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Shakespeare’s Ear, Part 2: Rhythm, Cadence and Dramatic Contours 23 rd October 2013

Shakespeare’s Ear, Part 2: Rhythm, Cadence and Dramatic Contours 23 rd October 2013. Five Act Structure 1. Horace, Ars Poetica where he insists upon a play having five acts (no more or less)

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Shakespeare’s Ear, Part 2: Rhythm, Cadence and Dramatic Contours 23 rd October 2013

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  1. Shakespeare’s Ear, Part 2: Rhythm, Cadence and Dramatic Contours 23rd October 2013

  2. Five Act Structure 1 • Horace, Ars Poetica where he insists upon a play having five acts (no more or less) • 1960s argument about whether this is traceable in Shakespeare – people tend to see the plays scenically now. • Some plays can be fitted to this paradigm – The Winter’s Tale is interesting in this regard. • Other Renaissance dramatists – notably Ben Jonson – followed classical paradigms much more closely. Jonson translated Horace.

  3. Five Act Structure 2 • Act 1: happy • Act 2: presentation of a problem/dilemma • Act 3: crisis • Act 4: failure to avert crisis • Act 5: consequences of this failure

  4. Comedy Prologos Parados Agon Parabasis Epeisodia Exodos Tragedy Prologos Parados Epeisodia Stasima Exodos Generic Distinctions in Form }intertwined

  5. Tragedy • A pathetic situation was the original form of tragedy. Nothing actually happened. • Divine will and human agency introduced – ‘invented’ peripeteia and anagnorisis. This means something happened – the plot was not all narrative. • Difference between reported and shown action: liaison (the interplay between live and reported action by which the play runs itself).

  6. ‘Scene’ http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/172219?redirectedFrom=scene#footerWrapper sense 5

  7. Scene ‘Changes’ • Are they physical or mental breaks? • Are they always both? • Act 1, scenes 4 and 5 of Hamlet:

  8. http://eebo.chadwyck.com/homehttp://eebo.chadwyck.com/search How to find seventeenth-century original texts on the Web

  9. What is a Scene change? French scene analysis Neoclassical Drama A new stage situation was created by the entrance or exit of any one character and the French marked the scene shift accordingly. (Servants don’t count). Modern analogue in the theatre game where you have to imagine the stage is a saucer.

  10. Balance of Power; Or Why Don’t Servants Count? • Saucer theory relates to ‘reaction’ • Messengers give the balance of power to one of the people listening to the message • But they don’t change the people to whom the balance can be given, only who has it

  11. http://eebo.chadwyck.com/search/fulltext?action=byid&warn=N&id=D10000998466150279&div=1&sequence=1&SOURCE=var_spell.cfg&file=../session/1382474604_17026http://eebo.chadwyck.com/search/fulltext?action=byid&warn=N&id=D10000998466150279&div=1&sequence=1&SOURCE=var_spell.cfg&file=../session/1382474604_17026

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