UNSEEN DRAMA REVISION GUIDE
This guide aims to remind students of a wide range of di erent dramatic techniques which a
playwright may employ to create certain e ects in their play. You will also nd in this guide some
notes on the conventions of tragedy set out by Aristotle, as well as explanations of di erent styles
and movements in drama, which are important to remember in order to gain marks for literary and
historical context in the exam. Particular emphasis is placed on the di erent e ects produced by
elements unavailable to poets or writers of prose, like sound and staging, because examiners are
really looking for analysis of form as well as of language and structure.
DRAMATIC TECHNIQUES:
Staging:
A playwright may choose to modify the performance space for e ect.
Example from ‘Death of a Salesman’ by Arthur Miller:
Arthur Miller makes clear to the audience that Willy Loman is lamenting his past failures and
xated on making up for them to the extent that it makes him lose his grip on reality and his own
mental wellbeing. He does this by visually representing on stage Willy’s ashbacks simultaneously
to his conversations with his family. The audience can distinguish between the present day action
and Willy’s ashbacks as the characters in the ashbacks ignore wall boundaries and occupy the
front of the stage. Sympathy is evoked from the audience when these ashbacks are shown
onstage simultaneously to scenes set in the present, as they see that Willy is becoming out of
touch with reality as he dwells on his past failures, upsetting not just himself but his family, who
unlike the audience are tragically unaware of why he seems so distant and agitated.
Example from ‘Arcadia’ by Tom Stoppard:
In the nal scene of ‘Arcadia’ by Tom Stoppard, the two time periods previously depicted
alternately in separate scenes merge onstage. Septimus and Thomasina appear onstage at the
same time as Valentine and Hannah. One e ect of this is that it heightens the audience’s
sympathy for Thomasina when it is revealed that she died in a re, because they also see her
acting childishly and presenting her incredible work onstage, and so appreciate the tragedy of
someone so young and with so much potential dying. Another e ect is that the audience can
decide their own position in Septimus and Thomasina’s debate in Scene Two over whether
‘mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again’. Valentine’s
discovery and reworking of Thomasina’s Coverly set is presented alongside Thomasina’s showing
that exact work to Septimus nearly two centuries earlier, which might make the audience take
Septimus’ optimistic view. However, the audience may be convinced that truths really are lost to
time, as Thomasina believed, because in this scene Bernard discovers that he came to the wrong
conclusion in his investigation of the past. This is powerfully reinforced by Valentine’s completion
and contradiction of Septimus’ line in the past; Septimus says ‘Oh, we have time, I think’, and
Valentine then says ‘… till there’s no time left’. In these ways, Stoppard uses staging to blur the
boundaries between past and present, topping o the dramatic irony at the heart of the play and
encouraging the audience to consider whether the truths of the past can truly be uncovered.
Dramatic Irony:
Put simply, dramatic irony is a literary device by which the audience of a play know more than the
characters in that play, or have a better understanding of events. It can be e ective in creating
tension.
Example from ‘Othello’ by William Shakespeare:
Shakespeare employs dramatic irony in order to increase the audience’s dread as to Iago’s
attempt to manipulate Othello. Iago’s asides to the audience reveal his jealousy of Cassio and his
malicious intentions from the beginning of the play, yet Othello has no idea of these intentions and
continues to trust him, so the audience has to watch him be manipulated throughout the play.
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, Othello’s repeatedly calling him ‘honest Iago’ and Cassio’s saying that he ‘never knew a Florentine
man more kind and honest’ add to the bitter irony. The audience understand that Iago is able to
manipulate Othello because he is skilled at making himself seem trustworthy. It is particularly
frustrating and upsetting for the audience to see Othello believe Iago’s lies about his wife
Desdemona and accuse her of being unfaithful because the audience knows that Desdemona is
innocent. In these ways, Shakespeare employs dramatic irony in ‘Othello’ in order to enhance the
emotional impact and tragedy of the play, as well as to ensure the audience understand how
deceitful Iago is.
Costuming:
Example from ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ by Tennessee Williams:
Tennessee Williams uses costuming e ectively in the rst scene of the play. When the audience
rst encounter Blanche in New Orleans, with its ‘atmosphere of decay’, Williams ensures through
the stage directions that ‘her appearance is incongruous to the setting’. She is ‘daintily dressed in
a white suit with a u y bodice, necklace, and ear-rings of pearl, white gloves and hat’, and looks
‘as if she were arriving at a summer tea or cocktail party in the garden district’, which is in striking
contrast to Stanley and Mitch, who are ‘roughly dressed in blue denim work clothes’. Blanche’s
elegance is contrasted with Stanley’s brutish nature, as he throws a package of meat at Stella.
Through this visual contrast Williams hints that Blanche’s extravagance and desire to ‘put on soft
colours, the colours of butter y wings, and glow' will hinder her from being able to successfully
integrate into Stanley’s world; this is later proven through Stanley’s becoming irritated by
Blanche’s amboyance and attempts at irting, which culminates in him raping Blanche. All of this
highlights a tension between Blanche’s idealised world and the harsh reality. In this way, Williams
uses costuming in the rst scene of the play to foreshadow later events and to dramatise
Blanche’s internal con ict.
Example from ‘Arcadia’ by Tom Stoppard:
Stoppard uses costuming in Scene Seven to create an incongruity on stage, which in turn allows
him to reinforce to the audience the irony that the present day characters have been unable to
accurately uncover truths from the past. In this scene the present day characters Valentine and
Chloe are seen wearing the Regency clothing of the period they were trying to uncover, yet they
look out of place in the Regency period context on stage: Valentine is ‘wearing unkempt Regency
clothes’, with the fact he does not t into the clothes neatly visually conveying the sense that he
does not belong in the period. He is ‘pecking at a portable computer’, the anachronistic image
visually reinforcing to the audience the disconnect between the past and the present. This could
be interpreted as visual irony, which reinforces to the audience that the present day characters
have been unable to accurately gleam what happened in the past, symbolised by the ‘portable
computer’ which Valentine uses in his work to recover Thomasina’s mathematical set. This may
remind the audience of Bernard’s mistranslations of the past which the audience saw through the
time shifts between the past and the present - in Scene Five, Bernard was seen striding
con dently around the stage as he claimed to have successfully discovered a scandal in the past
involving Lord Byron, however this scene is laced with dramatic irony as two scenes earlier in the
play, the audience had learned that the reason for his con dence is not actually based on truth;
Bernard made a false connection between Chater and Lord Byron, as Chater’s book only landed
in Byron’s possession because Lady Croom gave it to him, and the invitation to the duel was
really for Septimus, not Byron. Therefore, the incongruous image of the present day characters in
the Regency period context, achieved through costuming, may reinforce for the audience the fact
that they have mistranslated the past. This irony is reinforced by the presence of the ‘pot of dwarf
dahilas’ on stage; Bernard will nd out later in the scene that Chater died not in a duel with Byron
but on a botany expedition, which the ‘dahlia’ will alert him to. Thus, through visual irony and
incongruity on stage, Stoppard reminds the audience of the di culty in recovering truths lost to
time, encouraging them to sympathise with Thomasina’s sadness expressed in Scene Three
about the burning down of the library of Alexandria and the destruction of past knowledge.
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