Literature. Recommendations
"Analysis dramatic work".
It is preferable to begin the analysis of a drama with the analysis of a small fragment, episode (phenomenon, scene, etc.). The analysis of an episode of a dramatic work is carried out practically according to the same scheme as the analysis of an episode epic work, with the only difference that the reasoning should be supplemented with an analysis of the dynamic and dialogic compositions of the episode.
So,
ANALYSIS OF AN EPISODE OF A DRAMATIC WORK
The boundaries of the episode are already determined by the very structure of the drama (the phenomenon is separated from other components of the drama); give the episode a title.
Characterize the event underlying the episode: what place does it occupy in the development of the action? (Is this an exposition, a climax, a denouement, an episode in the development of the action of the entire work?)
Name the main (or only) participants in the episode and briefly explain:
who are they?
what is their place in the system of characters (main, main, secondary, off-stage)?
Reveal the features of the beginning and ending of the episode.
Formulate the question, the problem that is in the spotlight:
author; characters.
Identify and characterize the theme and contradiction (in other words, mini-conflict) underlying the episode.
Describe the characters participating in the episode:
their attitude to the event;
to the question (problem);
to each other;
briefly analyze the speech of the participants in the dialogue;
analyze the author's remarks (explanations for speech, gestures, facial expressions, poses of the characters);
identify the characteristics of the characters’ behavior, the motivation for their actions (the author’s or the reader’s);
determine the balance of forces, grouping or regrouping of heroes depending on the course of events in the episode.
Characterize the dynamic composition of the episode (its exposition, plot, climax, denouement; in other words, according to what pattern the emotional tension develops in the episode).
Describe the dialogical composition of the episode: what principle is used to cover the topic?
Understand author's attitude to the event; correlate it with the culmination and idea of the entire work as a whole; determine the author’s attitude to the problem.
Formulate the main idea (author's idea) of the episode.
Analyze the plot, figurative and ideological connections of this episode with other episodes of the drama.
Now let's move on to a comprehensive analysis of the dramatic work. The success of this work is only possible if you understand the theory dramatic kind literature (see topic No. 15).
So,
The time of creation of the work, the history of the concept, brief description era.
The connection between the play and any literary direction or cultural era (antiquity, Renaissance, classicism, Enlightenment, sentimentalism, romanticism, critical realism, symbolism, etc.). How did the features of this direction appear in the work?1
Type and genre dramatic work: tragedy, comedy (of manners, characters, positions, cloak and sword; satirical, everyday, lyrical, slapstick, etc.), drama (social, everyday, philosophical, etc.), vaudeville, farce, etc. Meaning Check these terms in the reference literature.
Specifics of the organization of drama action: division into actions, scenes, acts, phenomena, etc. The author's original components of the drama (for example, “dreams” instead of acts or actions in M. Bulgakov’s drama “Run”).
Playbill ( characters). Features of names (for example, “speaking” names). Main, secondary and off-stage characters.
Peculiarities dramatic conflict: tragic, comic, dramatic; social, everyday, philosophical, etc. Features of dramatic action: external - internal; “on stage” - “behind the stage”, dynamic (actively developing) - static, etc. Features of the composition of the play. The presence and specificity of the main elements: exposition, increasing emotional tension, conflict and its resolution, a new increase in emotional tension, climaxes, etc. How are all the “sharp points” (especially emotional scenes) of the work related to each other? What is the composition of the individual components of the play (acts, actions, phenomena)? Here we need to name specific episodes that are these “sharp points” of action.
Specifics of creating dialogue in a play. Features of the sound of each character’s theme in dialogues and monologues. ( Brief Analysis dialogical composition of one episode of your choice).
Theme of the play. Leading topics. Key episodes (scenes, phenomena) that help reveal the theme of the work.
Problems of the work. Leading problems and key episodes (scenes, phenomena) in which the problems are especially acute. The author's vision of solving the problems posed.
Specifics of the author's remarks explaining:
actions of characters (acting);
stage environment, costumes and scenery;
the mood and idea of a scene or phenomenon.
Specifics author's position, expressed through remarks.
The meaning of the play's title.
