INTRODUCTION
In this Unit, you will be introduced to how to analyse plays and appreciate their effectiveness as dramatic texts. The common approaches to the analysis of literary texts are content and form. Content deals with the theme and subject matter. Form comprises such stylistic features as plot, characterization, setting, language and other dramatic devices used in the play.
3.1 Textual Analysis
Textual analysis in drama is the evaluation of a written play. In the evaluation, you are expected to read the play very well and highlight how effectively or otherwise the playwright has utilized the elements and devices of drama in the composition of his play. The dramatic techniques used are also discussed. As you analyse a play, you are expected to identify the theme, how appropriate the characters are, if they are consistent and their actions are properly motivated. The language is another area that needs attention as you determine if there is consistency. The relationship between the message of the play and the method used to relay the message is also examined. You can take the following steps for an effective textual analysis:
a) Read the play for the first time and enjoy the story.
b) Read the play again with your notebook and dictionary by your side. Use the dictionary to find out the meaning of the words you are not familiar with and form notes on the plot, theme, characterization and other relevant information.
d) Read it again and again to fill in the gaps and ensure that you have obtained the required information.
e) Rewrite your note properly, and revise it as many times as possible.
3.2 Content/Theme
In the analysis of a play, the first issue that comes to mind is the theme. Theme is the main idea in a play that permeates the entire play. How do you identify the theme of a play? Themes are identified through the dialogue, actions and manifestations in the actions of the major characters as they interact with other characters in the play. The interpersonal relationships of the characters help to highlight and advance that particular idea. Themes in drama include corruption, love, revenge, and many others. The theme is the message which the playwright wants to send across to his audience and a play could have more than one theme. The playwright could draw his germinal idea from an incident or event in his contemporary society. It could also be drawn from history, legend, myth or folklore but the important factor is that there is a message he sends to the audience.
Most playwrights try to make their societies better through the exploration of the negative impacts of these ideas in the societies. A playwright is normally influenced by his background and this is reflected in his plays. In Nigeria many contemporary playwrights explore the themes like military dictatorship, insecurity unemployment, bad leadership, bribery and corruption. You will agree with me that these and more are the vices that plague the contemporary Nigerian society
The playwright is said to be the conscience of his society, a teacher and an entertainer. He therefore strives to educate, inform and entertain his audience. This explains why he presents his theme through an interesting story and chooses the most appropriate dramatic form. For example, Bernard Shaw decides to dramatise the themes of love and war through comedy, while Shakespeare presents his theme of revenge through tragedy.
The theme of the story is what gives it significance because without a recognizable and definable theme, a story will be trite and pointless. A clearly focused theme is the story’s “motivating force”. In Oedipus Rex for instance, the theme is man’s quest for his identity. The sub-theme is man’s helplessness in the hands of fate or the gods. If we take the main theme, we will see that Oedipus’ search for his true parents leads him to kill his father and marry his mother, while his search for the cause of the plague in his kingdom and the murderer of King Laius leads to his search for his own identity. The search for his own identity leads to his doom. Everyman explores the summons of death for mankind and man’s readiness to meet his creator. In explicating this theme, the play dramatizes the struggle between virtue and vice for supremacy in a man’s life. The question of man’s ultimate fate is also explored. It concludes with the fact that only man’s good deed is important for his salvation.
Consciously or unconsciously, every playwright has his theme in mind in choosing the style to adopt. The characters, the setting, the language, the plot, are chosen in such a way that should advance the major theme of the story. However, you must bear in mind the fact that a story may have one or more themes. It is also possible that each reader may discover a different theme or a multiplicity of themes in the same play. You should not worry about this. Literature is open to different interpretations and as literary students, you should be able to identify your position and substantiate it with facts from the play. You can see that in the example of Oedipus above, I used the first theme of man’s search for his identify. If I decide to use the theme of man’s helplessness as the major theme, I will state how Oedipus was born and there was a prophecy that he will kill his father and marry his mother.
His parents believe that they can avert the curse by killing him. Unfortunately the servant who was asked to kill him gives him to a shepherd who in turn hands him over to his childless master. Oedipus is brought up in Corinth but unfortunately, he tries to run away from the same curse (fate) when he realizes that he is doomed to kill his father and marry his mother. In running away from fate, he fulfills that prophecy.
The theme of a play could be given in one word but ideally it is presented in sentence or statement. A play could be complex and it might be difficult to give the theme or the central idea in one word. However, you should realize that whether it is in one word or in one sentence, you must explain it further based on the play. You should also be in a position to identify other themes, if the play has other themes. Usually the theme is identified after you must have read the entire play.
