general context

Question 1

Performance of the play

Answer 1

The play was first performed in communist Russia, in Moscow, in 1945, after the Second World War.
It was then performed in London in 1946.

Question 2

Dramatic irony of the play

Answer 2

The play is set in 1912 but first performed in 1945/1946. This creates dramatic irony because the audience knows that two world wars had happened but not the characters.

Question 3

Suffragettes

Answer 3

The Women’s Social and Political Union was founded in 1903 by suffragettes. They fought for the right to vote for women. By 1928, men and women are on equal footing on the right to vote.

Question 4

Trade union

Answer 4

In the early 1900s, there were strike actions in coal mines, railways etc. The Labour Party was then created to gain representation in the Parliament and the Trade Union Act of 1913 was passed.

Question 5

The Fabian society

Answer 5

Founded on 4 January 1884. The group favoured gradual social change rather than revolutionary change. For example, they campaigned for the introduction of minimum wage.

Question 6

J.W Dunne’s theory of time

Answer 6

Dunne proposed that our experience of time as linear was an illusion. He argued that past, present and future were continuous in a higher-dimensional reality.

Question 7

Aristotle’s dramatic unities

Answer 7

A play should have a single action represented as occurring in a single place and within the course of a day.