drama ii modern drama lecture 21 1. synopsis 1. a conclusive talk 2. george bernard shaw 3. the myth...
TRANSCRIPT
SYNOPSIS
1. A Conclusive Talk
2. George Bernard Shaw
3. The Myth Behind the Play
4. Contextual Background
5. George Bernard Shaw’s Philosophy
6. Plot Overview
7. Characters, Role, Relationship, Conflicts & Significance
8. Themes and the major Conflicts
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A Conclusive TalkWaiting for Godot
Lecture 14
Waiting for Godot By Samuel Beckett3. Samuel Beckett’s BiographyAn Overview of Waiting for Godot4. Characters in the PlaySetting of the PlayBeckett’s Theatrical Concept and Style
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A Conclusive TalkWaiting for Godot
Lecture 15
SUMMARY: Waiting for Godot2. Summary and AnalysisAct I: Introduction & Pozzo and Lucky's EntranceAct II: Introduction & Pozzo and Lucky's Entrance
3. Discussion Questions / Aspects to be analyzed
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A Conclusive TalkWaiting for Godot
Lecture 16
SUMMARY: Waiting for Godot (Conti…)2. Summary and AnalysisAct I: Introduction & Pozzo and Lucky's EntranceAct II: Introduction & Pozzo and Lucky's Entrance
3. Discussion Questions / Aspects to be analyzed
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A Conclusive TalkWaiting for Godot
Lecture 17
Absurdist DramaDialogue and Language/Humorof Absurdist DramaPlot & Structure of Absurdist DramaTHEMES in Waiting for GodotAspects to Consider
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A Conclusive TalkWaiting for Godot
Lecture 18
1. Waiting for Godot Symbolism, Imagery & Allegory 2. Setting3. Waiting for Godot Genre, TONE, STYLE & Title4. Waiting for Godot as Booker’s Seven Basic Plots Analysis:
Tragedy Plot5. Social Acceptance of Waiting for Godot
Critical Analysis
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A Conclusive TalkWaiting for Godot
Lecture 19
An Introduction to 1. Philosophical Background of Waiting for Godot Theatre of Absurd Existentialism The Paradox of Consciousness
2. Becket: Critical Analysis (Analytical Mapping) Characters
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A Conclusive TalkWaiting for Godot
Lecture 20
. Analytical Mapping: Social Significance 2. Philosophical Background: ThemesA. SocialB. PsychologicalC. Religious3. Dramatic references: Themes
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George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) was the third and youngest child (and only son) of George Carr Shaw and Lucinda Elizabeth Gurly Shaw.
Technically, he belonged to the Protestant “ascendancy”—the landed Irish gentry—but his impractical father was first a sinecured civil servant and then an unsuccessful grain merchant
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George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard grew up in an atmosphere of genteel poverty, which to him was more humiliating than being merely poor
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Another historical point that may have some importance is that in 1872 his mother left her husband and took her two daughters to London, following her music teacher, George John Vandeleur Lee, who from 1866 had shared households in Dublin with the Shaws.
Whatever we may feel about this, it shows him close to an exceptionally independent woman
George Bernard Shaw13
In 1876 Shaw resolved to become a writer, and he joined his mother and elder sister (the younger one having died) in London. Shaw in his 20s suffered continuous frustration and poverty.
He depended upon his mother's pound a week from her husband and her earnings as a music teacher.
George Bernard Shaw14
George Bernard Shaw
He spent his afternoons in the British Museum reading room, writing novels and reading what he had missed at
school, and his evenings in search of additional self education in the lectures and debates that characterized contemporary middle-class London intellectual activities.
His fiction failed utterly. The semiautobiographical and
aptly titled Immaturity (1879; published 1930) repelled every publisher in London.
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His next four novels were similarly refused, as were most of the articles he submitted to the press for a decade.
Shaw's initial literary work earned him less than 10 shillings a year. A fragment posthumously published as An Unfinished Novel in 1958 (but written 1887–88) was his final false start in fiction.
Despite his failure as a novelist in the 1880s, Shaw found himself during this decade. He became a vegetarian, a socialist, a spellbinding orator, a polemicist, and tentatively a playwright
George Bernard Shaw16
Before long, Shaw had become one of the most sought-after public speakers in England. He argued in his pamphlets in favor of equality of income and advocated the equitable division of land and capital. He believed that property was "theft" and felt, like Karl Marx, that capitalism was deeply flawed and was unlikely to last.
