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Taylor Collins

Walkley on "Man and Superman" by Shaw - 0 views

  • Walkley was an English drama critic for the London Star, the Speaker, and the Times from 1888 through 1902, and a major contributor to the Times Literary Supplement after it was founded in 1902. He has been noted for his disciplined, urbane literary tastes; in fact, his criticism is generally considered to have primarily a literary, and not a theatrical, basis. In the following excerpt from a review of Man and Superman—the play that Shaw dedicated to Walkley and claimed was inspired by his suggestion —Walkley regrets that while the play serves as an effective vehicle for “the Shavian philosophy and the Shavian talent,” it is imperfect as a theatrical work.
    • Taylor Collins
       
      Shaw wrote a letter to Walkley, describing his take on a suggestion Walkley made for Shaw to write a 'Don Juan'. Shaw ultimately flips the whole concept of a 'Cassinova' on its head with a modern, feminist twist, but still credits Walkley as providing him with the challenge. In the letter Shaw expresses his 'lukewarm admiration' of Shakespeare for the strength of his female characters in a maternalistic world. In this regard Shaw finds a fresh opinion of Shakespeare as a playwrite, and a connection to the women in his own plays. Though Shaw sees Shakespeare as having put his own 'tissue' around the plots and ideas of earlier, successful works (which, we can all admit, was true-) it seems that he could still have a respect for the unique and insightfulness played out in the roles of his female characters.
  • For Mr. Shaw and Shakespeare have at least one conspicuous bond of fraternal relationship; they both use the same stage technique.
  • liaison des scènes
    • Taylor Collins
       
      Roughly, the idea that the stage should never be empty during an act or a scene.
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • Thus for the sake of something which may be very fine, but certainly is not drama, both dramatists cheerfully let the quintessential drama go hang.
  • We want a play that shall be a vehicle for the Shavian philosophy and the Shavian talent and, at the same time, a perfect play. Shall we ever get it? Probably not, in this imperfect world. We certainly do not get it in Man and Superman.
  • he is perpetually energizing outside the bounds of drama,
    • Taylor Collins
       
      Since when does drama have bounds? Drama is not a formula, it is an art. Walkley says that there is a distinct form of art that he, and every other theater goer looks for in a play. Why, since Shaw's plays are entertaining, does it matter if this 'perfect' construction is not apparent? Is not a play perfect (as possible) if it is both entertaining and insightful? Literature is MEANT to convey ideas. No one creates works work taking note of unless he (or she) has something he (or she) wants to convey.
  • raison d'être
    • Taylor Collins
       
      'reason for existence'
  • nexus
    • Taylor Collins
       
      "1. a means of connection; tie; link. 2. a connected series or group. 3. the core or center, as of a matter or situation." -- Dictionary.com
  • the action-plot is well-nigh meaningless without the key of the idea-plot; that regarded as an independent entity it is often trivial and sometimes null; and that it is because of this parasitic nature of the action-plot, because of its weakness, its haphazardness, its unnaturalness, considered as a “thing in itself, ” that we find the play as a play unsatisfying.
  • We use the term action, of course, in its widest sense, so as to cover not merely the external incident but the psychologic and, more particularly, the emotional movement and “counterpoint” of the play.
  • The idea-plot we are not called upon to criticize. In the playhouse a dramatist's ideas are postulates not to be called in question. Theories of Schopenhauer about woman and the sex-instinct or of Nietzsche about a revised system of conduct are most assuredly open to discussion, but not by the dramatic critic. His business is, first and foremost, with the action-plot.
  • à propos de bottes
    • Taylor Collins
       
      'For no apparent reason'
  • dans cette galère
    • Taylor Collins
       
      'In this mess'
  • For Miss Ann is the new Don Juan, the huntress of men—no, of one man (that is to say, no Don Juan at all, but for the moment let that pass)
    • Taylor Collins
       
      In the previously mentioned letter from Shaw to Walkley, Shaw begins by telling him that he has taken up his challenge- to write a 'Don Juan story'. But, in Shaw's terms, the Don Juan is the one being pursued, rather than the pursuer. Walkley knows very well what Don Juan is doing 'in this mess'.
  • Tanner lectures poor mild milksopish Octavius about the devastating egoism of the “artist man”—how the “artist man” is (apparently) the masculine of the “mother woman,” how they are twin creators, she of children, he of mind, and how they live only for that act of creation, so that there is the devil to pay (examples from literary history) when they happen to become man and wife.
    • Taylor Collins
       
