Essay Questions
Below you will find questions which you can use as inspiration for essay writing, essay planning or simply as an opportunity to think more deeply about drama.
1. Consider the role of social class in an early American domestic comedy or melo/drama, such as The Contrast (1787), Fashion (1845), The Drunkard (1844), The Octoroon (1859), or Margaret Fleming (1890). How are the classes defined and differentiated in the course of the play? What is the connection (if any) between monetary wealth and moral worth in your selected play? How do characters representing different classes comment diversely on the nature of American identity or American democracy? What is the connection between social class and happy ending in your selected play? In Dialogue: Read The School for Scandal (1777) or A Tale of Mystery (1802), each with its more pronounced delineation of nobility and commoner, and compare a character from that play with a parallel figure in an American drama.
2. Discuss the role of religion in one of the melodramas from the 19th century: The Indian Princess (1808), Metamora (1829), The Drunkard (1844), Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), or The Octoroon (1859). Consider a mainline tradition (e.g., Christianity, Quakerism) and its proscriptions against drinking, adultery, or even slavery, or consider any demonstration of piety, modesty, heathenism, prudishness, or religious hypocrisy in the course of the play. Selecting a single character from the chosen play, discuss the relationship of religiosity to his or her fortunate or tragic outcome. In Dialogue: Read A Tale of Mystery (1802), which includes violence and elements of the gothic in its pious tale, and compare the role of violence in this story and in an American melodrama.
3. Think about the essential elements of melodrama – heavy-handed emotion, scenes of recognition or discovery, 11th-hour reversals of fortune, stark moral divisions – in a classic American example of the form: The Indian Princess (1808), Metamora (1829), The Drunkard (1844), Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), The Octoroon (1859), Margaret Fleming (1890) or The Easiest Way (1908). Select one of these essential elements and discuss how it affects male versus female characters, racially “pure” versus racially “mixed” characters, or comic or tragic features of the selected text. In Dialogue: Compare a melodramatic element in A Tale of Mystery (1802) and an American melodrama.
4. Compare depictions of the workplace or working life in a modern/realist work – Margaret Fleming (1890) or The Easiest Way (1908) – and an expressionist work – The Adding Machine (1923) or Machinal (1928). How have industrialization and related technological revolutions, as well as a world war and other social upheaval, caused a shift in thinking about the value of work in the middle-class marketplace? Or, compare work life, the workplace, and the making of an “honest” living in either The Adding Machine or Machinal and a mid-century realist drama: Waiting for Lefty (1935), Death of a Salesman (1949), or A Raisin in the Sun (1959). Has the cynicism with regard to work that characterized the expressionist text been replaced or revised in the later work? In Dialogue: Compare the role of work or wealth in A Doll’s House (1879) or The Cherry Orchard (1904) and one of the American realist plays listed above. Or compare the role of work or wealth in From Morn to Midnight (1912, 1917) and one of the American expressionist plays listed above.
5. Read Arthur Miller’s brief essay “Tragedy and the Common Man” (1949), noting his emphasis on the tragic hero as an ordinary man instead of a king or other noble figure, as in classical tragedy, and his definition of the tragic hero as “willing to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing – his sense of personal dignity.” Consider a modern or contemporary American tragedy – The Children’s Hour (1934), Death of a Salesman (1949), The Zoo Story (1959), Dutchman (1964), Topdog/Underdog (2001) – in the terms devised by Miller; if you wish to discuss Buried Child (1978) or Fences (1985), take care to note that the main character in these stories does not die a violent death but simply passes away; can this kind of main character be said to have tragically, heroically laid down his life, per Miller’s theory? Can Miller’s definition of tragedy be applied to Long Day’s Journey Into Night (1942) or A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), where characters struggle mightily to maintain their dignity but all remain alive by the end of the play? After you have made the case for your selected play as a modern tragedy, consider classical elements as well: is the tragic figure a tragic hero on the traditional sense? Does s/he have a tragic flaw? Does the audience receive the tragic figure’s situation and outcome with the cathartic emotions of pity and fear? Does he or she remain a victim of cosmic circumstances – on a collision course with fate – as in classical tragedy, or is s/he seen to have more agency and thus more responsibility for his outcome? In Dialogue: The Cherry Orchard (1904) ends with a death but focuses on a group of nobility whose “tragedy” is the onslaught of the “common man.” Does this play anticipate Miller’s definition of modern tragedy anyway? Compare The Cherry Orchard and Death of a Salesman in the course of your answer.
6. Consider an experimental aspect of a mid-century or contemporary drama: Waiting for Lefty (1935), Our Town (1938), Death of a Salesman (1949), A Raisin in the Sun (1959), The Zoo Story (1959), Dutchman (1964), House of Blue Leaves (1971), Fefu and her Friends (1977), Buried Child (1978), Topdog/Underdog (2001) or Dead Man’s Cell Phone (2007). In what ways do anti-linear narrative, violation of the actor/audience divide, unexpected or implausible action, or other non-realist elements bear upon that play’s themes and outcome? In Dialogue: Compare an absurdist element in Endgame (1957) – bare or ruined external landscape; direly injured, damaged, deranged but indifferent characters; profound pessimism with respect to human survival (let alone human happiness or fellow-feeling); an absence of meaning beyond incidental or repetitive motions and banal statements; clownish physical action and dark comedy – and a proto-absurdist American play, such as The Adding Machine or even Our Town, or a contemporary American play.
7. Distinguish a contemporary from a mid-century play with respect to each's treatment of violence, sex, humor, or theatrical convention. If the later play is read as more explicit in some respect, what is gained or lost in playwright’s decision to stage climatic actions that occurs offstage (or in reference only) in the earlier play? In Dialogue: Compare the “two-hander” Blood Knot and a contemporary American play: The Zoo Story (1959), Dutchman (1964), Oleanna (1992), or Topdog/Underdog (2001). How is the violence occurring in each story justified, even necessitated, by the opposition or conflict between the character pairings?
8. Comment on the role of history – variously defined as:
- the collective or personal past (i.e., early/forgotten narratives, “the return of the repressed”)
- the actual as opposed to the fabricated (e.g., an historical figure)
- the temporal (i.e., a sense of time passing or running out; making history/leaving one’s mark while still alive)
in a contemporary play: Fefu and her Friends (1977), Buried Child (1987), FOB (1981), The Independence of Eddie Rose (1986), Fences (1985), Angels in America (1993), Topdog/Underdog (2001), Anna in the Tropics (2002), Doubt (2004), Dead Man’s Cell Phone (2007) or Hamilton (2015). How do historical context, current events, repressed memory, repeating mistakes of the past, historical reenactment, and/or “ancient history” within a family or community affect the selected play’s structure, crises, and climax? In Dialogue: Compare the theme of a shameful or disputed past in Blood Knot (1961) and a contemporary play.
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