Finally, theme is the controlling idea in a play which the reader extracts consciously as he reads the text. It could be literal or symbolic. It is that idea or message which the playwright wants to share with or convey to his audience. In most cases, the theme emerges after the exploration of the entire play. Some plays have more than one theme. The major one which stands out is the main theme while the others are called the sub-themes.
3.3 Subject Matter
The subject matter is the topic of discussion in the play. It is easier to get the subject matter from the title of the play. Theme is the central idea of the play while the subject matter is the object of discussion from which the theme is extracted. It is means therefore that the theme is subsumed in the subject matter. In The Lion and the Jewel, for instance, the subject matter is the fame of Sidi (the Jewel) a young and beautiful girl and her seduction by the Bale (the Lion) who is sixty two years old. In The Marriage of Anansewa, the theme is love but the subject matter is the marriage of Anansewa. From the two examples, we conclude that the subject matter is indeed the object of discussion which other events and incidents in a text or work help to highlight.
This is the statement the play makes about the social world. In most cases, plays treat common human problems and make statements that have universal validity or relevance for all ages. Each playwright treats any of these human problems from his own perspective to give it a touch of originality and uniqueness. This is the style.
3.4 Characterization
Characters are the persons in a dramatic work. The playwright endows them with moral and dispositional qualities which are expressed (as discussed earlier in Module 2 Unit 1) in their words and actions. The reasons for the character’s action, his speech, his temperament constitute his motivation. In textual analysis, one could evaluate the character though the stage direction where some playwrights have some comments on the character’s disposition, his age, his physical attributes, his mode of dressing and other information that could be found there. The next thing is to evaluate his interactions with other characters through which you discover whether he is a flat or round character. A flat character remains unchanged in his outlook and dispositions from the beginning to the end but a round character could undergo a gradual or radical change which is brought about by events in the play. It is difficult to predict the actions of a round character because he is usually very close to real human beings.
Anything you write about a character must be contained in the text. You should therefore not infer, guess or suggest a characteristic moral disposition or physical attribute that cannot be identified in the text. For instance, you can rightly say that Baroka in The Lion and the Jewel is a crafty rogue who excels in self-indulgence. One of the characters said that about him and his action too in the scene where his current wife is pulling the hairs in his armpit and also in his seduction of Sidi. We have analysed the plays that are recommended for this course in subsequent units and we discussed some of the characters.
3.5 Setting
Setting is the place or the time where or when the action of the play takes place. In textual analysis, setting is also discussed. Setting could be a tribe, a village a town or a country depending on the disposition of the playwright. In some plays like Oedipus Rex, Arms and the Man, Hamlet and many others, the playwrights mention specific towns/countries like Thebes, Bulgaria, and Denmark. However, in some other plays like The Marriage of Anansewa, The Lion and the Jewel, and The Song of a Goat, the setting of each play is identified through the names of characters or other landmarks. In The Lion and the Jewel for instance, the reference to ‘sango’ by some of the characters highlights the Yoruba background of the play. Setting in terms of time, period, or locale can be mentioned, implied or alluded to in the text.
3.6 Language
Language seems to be the most essential technique in the analysis of any dramatic text. It is through language that the playwright communicates his ideas; so he manipulates it to suit his intention. Language could be in form of speech, gestures or other bodily signs/symbols. Dramatic language is not just an ordinary language because the playwright is compelled to incorporate descriptions about setting, character and the overall presentation of the story through the characters. The language must therefore be very economical, vivid and expressive. In Oedipus Rex, for example, the language is concise but loaded with meaning. Let us look at the following exchange in which Teiresias sums up the misfortunes of King Oedipus.
Oedipus: Man, must you wrap up your words in riddles?
Teiresias: Where you not framed for skill for solving riddles?
Oedipus: You taunt me with the gift that is my greatest.
Teiresias: Your great misfortune and your ruin.
In the last line of this exchange, the Blind Seer states that by solving the riddles and becoming the king of Thebes, Oedipus paved the way for his misfortune, which is marrying his mother after having killed his father. Consequently, there is a plague in Thebes and this leads to the search for a solution. In the course of this search, Oedipus discovers his true identity and this leads to his ruin. Another good example of condensed language in Hamlet is Polonius’ advice to his son, Laertes: “Neither a borrower nor a lender be / for loan often loses itself and friend/and borrowing dull that edge of husbandry” .
So, in dramatic language, the dramatist must think in terms of the characteristics of the characters, their speeches, their actions and the environment in which they operate and incorporate them in language. This is important because unlike in prose, where the novelist has enough time and space to describe everything and this include probing into the inner beings of the character, the dramatist relies only on dialogue to explore characters, describe incident, create environment, atmosphere and mood. This is the reason why he pays attention to the diction.
