Drama Analysis II

Question 1

When were Elizabethan History Plays popular?

Answer 1

During Elizabethan period

Question 2

What do Elizabethan History plays deal with?

Answer 2

Tudor history

Question 3

What do Elizabethan history plays combine?

Answer 3

Comedy and tragedy (depending on historical outcome)

Question 4

What are examples for Shakespeare history plays?

Answer 4

Henry VI, Richard II

Question 5

What are main parts of a plot?

Answer 5

• mediation
• chronology
• causality

Question 6

What is a plot?

Answer 6

Sequence of events within a story: a description of what happens and why it happens

Question 7

What is a story?

Answer 7

Comprehensive narrative, concludes setting, characters, themes and other factors that influence how the events (or plot) are told

Question 8

What are the main 3 genres of Shakespeare plays?

Answer 8

Comedy, tragedy, history

Question 9

What are other sub-genres of Shakespeare‘s plays? (+ 1 example)

Answer 9

• Romantic comedy: As You like it
• Romance: The Tempest
• Tragic comedy: The Merchant of Venice
• Problem Play: Measure for Measure
• Roman play: Anthony and Cleopatra

Question 10

What are the three unities?

Answer 10

Plot, time, place

Question 11

What are (neo-) Aristotelian principles for drama?

Answer 11

• the three unities
• mimesis

Question 12

What are codes for dramatic utterance?

Answer 12

• dialogue
• monologue
• soliloquy
• aside

Question 13

Whats a dialogue?

Answer 13

Brings action forward, establishes relationships between characters

Question 14

Whats a monologue?

Answer 14

Frequently develops an idea, explains a character‘s view and position

Question 15

Whats a soliloquy?

Answer 15

Is stage convention and is used to communicate inner thoughts and emotions of a character

Question 16

Whats an aside?

Answer 16

Possibility of an actor or character to look at the audience from the side and talk to them (typical of Elizabethian age)

Question 17

Whats dramatic irony?

Answer 17

Discrepancy of awareness between audience and characters on stage

Question 18

Whats explicit and authorial?

Answer 18

Verbal description of character traits in secondary text, telling names

Question 19

Whats authorial and implicit?

Answer 19

Contrasts/correspondences, constellations, configurations

Question 20

What’s Figural and explicit?

Answer 20

Verbal description of other characters, self-characterisation

Question 21

What’s figural and implicit?

Answer 21

Behaviour, appearance, body language, use of language

Question 22

Telling names in medieval and Renaissance allegory?

Answer 22

Fellowship, Goods, Good Deeds (Everyman, 15th century mortality play)

Question 23

Telling names in Restoration comedy?

Answer 23

Mrs Millimant, Mr. Witwould (Willing Congreve, The way of the world,1700)

Question 24

What are character functions?

Answer 24

Protagonist, antagonist, foil character

Question 25

What are character dimensions?

Answer 25

Monodimensional and multidimensional

Question 26

What are kinds of character developments?

Answer 26

Static vs. Dynamic

Question 27

Whats comic relief?

Answer 27

Humorous content in a dramatic or literary work that is intended to offset more serious episodes

Question 28

What is a turn?

Answer 28

Sudden change in story

Question 29

Whats stichomythia?

Answer 29

A form of dialogue originating in Greek drama in which single lines are uttered by alternate speakers in brief lines

Question 30

What is prose?

Answer 30

Used when characters have a lower social status (more sentence like)

Question 31

What is poetry?

Answer 31

used when characters have a higher social status (more poetry like)

Question 32

What is performance time?

Answer 32

Performance time should be no longer than 3 hours.
Performance time is usually shorter than the story, one chooses the excerpts to perform depending on their importance to the play.

Question 33

What are types of an aside?

Answer 33

Three types: dialogical, monological, ad spectatores