      These ideas are also included in the letter, noted by Shaw as being his "character's, and for a time, also [his] own".
  • The properly dramatic development would have thrown all the onus upon Ann—we should have seen Ann energizing as the “mother woman,” and nothing else—and would have kept Tanner's mouth shut.
  • If Mr. Shaw's play were a real play we should have no need to explain the action-plot by laborious reference to the idea-plot. The one would be the natural garment of the other; or rather the one would be the flesh of which the other was the bones.
  • Ann would exhibit Mr. Shaw 's thesis “on her own,” instead of by the help of Mr. Jack Tanner's lecture wand and gift of the gab.
  • the action-plot, being as we have said a mere parasite of the other, is bound very rapidly to give out.
  • We must not forget two subordinate characters —Ann's mother, middle-aged, querulous, helpless in her daughter 's hands, and the cockney chauffeur, the fine fleur of Board school education, Henry Straker. These two small parts, from the point of view of genuine and fresh observation, are among the best things in the play. In them Mr. Shaw has been content to reproduce, instead of deducing.
  • Mr. Shaw, as we have tried to show, has conceived Ann not as a character, but as a pure idea, a walking theory;
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    I'm having some issues with the website, but I do have the analysis saved if you end up needing a hard copy :)
Rizchel Dayao

Literary Reference Center - powered by EBSCOhost: Dramatic Intentions Diigo #3 - 0 views

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    Argument: Shakespeare uses time as a factor to increase the dramatic intention of the play. Claim: Shakespeare's use of intertwining plots and misreadings dramaticize the intention of the play. Evidence: -"What Shakespeare is doing is to present, before our eyes, an unbroken series of events happening in 'short time', but to present them against a background, of events not presented but implied, which gives the needed impression of 'long time.'"
Nicole Fayden

SparkNotes: Othello: Act V, scenes i-ii - 0 views

  • Shakespeare repeatedly casts Othello as Christ
  • Iago as Judas (or, ironically, as Peter)
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    1st claim= Othello is related to God, through the trials of the story, Othello is superior to others and is looked up to like God. 2nd claim= Iago is represented as Judas or Peter. He is looked upon as a constant secretive and mischievous evil. 3rd claim= christian culture ties in with the culture of Othello's time period. debate= Shakespeare is satirizing religion and culture. This concludes that Othello's time period and culture with religion is based on the biblical text in the bible text.
Rizchel Dayao

Shakespeare's Twelfth Night - 0 views

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    Argument: Shakespeare's characters struggle with the conflict in human nature between reason and emotions. Claim: - Shakespeare's characters used overindulgence in pleasre and self indulgence to attack the Puritans.- He influences the moral value of freedom vs. restraint. Evidence: "Of the two extremes, the course of life that would banish all indulgence is emphasized as more objectionable." "Shakespeare composed in praise of the much - needed, well balanced nature, to extoll that happy union of judgement and of feeling which is the basis of higher sanity."
Julia Hahn

Shakespeares Comedic Sequence - 2 views

Argument: Shakespeare writes comedy plays in order to educate the reader. Claim: The reason that Shakespeare creates the characters in his comedies to be somewhat uneducated is to teach the reader...

criticism literary critique

started by Julia Hahn on 15 Dec 10 no follow-up yet
Rizchel Dayao

Literary Reference Center - powered by EBSCOhost: Tragic Form - 0 views

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    Argument: Shakespeare's use of foil characters having differing traditional views concern the origin of suffering. Claim: Shakespeare purposely creates contradicting characters and their actions usually result in a tragedy of chance. The structure also has a role in his tragedy. Evidence: "The play however eludes both the 'providential' and the 'fatal' formulae and offers us an early, but fully articulated Shakespearean tragic structure."
Julia Hahn

Literary Reference Center - powered by EBSCOhost: 'What Was He Really Like?' - 0 views

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    http://search.ebscohost.com.lib.chandleraz.gov/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lfh&AN=48303388&site=lrc-live. This tells me about a couple biographies about Shakespeare so I can understand what envoked him into writing comedies and tragidies. What was he really like?
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    Julia, Please see my example below. You must include the argument, at least one claim of the article, and a quote that you intend to use as evidence for your argument in your paper.
Julia Hahn

Wrting style in Othello V. Comedy of Errors - 1 views

The writing style in both of the plays are different. Thats what seperates the comedies from the tragidies. Shakespeare had done this on purpose because it was meant to reach a certain audience. Ba...

Criticism literary

started by Julia Hahn on 28 Jan 11 no follow-up yet
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