Modern Dramab Part 1
"Miss Julie" Character
Jean - The other major character of the play, Jean is the manor's thirty-year old valet, chosen as Miss Julie's lover on Midsummer's Eve. Though initially coarse, he pretends to be gallant when seducing Miss Julie. His cruelty reveals itself after he has slept with her. Jean suffers from class envy. He simultaneously idealizes and degrades Julie. Eventually, he becomes a sadist, reveling in Julie's ruin.
Riders to the Sea.
John Millington Synge
The Escape; or, A Leap for Freedom.
A melodrama is a dramatic work that exaggerates plot and characters in order to appeal to the emotions, often with strongly stereotyped characters. Mood/Tone
Riders to the Sea Characters
Nora The youngest member of the clan, Nora is much more patient with mother's penchant for self-pity than her oldest sister is. At the same time, she provides a great sounding board for Cathleen to express her contrarian views
Pygmalion characters
Freddy Eynsford Hill - Higgins' surmise that Freddy is a fool is probably accurate. In the opening scene he is a spineless and resourceless lackey to his mother and sister. Later, he is comically bowled over by Eliza, the half-baked duchess who still speaks cockney. He becomes lovesick for Eliza, and courts her with letters. At the play's close, Freddy serves as a young, viable marriage option for Eliza, making the possible path she will follow unclear to the reader
Pygmalion
George Bernard Shaw
Pygmalion characters
Alfred Doolittle - Alfred Doolittle is Eliza's father, an elderly but vigorous dustman who has had at least six wives and who "seems equally free from fear and conscience." When he learns that his daughter has entered the home of Henry Higgins, he immediately pursues to see if he can get some money out of the circumstance. His unique brand of rhetoric, an unembarrassed, unhypocritical advocation of drink and pleasure (at other people's expense), is amusing to Higgins. Through Higgins' joking recommendation, Doolittle becomes a richly endowed lecturer to a moral reform society, transforming him from lowly dustman to a picture of middle class morality--he becomes miserable. Throughout, Alfred is a scoundrel who is willing to sell his daughter to make a few pounds, but he is one of the few unaffected characters in the play, unmasked by appearance or language. Though scandalous, his speeches are honest. At points, it even seems that he might be Shaw's voice piece of social criticism (Alfred's proletariat status, given Shaw's socialist leanings, makes the prospect all the more likely).
Miss Julie
August Strindberg
Riders to the Sea Characters
Bartley Bartley is the youngest of Maurya's six sons; when Michael's death is confirmed, he steps up to become the family's sole financial support. His means of supporting the family is what gives the play its title: he rides horses out to sea and to the steamer ship, which must lay anchored far offshore; the horses are sold at a fair on the mainland. Maurya refuses to give Bartley her blessing after having a vision of his impending death.
Riders to the Sea Characters
Cathleen Cathleen is the eldest of Maurya's daughter. Cathleen is 20 years old; she commiserates with Bartley's position and is scornful of her mother's superstitions. In contrast to the somewhat mystical bent of her mother, who is given to lamentations and omens, Cathleen is pure practicality in action, which is a great necessity when living with someone like Maurya.
The Escape; or, A Leap for Freedom.
Cato- House slave of Dr. Gaines. Dr. Gaines appoints Cato to be an assistant doctor. Flat Character (Stock Character)Plays the type of character typically found in Black Minstrelsy. He is a comedic character, always doing and saying foolish things.Ignorant, blissful. Dynamic Character He is always loyal to his master at the beginning of the play, but leaves him at the end to escape for freedom. Reverend Pinchen-Flat/Static Character Clergyman Mr. White-Flat/Static Character Northerner from Massachusetts who speaks against slavery Mr. and Mrs. Neal-Flat/Static Characters Quakers in Ohio, who help Melinda, Glen and Cato on the Underground Railroad Very Hospital and Kind Slaves-Sam, Sampey, Hannah, Dolly, Susan, Big Sally, Pete, Ned, and Bill
"Miss Julie" Character
Christine - A relatively minor character, Christine is the manor's thirty-five year old cook and Jean's fiancé. She gossips with Jean about Miss Julie, and believes wholeheartedly in the class system.
