Reading Week 5

Last year in English we learned a lot about theater and I didn't even know it. We had a list of vocabulary terms and they included such things as Deux ex Machina, catharsis, and plot. We didn't really connect them to the theatre even though we did read plays, Fences, Othello and a Man for All Seasons being the foremost in my mind. In the book it says, "A play in a book is only the shadow of a play and not even a clear shadow of it....The printed script of a play is hardly more than an architect's blueprint of a house not yet built or [a house] built and destroyed. The color, the grace and levitation, the structural pattern in motion, the quick interplay of live beings, suspended like fitful lightning in a cloud, these things are the play, not words on paper nor thoughts and ideas fo an author." I completely agree with this quote. In English we always watch a video of the play after we read it. It really does give a better idea of the characters than just words on a paper can, though they be quite lovely. Also, with Shakespeare, it is sometimes easier to tell what some of his words mean when someone else is saying them, with what inflection they are saying them.

Later on in the chapter, it says, "In both tradgedy and comedy, it is the nature of the balance between the strengths and weaknesses of the characters and the deserved or undeserved nature of the catastrophe taht determines whether the result is tragic or comic. With minor editing of character and situation, for example, tragic Othello becomes comic Othello." It goes on to itemize how this seemingly unseemly thing could come about. It just does seem that a man killing his wife could be funny, but they do a pretty good job of pleading their case. It's pretty interesting and I can see how several other plays could be made humorous.

Somewhere it talks about how due to television and other diversions the viewing of plays has gone down. I actually really like to see plays, but a lot of the time they are more expensive than I have the stomache for. My mom used to sew costumes for a local Junior High's plays and we would get free tickets. The plays we saw there were better than some of the ones my High School put on.