1. This point is revealed if such features are clearly expressed in the work (for example, in the classicist comedies of D. Fonvizin or in the comedy “Woe from Wit” by A. Griboyedov, which combined the features of three directions at once: classicism, romanticism and realism).
Recommendations for the topic theory >>
When analyzing a dramatic work, you will need the skills that you acquired while completing tasks to analyze an episode of the work.
Be careful and strictly adhere to the analysis plan.
Topics 15 and 16 are closely related to each other, so successful completion of the work is possible only if detailed study theoretical materials on these topics.
You should read those works of fiction that can be considered within the framework of this topic, namely:
A.S. Griboyedov. Comedy "Woe from Wit"
N. Gogol. Comedy "The Inspector General"
A.N. Ostrovsky. Comedy "Our people - we will be numbered!"; dramas "The Thunderstorm", "Dowry"
A.P. Chekhov. Play "The Cherry Orchard"
M. Gorky. The play "At the Bottom"
Attached files
Dramaturgy of the play based on the play by Leonid Andreev
"The One Who Gets Slapped"
Music for the play:
Spleen: “Rock and Roll Star”, “Romance”, “Are You Dreaming About It”
“We sat and smoked”, “Riki-Tiki-Tavi”
"Plastic Life", "Sihanoukville"
"Chateau Margaux"
L. V. Beethoven Third movement of the 14th sonata in Spanish. Victor Zinchuk.
ANALYSIS OF A DRAMATIC WORK
1) The theme of the play is Love, which everyone is looking for, but does not find, because... they themselves do not know how to love, trying to achieve it, even from “predators”, and only the hero loves, loves sincerely and openly, without trying to take possession of her completely himself. Ready to make any sacrifice in the name of this high feeling, which I experienced for the first time in my life, being already a married man and completely disillusioned with people, and even with existence itself, as a bright and extraordinary person that he himself was.
2) Idea of plays s: The arrival of a stranger, very often in classical works Russian and foreign authors, the appearance of someone else out of place leads to tragic consequences. (The destruction of two families - “Wuthering Heights” by E. Bronte.) Also from Andreev: a man from an aristocratic society who appears in a traveling circus, destroys the established way of life with his appearance, thereby introducing a note of discord, both between the circus workers and his own life condemns himself to death along with an innocent girl, endowing himself with a divine symbol.
Andreev himself is an unusual symbolist writer, a friend of A. Blok and others. The symbols of his work begin with the name of the hero and heroine. “That one” - Where from? Why? "Thoth" is the God of wisdom in Egyptian mythology. "Consuella" is a consolation. To start working on the play, having the name of the heroine and knowing that it was taken from the novel by George Sand (the pseudonym of the French writer Aurora Dupin, the lover of Frederic Chopin, the great composer, who wore trousers and smoked a pipe, thereby challenging aristocratic society, mother of five children, the writer is a romantic, in her prose one can discern the features of Gothic prose, from which we can conclude that Walter Scott had a huge influence on her) the name of the heroine, which Leonid Andreev took not by chance, the heroine was not only consoled, but also rested in peace in at a young age. It is difficult to accurately define the idea; the more you delve into the material, the more it seems to have a double, and sometimes even a triple bottom. A deeply philosophical tragedy in which the real names of all the characters are not explained; they are all bearers of the stage name. Nameless heroes, looking at us from the past, no matter what, retain and carry all those human qualities and eternal human mistakes, and therefore they themselves become some kind of symbols of eternal values and great losses, where values take on a different character. The idea of the play is that the height of the spirit is determined by the baseness of the position, for some reason the power of money gives the right to buy innocent children's souls? In the wake of perestroika in our state, this particular play seemed especially relevant to me, where people commit crimes that are redeemed thanks to their wealth, and do not bear any responsibility for it. We come across such stories all the time.
3) The main conflict is “...after all, they buy everything beautiful!” Zinida. As they are bought and sold human souls. The hero came to this world in order to change it, since he himself fell into this system of buying and selling (the scene of the appearance of the Master). We know that the world cannot be changed.
