MEG 2 British Drama cheat sheet

MEG 2 British Drama cheat sheet


Identify dialogues, who is speaking the dialogues, who is it spoken to, what happens after those lines, significance.

Play name, plot, author, performed, comments, age, context, style in prose or verse. 

Unique about the play and language used.


Block-1 Christopher Marlowe : Doctor Faustus


Christopher Marlow - 1564-93

Wrote 5 tragedy books in Elizabethan age in response to growing needs of entertainment, national and cultural aspiration.

Full title - The tragic history of the life and the death of Doctor Faustus (1589-92)

Elizabethean tragedy

Without renaissance & reformation Dr. Faustus would have remained a simple morality play but this makes it a human tragedy of christian morality.

5 Acts-

  • 1-Unscholarly attitude

  • 2-Gives himself to Mephistopheles

  • 3&4 - Comic diversion

  • 5 - Death


Staged in 1588, published in 1604, enlarged edition in 1616.


Faustus’s plenty makes him poor. - Tragedy

Hell is absence of heavenly joy and everlasting bliss.


Characters-


Dr. Faustus

Wagner - Servant

Valdes & Cornelius ( black magic teacher)

Good and Bad angel

Mephistopheles - Lucifer’s servant

Lucifer

Beelzebub - Devil


Pope who was troubled by Faustus

King Charles

Duke of Venholy who demands grapes in winter

Helen’s spirit

Old man who suggests Faustus to ask for repentance

Scholar friends who also suggest for forgiveness


Block-2 William Shakespeare : A Midsummer Night's Dream 

Possibly performed in 1598 summer on the occasion of some important aristocratic wedding.

5 Acts.

Shakespeare - April 1564-1616)

Written in Blank verse closest to spoken English

Characters-

Lysander

Demetrius

Hermia

Helena

Robin Goodfellow (Puck)

Theseus & Hippolyta

Egeus - Hermia’s Father

Nick Bottom & his drama group

Oberon & Titania


Block-3 William Shakespeare : Hamlet


First performed in 1601-02 by Chamberlain men (Shakespeare’s company)

5 Acts

Characters-

Hamlet

Claudius (villain uncle)

Gertrude - (Hamlet’s Mother)

Polonius (gets mistakenly killed by Hamlet)

Ophelia (Polonius’s daughter who is in love with Hamlet)

Laertes (Ophelia’s Brother)

Horatio (Hamlet’s Friend)

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern (spy disguised as friends of Hamlet)

Osric- Comic relief

Horatio (Hamlet’s friend)


Hamlet as a tragedy, religious play or play of revenge.




Block-4 Ben Jonson : The Alchemist


Ben Johnson  also known as epigrammatist. His comedy required maximum audience interaction.

Shakespearean comedy - sweet & romantic

Johnsonian Comedy - Bitter & Satiric

5 Acts

Characters-

Subtle - Cheat 1actor

Jeremy - Cheat 2 lures clients

Dol - Cheat 3 Prostitute

Dapper - clerk


Drugger - Tobacconist. Lured to marry Dame.

Epicure Mammon - Knight glutton for money and women

Kastril - Brother of Dame

Dame Piliant - Young beautiful widow

Lovewit - Master of the house



Block-5 The Playboy of the Western World by John Millington(1871-1909) written in 1907

3 Acts

Theme of Patricide

Bildungsroman

Comical irony

Fantasy vs reality

Extravagant comedy


Characters-

Christy 

Pegeen

Widow Quin

Shawn Keogh

Michael James


Block-6 Bernard Shaw: Pygmalion

Victorian Period realistic Drama first staged in German on oct 16 1914.

About speech & phonetics & social concern- Class distinction, manners, morality, snobbery.

5 Acts

Characters-

Higgins - Professor

Colonel Pickering - Friend

Eliza - Flower girl

Mrs. Pearce - Maid

Alfred Dolittle - Eliza’s father

Mrs. Eynsford Hill

Clara (daughter)

Freddi(son who marries Eliza)


Mother fixation- Oedipus complex


Play of 5 Acts -

Act 1 - Higgins meeting Eliza

Act 2 - Process started

Act 3 - Test Case

Act 4 - After Party

Act 5 - Final Act


Block-7 T.S. Eliot: Murder in the Cathedral

Characters-

3 Priests

4 Knights

Messenger

4 Tempter

Thomas Becket

Chorus women

Attendant


Originally The Cathedral on Dec 29, 1170 the incident took place.

3 Priests enter with 3 different introit(Sentences from Bible).

A 2 act Play.


The world must be cleaned in winter or we shall have only a sour spring.

Through accepting suffering & pain in this life, you can get power and glory in the next.



Poetic Drama, Christian play, Eliot’s Successful integration of his dramatic theories, Biographical information.



Block-8 John Osborne: Look Back In Anger

2 Acts
Act 1 
Act 2 - Scene 1- 2 weeks later. Scene 2- The following evening.
Act 3 - Scene 1 - Several months later. Scene 2 - A few minutes later


Characters-

Jimmy Porter

Alison Porter

Colonel Redfern

Helena Charles

Cliff Lewis

Block-9 Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Godot

Written in 1940 and published on 1952 in French on stage debut in Paris in 1953. 

Later translated in multiple languages, initially controversial.

Tragicomedy

Theatre of absurd

2 Acts


Characters-

Estragen

Vladimir

Lucky

Pozzo

Throughout the play Estragen & Vladimir refer to each other as Godot & Didi.


  1. Man’s greatest sin is to have been born.

  2. Pozzo - The tears of the world are a constant quantity.

  3. Nothing to be done. - Opening words of the play and also the description of it.

  4. Emptiness of the modern world that doesn’t know it’s empty.

  5. Hopelessly hoping - Humanity’s vain hope of salvation.

  6. We remain therefore we must be waiting for something. We are waiting therefore there must be something we are waiting for.


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