Trifles Characters
George Henderson - The county attorney Henry Peters - Local sheriff and husband of Mrs. Peters Lewis Hale - Neighbor of the Wrights Mrs. Peters - Wife of the sheriff Mrs. Hale - Neighbor to the Wrights and wife of Lewis Hale John Wright - The victim and owner of the house Mrs. Minnie Wright - John Wright's wife and his suspected murderer
Pygmalion characters
Colonel Pickering - Colonel Pickering, the author of Spoken Sanskrit, is a match for Higgins (although somewhat less obsessive) in his passion for phonetics. But where Higgins is a boorish, careless bully, Pickering is always considerate and a genuinely gentleman. He says little of note in the play, and appears most of all to be a civilized foil to Higgins' barefoot, absentminded crazy professor. He helps in the Eliza Doolittle experiment by making a wager of it, saying he will cover the costs of the experiment if Higgins does indeed make a convincing duchess of her. However, while Higgins only manages to teach Eliza pronunciations, it is Pickering's thoughtful treatment towards Eliza that teaches her to respect herself.
Pygmalion characters
Eliza Doolittle seems to defy any conventional notions we might have about the romantic heroine. When she is transformed from a sassy, smart-mouthed kerbstone flower girl with deplorable English, to a (still sassy) regal figure fit to consort with nobility, it has less to do with her innate qualities as a heroine than with the fairy-tale aspect of the transformation myth itself. In other words, the character of Eliza Doolittle comes across as being much more instrumental than fundamental. The real (re-)making of Eliza Doolittle happens after the ambassador's party, when she decides to make a statement for her own dignity against Higgins' insensitive treatment. This is when she becomes, not a duchess, but an independent woman; and this explains why Higgins begins to see Eliza not as a mill around his neck but as a creature worthy of his admiration.
Soul Gone Home
Langston Hughes
Riders to the Sea Characters
Maurya Maurya has given birth to six sons during her life on the coastal island lying of at the mouth of Ireland's Galway Bay. Four of them are already dead, along with their father and grandfather. She is old and poor and fears that the extended and uncharacteristic absence of her son Michael means he is about to added to the list of her deceased loved ones. As if worrying that Michael has drowned weren't enough stress, she also doesn't appear to be very successful at persuading her other remaining son, Bartley, from crossing over to the mainland in a bid to deal away a couple of horses. In the end, Maurya has only her daughters to help with the cold comfort of knowing that there are no more men in her life for the sea to take from her. She feels at last a sense of peace and serenity now that her greatest anxiety has been lifted.
Riders to the Sea Plot
Maurya has lost her husband, and five of her sons to the sea. As the play begins Nora and Cathleen receive word from the priest that a body, which may be their brother Michael, has washed up on shore in Donegal, on the Irish mainland north of their home island of Inishmaan. Bartley is planning to sail to Connemara to sell a horse, and ignores Maurya's pleas to stay. He leaves gracefully. Maurya predicts that by nightfall she will have no living sons, and her daughters chide her for sending Bartley off with an ill word. Maurya goes after Bartley to bless his voyage, and Nora and Cathleen receive clothing from the drowned corpse that confirms it was Michael. Maurya returns home claiming to have seen the ghost of Michael riding behind Bartley and begins lamenting the loss of the men in her family to the sea, after which some villagers bring in the corpse of Bartley. He has fallen off his horse into the sea and drowned.
Miss Julie Character
Miss Julie - The play's twenty-five-year-old tragic heroine, she is doomed to a cruel demise. Fresh from a broken engagement—an engagement ruined because of her attempt to master her fiancé—Miss Julie has become "wild", making shameless advances to her valet, Jean. Miss Julie's behavior is supposed to signal sickness. Raised by a shockingly "feminist" mother, Julie is simultaneously disgusted by and drawn to men. Julie is sado-masochistic. She wants to enslave men, but she also desires her own fall
Miss Julie Plot
Miss Julie is perhaps the most famous play in the style of naturalism. It focuses on Miss. Julie, a headstrong yet confused aristocratic lady who has just broken off her engagement. She is drawn to Jean, an enticing and educated valet who works for her father. The action takes place in the kitchen of Miss Julie's father's manor, where Jean's fiancée, a servant named Christine, cooks and sometimes sleeps while Jean and Miss Julie talk. One night the relationship between Miss Julie and Jean escalates rapidly to feelings of love and is subsequently consummated. Over the course of the play Miss Julie and Jean battle for the upper hand in the relationship, and struggle with a plan to move forward with their lives. Jean finally convinces Julie that the only way to escape her predicament is to commit suicide. A complex play that examines social order and sexuality
The Escape; or, A Leap for Freedom.