4) The main events of the play: There is not a single event in L. Andreev’s work in which there would not be symbols of mysticism and riddles.
a) Initial event: The hero leaves his usual habitat, the hero’s internal moral conflict leads him to a traveling circus.
b) The appearance of a hero in the circus, where its own life flows, where there are its own laws and its own ideas about it, but even in the circus the hero plunges into an infinity of problems, and the circus is a “model” of the world order from which he escaped.
c) Meeting of hero and heroine stirred the hero's soul, since the heroine, in his opinion, possessed divine innocence and purity of soul. “Struck by Cupid’s arrows,” he is ready to do anything to stay by her side.
d) The hero is forced to open the door to the circus director its origin, thereby leading to confusion and amazement.
e) Clarification of the relationship between Zinida and Bezano, becoming a witness to this scene, the hero discovers the secret aspects of the life of this circus, as well as the secret aspects of the life of the world and any society in which people are forced to live, which are already familiar to him.
f) The heroine’s teacher set out to sell it to a perverted baron who is clearly in his old age. This fact leaves all the characters indifferent, except the hero in love.
g) Clown Jim forbids the hero to peer and sneer at Providence, due to something already experienced. The hero receives a real slap in the face, because he has not yet learned that one cannot work for nothing. Here the author clearly draws a parallel between himself and the hero of the play.
h) Confidential conversation of the hero with the heroine’s “educator”. The conversation was paid for by the hero in material terms. Another step towards saving the heroine from the web, into which an innocent creature should fall, was not crowned with success, because... too much power of money.
i) Tiger Tamer Zinida loses consciousness after colossal dedication and nervous tension in the arena with tigers, having crossed the permitted boundaries, being already sure that she will now be torn apart by predators, and thereby blowing up auditorium, appears, trying to still hold on, but loses consciousness, which causes a general commotion throughout the circus. I limited this striking event of the play with the internal discord of the tamer with the dislike of people and the devotion of predators.
j) Divine innocence of the heroine in this event he asks the hero a question - “What is love?” Already trying to take advantage of the love of others (Jim, Thomas, Tilly and Polly, Besano, Zinida, Papa Briquet). The hero does not answer her question directly, but tries to openly confess his love, raising himself to the same level as divine innocence, clothing his soul in divine wisdom, trying to make the illiterate girl, who is unable to comprehend, understand his profound words and look into “second bottom” (or second plane) used by the hero. When the hero receives a slap, he turns everything into a game, fortune telling, etc. And she just wants to be full all the time.
k) The Coming of the Master, the culmination of the work. This event completely reveals the hero’s life before joining the circus, and in this event the author clearly makes it clear how endless the destruction of one’s own kind is due to envy, self-interest, and the desire for fame.
m) Trying to persuade the rider, also in love with the heroine, to save the girl, stumbles upon silence, and the impossibility of doing this, due to his own convictions.
m) The Tamer makes it clear to the hero that he is “superfluous”, if he is superfluous in the world from which he came, and superfluous here, then what is the point in further existence?
o) Clowns during a benefit performance the heroines feel like frauds, because... They understand that they cannot go against fate.
p) The heroine realized what life with the baron threatened her with, and in tears asks the hero for help, although he understands that nothing can be returned.
p) Poisoning, that's the only thing What remains for the hero to save an innocent soul, and he himself dies.
c) While still conscious, after the heroine’s breathing has stopped, he hears Thomas running in and reports that the baron has shot himself. The hero's assessment is the end of the tragedy human life, where very often close souls are forced to live apart.
r) The Outrage of Clown Jim, and the explanation of the tamer, this is the final point of the mysterious and mystical work of L. Andreev.
Related information.
Homework
on literature
What is the most effective way to study drama? modern school? Why?
The modern way of studying drama at school seems to be this: first, familiarization with the play - watching a video recording of a performance or a television performance (not a movie based on it!) - familiarization with the text and its analysis - watching a performance in the theater (the last element is desirable, but optional) - discussion.
Drama - the most complex type readings for schoolchildren. The difficulty of playing the piece ininsufficient development of both recreative and creative thinking.
In a modern school, the following ways of studying drama can be used:
Traditional way (reading - studying - watching). Experience at school shows that when the teacher reads vividly, most students listen to him with pleasure, become involved in the events taking place, and realize the main qualities of the characters and the relationships between them. You don’t have to read the play to the end if the teacher is sure that interest in the action is high, and there are difficulties in recognizing the characters and in orienting art world overcome, - then the children will be able to finish reading on their own.
