English 3236 Prompt #59

English 3236 Restoration and Eighteenth Century Drama and Theatre
Prompt # 59
27 March 2013

Some scenes, some background

Discussing some questions

Here are the background texts people chose to report on:

Kayla: John Dryden, Preface to An Evening's Love
Matt: Jeremy Collier, A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage
Adam: William Congreve, "Concerning Humour in Comedy," "Amendments of Mr. Collier's False and Imperfect Citations."
Iya: Richard Steele, Spectator No. 65 [on Sir Fopling Flutter]; John Dennis, "A Defense of Sir Fopling Flutter"
Tabitha: Oliver Goldsmith, "An Essay on the Theatre; or, A Comparison Between Laughing and Sentimental Comedy"

I said that today we'd identify what challenges there and make some decisions about dealing with them. Some of these are longer than others, and some will need some focusing. In each case, your assignment is to write a useful paraphrase or summary for the rest of us, with particular attention to the plays and ideas we've dealt with in this course, and publish it on the background texts wiki page (with, as usual, references properly cited at the end). You can use sources other than the text itself if you like, but they will need to be listed in your citations as well. This document will need to be in place by April 5th, so that we can read and discuss them for the final meeting of class on the 10th.

Attending to some scenes

As I said in class last time, I'd like to spend some time in each of the next few classes attending to the specific scenes people chose, and that we'd do that in chronological order. So, for today, the relevant plays are Wycherley's The Country Wife, in which Tabitha proposed we read Scene ii of Act 4, and Etherege's The Man of Mode, in which Iya proposed we read scene ii of Act 2.

Tabitha's explanation of the context of the scene is here, and the text of the scene itself is here. A video is here, starting at 55:00
Iya's explanation of the context of the scene is here, and the text of the scene itself is here.

For next meeting, which will not be till next Wednesday, we'll read Kayla's proposed scene from Wycherley's The Plain-Dealer, and Matt's from Behn's The Rover. And because it's so widely known (and much of the reason the play was not performed till the 20th century) I want, as well, to look quickly at the "China" scene from The Country Wife. There is a short, edited video here; I'll put a text up on the Web site, along with some of the context you need to understand what's going on.

On Friday, April 5, we'll look at Adam's scene from The Way of the World and mine from The School for Scandal.

And on Wednesday, April 10, we'll discuss the five reports on contemporary background texts.

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