Given circumstances notes PDF

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Professor Chelsea Hickman...

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Given circumstances: ● As vital to the play as plot and character ○ Provides context What is the “here and now” of the action? ● Given circumstances influence characters, increase tensions, create complications and environment, and suggest the mise-en-scene 8 given circumstances: ● Time ● Place ● Society ● Economics ● Learning and the arts ● Spirituality Time: ● Time of composition: ○ Time the work was published ○ Example: A Raisin in the Sun : 1957 ● Time of the action ○ Time in which play’s action is set ● Dramatic time ○ Time that passes during the course of the action ○ Example: A Raisin in the Sun l a sts a month and a half.

Place: ● General locale ○ Country, region, district ○ Listed on character page and in dialogue ○ A Raisin in the Sun: s outh side of Chicago ● Specific locale: ○ Particular place in which action takes place ○ Dialogue over scenery notes ○ Inference Society: ● Families: ○ Most basic social unit ○ Expectations are placed ○ Expectations confirmed, refuted, or tested ● Love and friendships: ○ Emotional and behavioral expectations ○ Confirm, refute, or tested ○ Can be outside family ● Occupation: ○ What characters do for a living ○ Interactions with others ○ Clues to character motives

○ Emotional undercurrent ● Social rank: ○ Distinguishes a character’s position or standing in society ○ Wealth, power, formal education, material issues ■ Deduced from behavior ● Social standards ○ Codes of conduct and shared beliefs to conform ○ Usually accepted without outwardly stating ○ Religion, class, politics, inherited family position, national culture ○ Science and business, equality, media, middle class ○ Euphemisms Economics: ● Mercantilism: colonialism with national control of manufacturing and exports ● Capitalism: individual freedom and free enterprise: private property, profit, and credit ● Laissez-faire: business allowed to follow the unwritten “natural laws” of economics ● Socialism: public ownership of manufacturing, public services, and natural resources Politics and law Learning and the arts ● Highest form of social activity ● The life of the mind: the greater good ● Formal schooling vs. wisdom Spirituality:

● Formal religious features in the play ● Any belief in divine, spiritual, or supernatural powers (obeyed, worshipped, respected) What guides characters?...