You shouldn’t talk about what you read immediately after reading in class: you need to give the text the opportunity to reread and think about it. Therefore, it is more appropriate to invite students at home to reflect on a number of questions that will activate all areas of reader perception. The teacher chooses the form, oral or written, arbitrarily.
The specificity of a dramatic work is that the conflict is not described, but depicted: the reader must reconstruct it, guess, understand its essence and reasons only on the basis of the words of the characters and the author’s remarks. This is the most difficult thing in reading. Therefore, the teacher’s task is to help the children clarify the conflict and see its roots. The most convenient way to do this is to move from scene to scene, from action to action. During the lesson, the focus is on action as an integral element of the composition of a dramatic work. It is necessary to highlight its stages, when drawing up a plan, we also highlight the elements of the plot: exposition, plot, episodes of action development, climax and denouement. As a result, all our events will be correlated with the plot.
Then we highlight plot elements: everything that is not directly related to the action, but slows it down, pauses it. These are monologues and dialogues that somehow reveal inner world the hero, reveal his past, indicate his relationships with other characters, etc.; descriptions contained in replicas (appearance, nature, premises), letters (their content). We pay attention to details, images-symbols (if any), motives, author's remarks that precede the action and data during the action. Thus, we get a certain portrait of each character.
And of course, a drama lesson cannot do without expressive reading of roles, dramatization of individual episodes, and creation of a play project.
In a “strong” class, where the level literary development students above should be appliedthe way of analysis is by actions.
We are designing a lesson system where we study each action in detail.
We begin the lesson by setting a learning task and, after creating a problem situation, we begin to solve it.Action analysis will be devoted to finding an answer to these questions.
The projects of the following lessons are created according to the same principles: from text analysis, from highlighting structural elements- to questions and tasks that will help students see these elements and understand their role, and therefore come closer to understanding the essence of the conflict and its causes and to understanding the images of the characters.
In many ways, designing the stage of studying the text of a dramatic work is similar to designing lessons on epic works. However, one should take into account when compiling a lesson on drama: this is the complexity of perception of a dramatic text, the need for visual concretization of images of characters that are created differently than in the epic, highlighting the event basis and consideration of the conflict in its development, features of the language of dramatic art (the importance of stage directions, overlapping lines , antithesis in mise-en-scène, the role of music, lighting, manners and gestures). Inclusion in the project latent analysis, creative activity students helps the children look at the world created by the author with different points vision, which means a deeper, more accurate understanding of the characters’ characters and their feelings.
2.What techniques are actively used in the study of drama? Why?
Methods and techniques for working on drama are varied. Let's look at some of them:
1. “Point of view from the audience”, installation on visual perception. Schoolchildren should imagine themselves mentally seeing the play; for this purpose, it is useful to use fragments of memories of performances.
2. It is important to encourage students to IMAGINE what is happening on stage for this purpose to suggest the situation: “Imagine, you are sitting on the stage.”
Another technique that encourages students to penetrate into the text of the play iscreating imaginary mise-en-scenes, those. Schoolchildren are asked to think about how they would position the characters at a certain moment of the action, to imagine their positions, gestures, and movements.
The core of work on each act is consistent observation of the development of the action, the internal logic of this development in a given act. Students' observation of the development of action should be inseparable from penetration into the characters of the characters. Questions help with this.
When analyzing drama, the subject of constant attention isspeechcharacter, its originality, since the character’s character, his social face, state of mind reveals speech. The way speech sounds plays a big role in who it is addressed to. We must remember that the selection of words and their sound - intonation is directly related to SUBTEXT. To reveal the subtext means to reveal the essence of the play, the relationship between the reasons for the character’s actions and their external manifestation. If students are taught to understand subtext, then we are raising a good reader and viewer.
We should not forget that when analyzing a play, the speech of the characters, as well as the authors’ remarks, the playbill and the remark to it are of great importance (students often miss this when reading). For this purpose, the following tasks are important: give a remark for the actors following the example of Gogol does this in “The Inspector General” or “What does the stage direction say in the second act of “The Thunderstorm” in the scene of Katerina’s farewell to her husband.”
