
and oppressive, a trap from which it is
impossible to escape.
Liberal Tragedy
General Gabler’s memory
Regional location
Oppressive
environment
Social class /
expectations
HEDDA
GABLER
Tesman /
identity as ‘wife’
Intellectual boredom
Impending motherhood
Judge Brack’s
‘leverage’
Threat of scandal
Patriarchy
Private Tragedy
O Strindberg’s drama, on the other hand, belongs to a
category that Williams calls ‘Private Tragedy’, a form which
‘begins with bare and unaccommodated man’:
‘All primary energy is centred in this isolated creature, who desires
and eats and fights alone. Society is at best an arbitrary
institution, to prevent this horde of creatures destroying each
other. And when these isolated persons meet, in what are called
relationships, their exchanges are forms of struggle, inevitably.
Tragedy, in this view, is inherent.’ (2006: 133)
O The association between love and destruction is ‘so deep that it is
not, as the liberal writers [like Ibsen] assumed, the product of a
particular history: it is, rather, general and natural, in all
relationships.’ (2006: 134)
O
Environment,
heredity, body,
psyche, etc.
Private Tragedy
Environment,
heredity, body,
psyche, etc.
MISS JULIE
JEAN
CHRISTINE
Environment, heredity, body, psyche, etc.
Private Tragedy
JEAN
MISS JULIE
Jean’s heredity,
body, psyche,
etc. (suggests
Strindberg) are
better
equipped for
survival… or
are they?
Tragic Deadlock and Stalemate
O
Williams describes the ‘deadlock’ of liberal tragedy:
O
O
He argues that this deadlock, ‘familiar to us from Ibsen’, is
‘transformed by Chekhov into a new condition: that of stalemate’:
O
O
The hero ‘sees what has to be done, and tries to do it. He is left to
struggle alone, is misunderstood and is broken. He also breaks others,
in his own fall.’ (2006: 172)
‘In a deadlock, there is still effort and struggle, but no possibility of
winning: the wrestler with life dies as he gives his last strength. In a
stalemate, there is no possibility of movement or even the effort at
movement; every willed action is self-cancelling.’ (2006: 172)
Williams on Three Sisters: ‘The breakdown of meaning is now so
complete that even the aspiration to meaning seems comic.’ (2006:
174)
Tragic Deadlock and Stalemate
HAMM: We’re not beginning to… to… mean something?
CLOV: Mean something! You and I, mean something!
(Brief laugh.)
Ah that’s a good one!
HAMM: I wonder.
(Pause.)
Imagine if a rational being came back to earth, wouldn’t he
be liable to get ideas into his head if he observed us long
enough.
(Voice of rational being.) Ah, good, now I see what it is, yes,
now I understand what they’re at! (Beckett, p. 108)
Tragic Deadlock and Stalemate
O
Peter Brook on Beckett:
O ‘Beckett does not say ‘no’ with satisfaction; he forges his merciless
‘no’ out of a longing for ‘yes’ and so his despair is the negative
from which the contour of its opposite can be drawn. …When we
attack Beckett for pessimism it is we who are the Beckett
characters trapped in a Beckett scene. When we accept Beckett’s
statement as it is, then suddenly all is transformed. There is after
all quite another audience, Beckett’s audience; those in every
country who do not set up intellectual barriers, who do not try too
hard to analyse the message. This audience laughs and cries out –
and in the end celebrates with Beckett; this audience leaves his
plays, his black plays, nourished and enriched, with a lighter heart,
full of a strange irrational joy.’ (1990: 66)
Brecht’s rejection
of ‘dramatic theatre’
O Brecht:
We ask you expressly to discover
That what happens all the time is not natural.
For to say that something is natural
In such times of bloody confusion
Of ordained disorder, of systematic arbitrariness
Of inhuman humanity is to
Regard it as unchangeable. (The Exception and the Rule, p.
37)
O ‘For art to be “un-political” means only to ally
itself with the “ruling” group.’ (1977: 196).
Brecht’s rejection
of ‘dramatic theatre’
O ‘The dramatic theatre’s spectator says: Yes, I have felt like that
too – Just like me – It’s only natural – It’ll never change – The
sufferings of this man appal me, because they are inescapable
– That’s great art; it all seems the most obvious thing in the
world – I weep when they weep, I laugh when they laugh.’
O ‘The epic theatre’s spectator says: I’d never have thought it –
That’s not the way – That’s extraordinary, hardly believable –
It’s got to stop – The sufferings of this man appal me, because
they are unnecessary – That’s great art: nothing obvious in it –
I laugh when they weep, I weep when they laugh.’ (1977: 71)
Where can I find past papers?
O Here!
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/examp
apers/
References
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Brecht, Bertolt (1965) The Messingkauf Dialogues, trans. J. Willett,
Chatham: W. & J. Mackay & Co.
Brecht, Bertolt (1977) Brecht on Theatre, trans. J. Willett, London: Eyre
Methuen
Brook, Peter (1990) The Empty Space, London: Penguin.
Strindberg, August (1888) ‘Preface to Miss Julie’, in Meyer, M. [trans.]
(2000) Strindberg, Plays: One, London: Methuen Drama, pp. 91-103.
Williams, Raymond (2006) Modern Tragedy, Peterborough, Ontario:
Broadview Press.
Zola, Emile (1881) ‘Naturalism on the Stage’, in Cole, T. [ed.] (2001)
Playwrights on Playwriting: from Ibsen to Ionesco, New York: Cooper
Square Press, pp. 5-14.