Unlike Marx, however, Shaw favored gradual reform over revolution. And there we see Alfred Doolittle, common dustman.
George Bernard Shaw17
In one pamphlet written in 1897, he predicted that socialism "will come by prosaic installments of public regulation and public administration enacted by ordinary parliaments, vestries, municipalities, parish councils, school boards, etc."
George Bernard Shaw18
In 1892, Shaw wrote his first play, Widowers' Houses, about the evils of slumlords. The play was attacked savagely by people who opposed his politics.
It was then that Shaw knew he was a good playwright--he must have been to have upset so many people with his social commentary.
He went on to revolutionize the English theater by concentrating his writing on various social issues at a time when most other playwrights were writing "sentimental pap."
George Bernard Shaw19
The Myth Behind the Play
There is never any overt reference in the play to Pygmalion; Shaw assumes a classical understanding.
According to the Mythology Guide “Pygmalion saw so much to blame in women that he came at last to abhor the relation with them, and resolved to live unmarried. He was a sculptor, and had made with wonderful skill a statue of ivory, so beautiful that no living woman could be compared to it in beauty.
It was indeed the perfect sem-blance of a maiden that seemed to be alive, and only prevented from moving by modesty. His art was so perfect that it concealed itself, and its product looked like theworkmanship of nature.
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Pygmalion admired his own work, and at last fell in love with the counter-feit creation. Oftentimes he laid his hand upon it, as if to assure himself whether it were living or not, and could not even then believe that it was only ivory.
The festival of Venus was at hand, a festival celebrated withgreat pomp at Cyprus. Victims were offered, the altars smoked,and the odor of incense filled the air.
When Pygmalion had performed his part in the solemnities, he stood before the altar and timidly said, "Ye gods, who can do all things, give me, I pray you, for my wife" he dared not say "my ivory virgin," but said instead "one like my ivory virgin." Venus, who was present at the festival, heard him
The Myth Behind the Play22
While he stands astonished and glad, though doubting, and fears he may be mistaken, again and again with a lover's ardor he touches the object of his hopes.
It was indeed alive! The veins when pressed yielded to the finger and thenresumed their roundness. Then at last the votary of Venus found words to thank the goddess, and pressed his lips upon lips as real as his own.
The Myth Behind the Play23
The Play Itself: PYGMALION
One of the most popular plays of Bernard Shaw, first performed in 1913 in Vienna and published and performed in London in 1916.
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Pygmalion: Background
Pygmalion is set in London, England, around the beginning of the twentieth century.
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During this time in London, working-class people like Eliza Doolittle
Pygmalion: Background
• lived in slums
• had no heat or hot water
• had to put coins in a meter to get electric light
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Pygmalion: Background
The class structure in England at this time was very rigid.
upper class
middle class
working class
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Pygmalion: Background
The government did provide some schooling.
However, an education did not teach the proper speech that was considered a sign of the upper class.
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Pygmalion: Background
The way that many working-class people spoke was an obstacle to their becoming middle class.
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Pygmalion: Background
In Greek mythology, Pygmalion was a gifted, young sculptor who resolved never to marry.
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Pygmalion: Background
But after Pygmalion created a statue of a beautiful woman, he fell in love with the statue.
Miserable because he loved a lifeless object, he appealed to Aphrodite, the goddess of love.
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Pygmalion: Background
Sympathetic to the young artist’s plight, Aphrodite turned the statue into a live woman.
Pygmalion named the beautiful maiden Galatea, and the two were married.
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George Bernard Shaw
“I must warn my readers that my attacks are directed against themselves, not against my stage figures.”
-Shaw
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George Bernard Shaw
• Shaw wanted to force his viewers to face the reality of unpleasant events.
• He promoted the “unpleasant” plays by publishing a long preface in which he could argue his views.
• Shaw was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1925.
• He continued to write until he was 94.
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http://www.meghanwilliams.com/ugb.html
Meg Williams
What we believe influences how we behave
What we believe influences how we behave
Likewise, how we behave impacts what people think
about us.
Likewise, how we behave impacts what people think
about us.
In turn, this
affects how
others behave towards
us.
In turn, this
affects how
others behave towards
us.
Ultimately, how they behave towards us
reinforces what we believed about ourselves in the first
place
Ultimately, how they behave towards us
reinforces what we believed about ourselves in the first
place
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Pygmalion: Introduction
In this play, George Bernard Shaw uses humor and lively characterization to explore how
language,
class structure,
education,
and gender
influence how people are seen by society.