Great value has an expressive reading when working on a play. In this case, the student moves from the position of a spectator to the position of a performer.
The author and his attitude to what is happening is the main question facing the study of any work. In a dramatic work, the author's position is more hidden than in works of other types. For this purpose, the teacher has to: draw the attention of students to the comments made by the author for the actors and invite them to think about how the writer relates to his characters? Or he suggests answering the question: “How does Ostrovsky force the viewer watching act 3 to justify Katerina?”
In the process of analyzing the observations obtained, the teacher must generalize for this purpose important summative questions, such as: “What have we learned about life county town? How did the city officials appear before us? What is the nature of the measures taken in Gorodnichy? or “What do the characters of Dikoy and Kabanikha have in common, and what are their differences? Why is a conflict between Katerina and the world of Kabanova inevitable?”
On final lessons in a generalized form, the questions arise that the students were looking for answers to in the process of analyzing the drama.
The final lesson, in fact, begins with work on the last action of the play, when the conflict is resolved and the author-playwright, as it were, sums up. To this end special meaning has expressive reading by students: this tests the depth of their understanding of the characters of the characters.
Reading by role also shows the degree of students' understanding of a dramatic work. A teacher can approach the distribution of roles in different ways. Homework for such a lesson can be a written or oral description of the character whose role the student will play.
At the final classes there are competitions for reciters of individual scenes, stage history dramas, watching the film adaptation, discussing it.
In connection with the study of drama, the student must master a number of theoretical and literary concepts. A number of them should be included in the active vocabulary of schoolchildren: act, action, phenomenon, monologue, dialogue, list of characters, remarks. As students penetrate into drama, the vocabulary of schoolchildren is replenished: conflict, plot, exposition, plot, climax, denouement, genres: comedy, drama, tragedy.; play, performance. The performance is not an illustration in the play, but a new work of art, created by the theater, interpreting the playwright’s plays in its own way.
3.How to “translate” literary analysis drama into student questions and assignments?
Drama Analysis
The conversation method used in the study of epic and lyrical works is also effective for dramaturgical works. Most methodologists recommend using it mainly when analyzing the development of action, clarifying the conflict, problems and ideological meaning of dramatic works. One cannot but agree with this, since the conversation makes it possible to widely involve the text of the work, to use the facts obtained by students as a result of independent work on the work.
Of particular importance when analyzing dramatic works is independent work students over the text of the work. Analysis of the speech and actions of characters helps students understand the essence of their characters and create in their imagination a specific idea of their appearance. In this case, the students’ analysis of a particular phenomenon or scene of a dramatic work will to some extent resemble the work of an actor on a role.
When analyzing a play, it is of great importance to clarify the subtext of the characters’ remarks. Work on clarifying the subtext of the characters’ speech can be done already in the 8th grade when studying “Woe from Wit” (act. 1, scene 7, - Chatsky’s meeting with Sophia).
In the process of analyzing a dramatic work, we pay special attention to the speech of the characters: it helps to reveal spiritual world the hero, his feelings, testifies to the culture of a person, his social status.
However, one cannot consider the characters’ speech only in this function; One should remember and during the work more than once draw students’ attention to the fact that every phrase of the character, every remark, “like electricity, is charged with action, for they all must move the play forward, serve the development of its conflict and plot.”
In the play, a person, placed by the playwright in certain circumstances, acts according to his own logic, the characters themselves, “without the author’s prompting,” lead events to a “fatal ending.” “With each phrase, the character takes a step up the ladder of his destiny,” wrote A. N. Tolstoy. Therefore, when reading dramatic works, some students do not have visual images of the characters at all, while for others, the images blur, the contours and colors are constantly mixed, for still others (usually there are very few of them), the images that arise in the imagination are based on visual ideas about some persons. Thus, students often recreate the appearance of a hero based on the external characteristics of the actor who played his role in a play or film.”
In plays, everything is communicated and everything is accomplished through the speech of the characters themselves. The author only in exceptional cases points to the behavior of the character and the emotional and intonation side of his speech in an unusually short form(remarks).
