English 3336 Restoration and Eighteenth Century
Drama and Theatre
Prompt # 20
19 October 2012
Completing and using the early play reports
Completing the reports
With luck, by Monday (let's say midnight) everyone will have expanded
her report on a play to address these questions.
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What do people (scholars, critics, historians, contemporaries)
say about the importance of the play?
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How do they characterize the play's influence?
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How do they characterize the playwright?
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What do they say about how the play illuminates the kinds
of drama being produced? Is it considered a good example?
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What do they say about how the play illuminates the context
of the time -- political, religious, social ideas?
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How does the play sound? What kind of style does the author
use? (quotations help here, and everywhere)
Quote liberally, and attribute your quotes. Make sure you
tell us where work is coming from.
Please remember as you do this that this is not a report on the experience
of reading the play. You should have found a copy of the text, but there
is no need to read the entire play. What you should focus on is the questions
above, and most of your time should be spend with general research sources
to find out what people are saying about the value of reading the play,
of its importance for understanding the character of the drama and theatre
of the time, for the way it fits into its context.
Considering and evaluating the plays
After Monday night, everyone should read all the play reports and post
comments on the Forum on the four plays you didn't report on.
Read all the reports first, and consider the way you'd prioritize them,
and the reasons you'd give. Then post a reply to each of the four reports
you didn't do. I suggest strongly writing them all at the same time, off
line, saving them, then rereading and editing, and only then posting them
to the Forum.
Use as the title or subject of each posting "first choice," "second
choice," "third choice," and "if we have to." In each case, outline the
reasons for your choice, and they cannot include whether the report is
well written or not, or whether the writer is persuasive: it needs to point
at specific things the writer said that made you think we should all read
the play. A brilliant report might convince you we don't want to read the
play. This isn't about the quality of the reports, except insofar as they
give you enough information to make a decision.
These postings need to be on the Forum by class time on Wednesday morning.
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