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Pygmalion: Introduction
The two main characters are• Eliza Doolittle—a poor
but proud flower girl with a cockney accent—a way of speaking associated with the working classes.
• Henry Higgins—an arrogant and insensitive linguistics professor
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Pygmalion: Introduction
Eliza comes to Higgins’s house to ask him to give her speech lessons.
She wants to learn to speak properly so that she can get a job in a flower shop instead of selling flowers on the street.
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Pygmalion: Introduction
Higgins decides to take the girl on as a professional challenge.
He boasts to his associate Colonel Pickering that with six months of lessons, Eliza could be passed off as a duchess.
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Pygmalion: Introduction
Higgins has Eliza move into his home.
With the help of Pickering and the housekeeper, Mrs. Pearce, he teaches Eliza the proper speech and manners of the upper class.
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Pygmalion: Introduction
Although Eliza wants to learn, there is tension between her and Higgins.
She also wants to be treated with respect—as a person.
Higgins, however, persists in treating her as a project and an object.
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Pygmalion: Introduction
If Higgins’s experiment succeeds, where will Eliza go from there?
Will Eliza and Henry Higgins become friends, or will their differences drive them apart?
Will learning to speak like a duchess allow her to live like one?
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kind, polite, generous, enthusiastic, eager, confident
impatient, rude, confident, superior, self-important
anxious, eager, emotional, ambitious, unsure
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Character Position in society
Evidence in the play
ElizaLower class Language: calls
gentleman “sir” and “cap’in” (or captain) which is a compliment
Behaviour: respectful to people of higher class
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Character Position in society
Evidence in the play
Henry Higgins Language: calls Eliza
“you silly girl” and Pickering “my dear man” (an equal and friend)
Behaviour: rude (and patronizing) to lower class; polite to same or upper classMiddle
class
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Character Position in society
Evidence in the play
Colonel Pickering
Upper class
Language: prepared to begin a conversation with Henry, whom he does not know; generous with praise to him
Behaviour: generally confident and polite; but ignores Eliza
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Words to know
• Phonetics• Dialect• Cockney• Dramatist• Fin de siecle • Social satire• Aestheticism • Fabian society• Shavian• Naturalism
Fabian Society
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Major Conflicts1. Status Divide
The nature of class structure
Upper Class: Higgins, Col. Pickering, Mrs. Higgins, Mrs. Clair and Freddy Eynsford Hill.
Middle Class: Mrs. Pierce She does not, however, represent “middle-class morality” alone. In many ways that is also a quality of Higgins’ and Col. Pickering’s class.
Lower Working Class: Eliza, Alfred Doolittle and his never seen but often heard about “wife.” and Eliza’s step-mother.
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Major Conflicts1. Status Divide A vast gulf between the poor and even
the lower upper class. Higgins’ “cast-off” change is a fortune
to Eliza who assumes later that he must have been drunk.
Eliza’s belief that riding in a taxi is the ultimate badge of upper class quality of life.
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Major Conflicts2. Gender Relations/Differences
The relationship between genders “No, no, no, you two infinitely stupid male creatures!”
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Major Conflicts2. Gender Relations/Differences
Gender Differences Neither Col. Pickering nor Henry Higgins have a
clue about the situation they are putting Eliza or themselves into.
Mrs. Pierce recognizes that Higgins is immorally using the power granted him by his patriarchal culture to pressure Eliza, a presser which if she gives in could lead her to a life of wickedness.
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Major Conflicts3. Self-consciousness
Self Perception Eliza’s sense of worth She is infected with the lie.
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Eliza learns that women in the upper classes in fact do not have the independence that women of the lower classes do. They must be connected to a man in some way to be respectable within “middle-class morality.”
Eliza rejects being a “gold-digger” and Higgins rejects female “puppy-dog” tricks.
Only a working skill frees Eliza.
Major Conflicts3. Self-consciousness
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Major Conflicts3. Self-consciousness Eliza has a powerful sense of her value: “I’m a
good girl I am!” Therefore she will never become a “kept woman.”
She has ambition willing to give up two thirds of her daily income to improve herself.
But she is infected with class-prejudice Put the girls in their place just a bit You’re going to allow yourself to marry that low born
woman?
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Major Conflicts4. Social Snobbery
Eliza’s Struggle To work at a flower-shop She is infected by social snobbery herself. Discovers that a rise in culture means a loss of
independence (as does her step-mother). Eventually achieves independence.
Probably the most Important conflict in the play: the class system is Eliza’s primary antagonist
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