Many students, when reading a play, cannot recreate in their imagination either the actions or behavior of the characters. Others, based on the logical and semantic side of the characters’ speech and perceiving it as a source of information, recreate in their imagination only the actions of the heroes. Some students (usually there are very few of them) pay attention when reading a play to stage directions that indicate the external actions of the characters, and on this basis they try to “see” the external (physical) side of their behavior, leaving them without attention to the mental state of the heroes, which determines their external actions. In addition, the vast majority of schoolchildren do not notice any remarks indicating the psychological state of the characters. But, “seeing” only the physical side of the character’s behavior and not “seeing” his internal state, students do not imagine him as a person. For them, the hero remains an incorporeal creature, a mouthpiece for the author’s ideas; the character of the hero is not deeply known.
Schoolchildren cannot recreate the psychophysical behavior of the characters in a dramatic work based on their speech, because they take into account only its content side (what is said) and lose sight of the form of expression of this content. This, however, is not limited to the features of “vision”
students of the actions and behavior of the drama characters based on the perception of the content of their speech. IN best case scenario students “see” the act itself, but, excluding it from the specific situation that to some extent predetermines it, they cannot thus reveal the subtext of this act.
The experience of perceiving a dramatic genre, acquired by students in the process of studying literature, is the most important aid for the perception of a dramatic work. We mean that the student has developed a certain knowledge of the specifics of the genre - its structure, elements, features of recreating characters, etc.
Another thing is the circle of historical and everyday realities, human relations, linguistic idioms.
So, merchant life, shown by Ostrovsky, or a certain “freedom” with which the wife and daughter of Gogol’s Gorodnichy perceive Khlestakov’s courtship will definitely require special comment.
Sometimes, to activate the imagination of students, one should turn to historical and everyday commentary. This is done in cases where students who are far from the era depicted in the drama do not have the necessary ideas and knowledge and cannot recreate in their imagination the details of the external appearance of the character in the play, for example: the mayor’s uniform, Kabanikha’s clothes, etc. If students are not helped, then they will not have the appropriate ideas and will only learn the meaning of the word.
The character’s aspirations, moods, and feelings “move” and change during the course of action and dialogue. All this is expressed by his speech, therefore, when analyzing the most important points dialogue, it is necessary to understand the behavior of the character, which should be considered in its “double” nature, i.e., as psycho-physical. One cannot ignore such an important moment in dramaturgy as the text.
In Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, the characters have just experienced very dramatic events, the collapse of hopes, the loss of ideals. And one of them, Doctor Astrov, suddenly, outwardly seemingly unmotivated, approaches the geographical map and, as if completely out of place, he says: “And, in this very Africa, the heat must now be a terrible thing!”
In Gorky’s play “At the Lower Depths” Vaska Pepel conducts a most important - and not only for himself - explanation with Natasha. At this moment Bubnov interjects: “But the threads are rotten” - at this very time he is really sewing something from rags. But it is clear that this remark is not accidental, and does not carry the meaning that lies in it, so to speak, “on the surface.” And this should be explained to students.
“The first condition for analyzing a dramatic work will be the reconstruction in... their (schoolchildren’s) imagination of the performance... Therefore, it is necessary to attract material that tells about the performance of artists who gave not only vivid images, but also images that are in tune with the author.” This is undeniable. But “seeing” and “hearing” how a character acts, speaks, feels, can only be based on reading and analysis of a dramatic work.
Here last scene"Inspector". Everyone just found out that Khlestakov is “not an auditor at all.” Anger and malice take possession of the mayor. He (according to the stage directions) imperiously “waves his hand,” indignantly “hits himself on the forehead,” screams “in his heart,” “shakes his fist at himself,” “knocks his feet on the floor in anger.” The author's meager instructions should be carefully used when reading the play - they alone largely depict the psychophysical state of the hero.
Simultaneously with the expressive reading of the play or after it, an analysis of the work is carried out. This analysis is based on specific features constructing drama and revealing its images and, of course, the peculiarities of perception of this genre by schoolchildren.
The specific subject of depiction in drama is life in motion, or, in other words, action, and it is a holistic analysis of the play following the stage action that allows us to understand the essence of this action.