Plot Complication: Dr. Gaines becomes increasingly desperate for Melinda to sexually submit to him. Because of Dr. Gaines' attention toward Melinda, Mrs. Gaines becomes jealous of Melinda and treats her harshly. Glen is aware of Dr. Gaines tactics, and desires to protect Melinda, even if it costs his life. Plot Climax: Dr. Gaines takes Melinda to a cottage 10 miles away from the Muddy Creek farm to try and seduce her. He offers her freedom, property, and clothes if she would submit to him. Melinda refuses Dr. Gaines' offer and unveils her marriage to Glen. This infuriates Dr. Gaines, and he promises to burn Glen at the stake. Mrs. Gaines finds Melinda in the cottage, and attempts to kill her with poison. Plot Resolution: Both Melinda and Glen resist their intended murder and torture and run away. They find each other outside of Muddy Creek, and decide to escape to Canada. With the help from Ohio Quakers on the Underground Railroad, Melinda and Glen succeed in their escape to Canada.
Pygmalion characters
Professor Henry Higgins - Henry Higgins is a professor of phonetics who plays Pygmalion to Eliza Doolittle's Galatea. He is the author of Higgins' Universal Alphabet, believes in concepts like visible speech, and uses all manner of recording and photographic material to document his phonetic subjects, reducing people and their dialects into what he sees as readily understandable units. He is an unconventional man, who goes in the opposite direction from the rest of society in most matters. Indeed, he is impatient with high society, forgetful in his public graces, and poorly considerate of normal social niceties--the only reason the world has not turned against him is because he is at heart a good and harmless man. His biggest fault is that he can be a bully.
"Miss Julie" Character
Serena - Miss Julie's canary, she is beheaded by Jean. Her decapitation symbolizes the way Jean injures Julie.
Trifles
Susan Glaspell
Soul Gone Home character
The Son Male Lead The Mother Female Lead Two Men
Trifles Plot
The play begins as the men, followed by the women, enter the Wrights' empty farm house. On command from the county attorney, Mr. Hale recounts his visit to the house the previous day, when he found Mrs. Wright behaving strangely and her husband upstairs with a rope around his neck, dead. Mr. Hale notes that when he questioned her, Mrs. Wright claimed that she was asleep when someone strangled her husband. While the county attorney, Mr. Hale, and Mr. Peters are searching the house for evidence, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters find clues in the kitchen and hallway to this unsolved mystery. The men find no clues upstairs in the Wright house that would prove Mrs. Wright guilty, but the women find a dead canary that cracks the case wide open. The wives realize Mr. Wright killed the bird, and that led to Mrs. Wright killing her husband. The wives piece together that Minnie was being abused by her husband, and they understand how it feels to be oppressed by men. Because they feel bad for Minnie, they hide the evidence against her and she is spared the punishment for killing her husband.
Soul Gone Home Plot
The plot of the play is a sixteen-year-old boy named Ronnie Bailey who has died. His mother is standing over his body in the tenement room where they live. She is pleading loudly with God and her son that he would come back from the spirit world and talk to her. Ronnie does come back to talk to her, but it is not the conversation she expects. He accuses her of being a bad mother. She is shocked and says he never talked to her that way when he was alive. He agrees and says that since he is dead now, he can talk to her that way
Pygmalion plot
Two old gentlemen meet in the rain one night at Covent Garden. Professor Higgins is a scientist of phonetics, and Colonel Pickering is a linguist of Indian dialects. The first bets the other that he can, with his knowledge of phonetics, convince high London society that, in a matter of months, he will be able to transform the cockney speaking Covent Garden flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, into a woman as poised and well-spoken as a duchess. The next morning, the girl appears at his laboratory on Wimpole Street to ask for speech lessons, offering to pay a shilling, so that she may speak properly enough to work in a flower shop. Higgins makes merciless fun of her, but is seduced by the idea of working his magic on her. Pickering goads him on by agreeing to cover the costs of the experiment if Higgins can pass Eliza off as a duchess at an ambassador's garden party. The challenge is taken, and Higgins starts by having his housekeeper bathe Eliza and give her new clothes. Then Eliza's father Alfred Doolittle comes to demand the return of his daughter, though his real intention is to hit Higgins up for some money. The professor, amused by Doolittle's unusual rhetoric, gives him five pounds. On his way out, the dustman fails to recognize the now clean, pretty flower girl as his daughte
The Escape; Or a Leap for Freedom
William Wells Brown
