Five Act Structure 1

1
Shakespeares Ear, Part 2 Rhythm, Cadence and
Dramatic Contours 23rd October 2013
2
Five Act Structure 1

• Horace, Ars Poetica where he insists upon a play
  having five acts (no more or less)
• 1960s argument about whether this is traceable in
  Shakespeare people tend to see the plays
  scenically now.
• Some plays can be fitted to this paradigm The
  Winters Tale is interesting in this regard.
• Other Renaissance dramatists notably Ben Jonson
  followed classical paradigms much more closely.
  Jonson translated Horace.

3
Five Act Structure 2

• Act 1 happy
• Act 2 presentation of a problem/dilemma
• Act 3 crisis
• Act 4 failure to avert crisis
• Act 5 consequences of this failure

4
Generic Distinctions in Form

• Comedy
• Prologos
• Parados
• Agon
• Parabasis
• Epeisodia
• Exodos

• Tragedy
• Prologos
• Parados
• Epeisodia
• Stasima
• Exodos

intertwined
5
Tragedy

• A pathetic situation was the original form of
  tragedy. Nothing actually happened.
• Divine will and human agency introduced
  invented peripeteia and anagnorisis. This
  means something happened the plot was not all
  narrative.
• Difference between reported and shown action
  liaison (the interplay between live and reported
  action by which the play runs itself).

6
Scene

• http//www.oed.com/view/Entry/172219?redirectedFro
  mscenefooterWrapper
• sense 5

7
(No Transcript)
8
(No Transcript)
9
Scene Changes

• Are they physical or mental breaks?
• Are they always both?
• Act 1, scenes 4 and 5 of Hamlet

10
(No Transcript)
11
(No Transcript)
12
(No Transcript)
13
(No Transcript)
14
(No Transcript)
15
(No Transcript)
16
http//eebo.chadwyck.com/home http//eebo.chadwy
ck.com/search
How to find seventeenth-century original texts
on the Web
17
What is a Scene change?

• French scene analysis
• Neoclassical Drama
• A new stage situation was created by the entrance
  or exit of any one character and the French
  marked the scene shift accordingly. (Servants
  dont count).
• Modern analogue in the theatre game where you
  have to imagine the stage is a saucer.

18
Balance of Power Or Why Dont Servants Count?

• Saucer theory relates to reaction
• Messengers give the balance of power to one of
  the people listening to the message
• But they dont change the people to whom the
  balance can be given, only who has it

19
(No Transcript)
20
(No Transcript)
21
http//eebo.chadwyck.com/search/fulltext?actionby
idwarnNidD10000998466150279div1sequence1S
OURCEvar_spell.cfgfile../session/1382474604_170
26