Diction is the choice or selection of the words which forms the dialogue through which the playwright communicates his ideas to his audience. The diction could be simple or difficult. A play that has very simple diction invariably will have a simple and direct language so is said to be accessible to a wider audience. This is because more people will read and understand it. Also, when it is presented on stage, people will understand the story and absorb the message with ease. In a play with simple diction, the playwright uses familiar and simple words.
On the other hand, some plays are difficult to understand. They are usually filled with unfamiliar words, terms, and symbols. Such plays are said to be obscure and the playwright is said to be writing for a select audience. This is because many people will find it difficult to understand and appreciate the play. The problem here is that if you do not understand a play, you would not enjoy it or be entertained by it. You can read a simple play just once and enjoy the story but it will take at least a second reading for the story of an obscure play to be understood. For instance, you can read two plays by Wole Soyinka, The Trials of Brother Jero and Madmen and Specialists. The former is very simple, direct and entertaining. It tells a story of a fake pastor who swindles people to make money. The latter is on the Nigerian civil war but you will have to read it several times to be able to decode the symbols used in it for you to understand the play.
3.7 Other Devices
Imagery
A playwright could employ literal or connotative language in his work. A literal language gives a direct meaning of the words while a connotative language gives more than one meaning to the word. The language here determines how we mentally visualize the object or situation. This is called imagery. It also shows the playwright’s attitude towards a particular character or situation. In The Lion and the Jewel, for example, Baroka is referred to as a ‘fox’, a ‘crafty rogue’, ‘wiry’, ‘goated’, ‘tougher than his sixty-two’, these references helps the reader to have a mental picture of Baroka. The image of a character and his mode of dressing as described in a stage-direction helps us, to a large extent, to evaluate the character’s disposition, personality, and the attitude of the playwright towards that character.
Symbolism
In everyday life, you come across symbols and even use them at times. Symbols are objects or things that communicate meaning or messages without using words for example, a cross or a bible symbolizes Christianity. It could be a character, an object, or an incident which represents an idea, a person, a quality, a profession or situation.
Symbolism is an artistic device through which the playwright uses factual language in a way that it deviates from its simple function of describing or recording but used to stand for or represent something else not directly named. This means, therefore, that in a play, you could have symbolic action, symbolic object and symbolic character.
Irony
A playwright uses irony to add flavour to his story. Here, a playwright uses words or action to create certain kinds of discrepancy between appearance and reality; between what is said or done and what is meant or intended. The types are verbal irony, dramatic irony and situational irony.
Verbal Irony
This is the simplest and commonest type of irony. It is a figure of speech where the word is the opposite of what is meant; for example, when he is a giant or the tallest man refers to a very short man.
Dramatic Irony
Here, there is a contrast between what the character says or does and what the reader knows as the truth. If a speech is meant to be understood in one way by a certain character in a play but the audience understands it in a different way, the scenario becomes a dramatic irony.
In other words, a character is under a delusion of a certain fact which has been overtaken by an intervening circumstance.
Situational Irony
In irony of situation, the expectation does not come out in the way it is anticipated. It is a situation of appearance versus reality. The action of a character here is at variance with the consequences or result of the action.
SELF-ASSESSMENT EXERCISE.
i. Read and analyze one of the plays recommended for this course.
ii. Discuss setting in any one of the plays set for this course.
4.0 CONCLUSION
We have tried in this unit to give you a detailed discussion on the steps you take in the analysis of a play. This is very important because they are tools you need to possess before you can appreciate, understand and criticize any play. We have also tried to show you how to analyse plays by identifying the dramatic elements and other devices used and how appropriate they are.
The reading of the play may be for an examination, entertainment or even for a job. If for instance, you secure a job as a literary editor in a print or even an electronic media, you need to know these techniques very well to aid you in your job. Who knows you may aspire to write a play, so the knowledge you have acquired in this unit will be of immense benefit to you.
5.0 SUMMARY
Textual analysis in the study of dramatic literature could be seen as the ‘palm oil’ with which drama is eaten. In other words, you cannot give what you do not have. So, you cannot talk of literary appreciation without knowing what to look out for to determine whether the playwright has done well or not. You have learnt from this unit that you approach the study of a play through its content and form. The content is the theme and the subject matter while the form is the style.
6.0 TUTOR-MARKED ASSIGNMENT
1. What are the basic steps in the textual analysis of a play?
7.0 REFERENCES/FURTHER READINGS
Abrams, M.H. (1981). A Glossary of Literary Terms. New York: Holt Rinehart.
Brocket, Oscar G. (1980). The Essential Theatre. New York: Holt Reinhart.
Miller, Arthur (1983) “Tragedy and the Common Man.” In X.J. Kennedy, ed. Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry and Drama. Boston: Little Brown
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