In a play, along with the central line, there are always non-main lines, “side” lines, which “flow into the main channel of the struggle, intensifying its flow.” Not to consider these lines in interrelation, to reduce everything to just one central line means to impoverish the ideological content of the dramatic work. Of course this requirement only possible by studying the play as a whole or in editing. In the same national schools, which study only excerpts from drama, the teacher informs about the plot of the play.
As mentioned above, the action of drama is manifested in the characters who come into conflict. This means that when analyzing drama, we must consider the development of action and the revelation of characters in organic unity. Even V.P. Ostrogorsky suggested that a teacher analyzing a dramatic work pose the following questions to students: Are people’s actions completely consistent with their characters?.. What prompts the hero to act? Does the idea or passion excite him? What obstacles does he encounter? Are they within him or outside of him?
A holistic analysis of drama following the development of its action obliges us to proceed from this fundamental law of dramatic art. At the same time, we must not forget that action refers not only to the actions of the characters, but also to the manifestation of character in the details of behavior. The characters in the play are revealed either in the struggle to achieve certain goals, or in the awareness and experience of their existence. The whole question is what action comes to the fore in this drama. Taking this into account, the teacher, in the process of analyzing drama, focuses attention either on the actions of the heroes of the drama, or on the details of their behavior. Thus, during the analysis of “The Thunderstorm,” the focus will be on the “acts of will” of the characters, while when analyzing “The Cherry Orchard,” the “detailed behavior” of the characters will be in focus.
When analyzing the images of a play, one should not limit oneself only to clarifying the actions of the characters. It is necessary to draw students' attention to how the character carries out his actions. And the teacher faces the task of forming and developing the students’ recreating imagination.
The psychophysical behavior of a character in a dramatic work - especially when reading the play, and not when perceiving it from the stage - is difficult to imagine and comprehend due to the lack of author's commentary in the drama. It can emerge only from the dialogue and the author’s meager remarks. Therefore, when starting to analyze the hero’s speech, it should be remembered that it characterizes the character by its cause-and-effect nature, its content, logical-semantic side and the form in which this content is embodied.
When starting to analyze the dialogue scene, you should first of all ask the students the question: In what situation and why did this dialogue arise and is being conducted? Here the author's remarks will provide some help, and, therefore, you need to pay due attention to their consideration, find out how much they have equipped the students.
If the author's remarks, as often happens, do not provide students with sufficient support for the work of their reconstructive imagination, they will have to give a series of additional materials: either sketches of the scenery (for example, for “The Thunderstorm” by B. Kustodiev), then the author’s explanations (for example, in Chekhov’s letters to Stanislavsky about the scenery of Act II of “The Cherry Orchard”), or use books (the chapter “Khitrov Market” from the essays of Vl. Gilyarovsky “Moscow and Muscovites”, photographs of shelters from the album “Moskovsky” Art Theater" - to the play "At the Bottom"), etc.
One should not miss the opportunities sometimes inherent in the work itself. So, in “The Cherry Orchard”, we should point out what the situation appears to us in the speeches of the participants in the events themselves (Gaev: The garden is all white; Varya: The sun has already risen... Look, mommy, what wonderful trees! .what air! Starlings sing!
It is clear that reproducing a specific situation of events in the students’ imagination is not an end in itself, but contributes to the disclosure ideological content works.
Considering that schoolchildren, as a rule, do not have visual representations of the hero of a dramatic work, and the process of understanding the image of the hero is associated with a visual representation of him, it is necessary, in the process of analyzing the work as the action develops, to find out what the author reports about the appearance the hero, what other characters in the play say about the character’s appearance, what the hero himself says about his appearance, what details in the hero’s appearance indicate his origin and living conditions, how certain personality traits are expressed in his appearance.
Students cannot be expected to have a complete understanding of the play and its characters as a result of textual analysis conducted in class. Subsequent work is necessary - synthesis of materials accumulated in the process holistic analysis, for example, a generalization of observations on the images of heroes.
This work in each specific case is of a specific nature, but a number of general issues, which are clarified in a general conversation about the character: What is the role of this hero in the general flow of events of the drama? What does this hero look like? In what scenes does he reveal himself most expressively and fully? Do we know his backstory and how do we find out about it? What thoughts, views, character traits does the hero reveal in his dialogues and with whom does he conduct these dialogues? How does the hero characterize his attitude towards other characters? What ideological meaning image.
It is necessary to determine the true conflict underlying the dramatic work so that students do not have erroneous ideas about it. So, it may seem to them, for example, that in Gorky’s play “At the Depths” the conflict is in the clash of interests of Natasha and Ash, on the one hand, and the Kostylev couple, on the other. Meanwhile, if this were so, the play would end in the third act and the fourth would simply be superfluous. And the conflict of the play is in the clash of worldviews, and the disappearance of Luke, also in the third act, only emphasizes the continuation of the spiritual struggle, the struggle with the “saving” lie, which ends in the fourth act with the vital test of “consolation”, the collapse of this “philosophy”, the revelation of the futility and harmfulness of the illusions spread by Luke.
By identifying the main conflict of the play, the teacher shows the students that the essence of this conflict expresses the author’s worldview.
Training in episode analysis and complex analysis
dramatic work.
The analysis of a drama must begin with the analysis of a small fragment, an episode (phenomenon, scene, etc.). The analysis of an episode of a dramatic work is carried out practically according to the same scheme as the analysis of an episode of an epic work. The difference is that it is necessary to supplement the reasoning with an analysis of the dynamic and dialogic compositions of the episode.
Episode analysis plan.
who are they?
what is their place in the system of characters (main, main, secondary, off-stage)?
characters.
their attitude to the event;
to the question (problem);
to each other;
briefly analyze the speech of the participants in the dialogue;
identify the characteristics of the characters’ behavior, the motivation for their actions (the author’s or the reader’s);
determine the balance of forces, grouping or regrouping of heroes depending on the course of events in the episode.
Characterize the event underlying the episode: what place does it occupy in the development of the action? (Is this an exposition, a climax, a denouement, an episode in the development of the action of the entire work?)
Name the main (or only) participants in the episode and briefly explain:
Reveal the features of the beginning and ending of the episode.
Formulate the question, the problem that is in the spotlight:
Identify and characterize the theme and contradiction (in other words, mini-conflict) underlying the episode.
Describe the characters participating in the episode:
Characterize the dynamic composition of the episode (its exposition, plot, climax, denouement; in other words, according to what pattern the emotional tension develops in the episode).
Describe the dialogical composition of the episode: what principle is used to cover the topic?
Formulate the main idea (author's idea) of the episode.
Analyze the plot, figurative and ideological connections of this episode with other episodes of the drama.
Plan comprehensive analysis dramatic work .
For a comprehensive analysis of a dramatic work, it is necessary to understand the theory of dramatic literature.
actions of characters (acting);
stage environment, costumes and scenery;
the mood and idea of a scene or phenomenon.
The time of creation of the work, the history of the concept, a brief description of the era.
The connection of the play with any literary movement or cultural era. How did the features of this direction appear in the work?
Type and genre of dramatic work: tragedy, comedy, drama, vaudeville, farce. Please refer to the reference literature for the meaning of these terms.
Specifics of the organization of drama action: division into actions, scenes, acts, phenomena, etc. Author's original drama components.
Playbill (characters). Features of names (for example, “speaking” names). Main, secondary and off-stage characters.
Features of dramatic conflict: tragic, comic, dramatic; social, everyday, philosophical.
Features of dramatic action: external - internal; “on stage” - “behind the stage”, dynamic - static.
Features of the composition of the play. The presence and specificity of the main elements: exposition, increasing emotional tension, conflict and its resolution, a new increase in emotional tension, climaxes, etc. How are all the “sharp points” (especially emotional scenes) of the work related to each other? What is the composition of the individual components of the play (acts, actions, phenomena)? Here we need to name specific episodes that are these “sharp points” of action.
Specifics of creating dialogue in a play. Features of the sound of each character’s theme in dialogues and monologues. (A brief analysis of the dialogic composition of one episode of your choice).
Theme of the play. Leading topics. Key episodes (scenes, phenomena) that help reveal the theme of the work.
Problems of the work. Leading problems and key episodes in which the problems are especially acute. The author's vision of solving the problems posed.
The meaning of the play's title.