VPDB 11H3

Matt Jones

Essay Outline and Annotated Bibliography (10%): Feb. 22 Feb. 29

Purpose: The goal of the essay outline is to make sure that you have a solid topic for your essay
long before you are deep in the writing of it
You will need to hand in an outline that answers the following questions:

What is your topic?

What is your argument about that topic? Make sure you have a clear, but preliminary,
thesis statement
How will you prove your argument? Give a tentative outline of how you will structure
your argument
What evidence will you use to prove it? Give at least three academic sources (books or
scholarly articles) with some notes explaining their main arguments and why they are
important to your argument Suggested essay topics

Types of essay:

Literary (Concentrate on the meaning of a play. How does the form/style of the play
affect its content?)
Performative (Concentrate on the performance conditions of a play or style of
performance. How do changes in aspects of performance affect the meaning of a play?)
Historical (Connect the performance to the broader historical context. How does the play
respond to or critique historical or political changes that are going on?)

Within those parameters, you may decide to focus on one work or compare and contrast two or
three works (but no more than this!).
You could analyze:

One or more play scripts

A performer, actor, singer, director, playwright, choreographer, translator (what do we
know about their career? How did their work evolve?)
A genre of performance (tragedy, melodrama, acrobatics, burlesque, a particular kind of
comedy. Where did it evolve from?)
A type of technology (machines to make people fly, rotating stages, linear perspective)
The politics of certain types of performance (the portrayal of women, minorities)
An aspect of history (changes in laws, attitudes, class structure, gender relations, race
relations, or the position of the theatre in society)

Comparisons can be particularly helpful in building an argument.

You can use this method to trace a historical change. For example, comparing a later commedia
erudita script with an earlier script by Scala would allow us to see the progression of commedia
from marginal marketplace entertainment to official court culture.
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VPDB 11H3

Matt Jones

You can also compare plays of different genres that share a common source (The Tragic Events
and Shakespeares Romeo and Juliet), a common type of character (Don Juan vs. Macheath in
The Beggars Opera) or common theme (lovers in drag in The Jealousy of Isabella and
Shakespeares Twelfth Night or suicide in The Tragic Events and Love Suicides at Amijima).
What does the different treatment of the story or the theme tell us?
Looking at adaptations allows you to make an argument about how different styles transform the
same work.
You could compare George Aikens adaptation of Harriet Beecher Stowes adaptation of The
Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself.
There are huge political differences that depend on who is telling the story.
Many of the works weve looked have been adapted into other media. Othello became Verdis
opera Otello, Don Juan became Mozarts opera Don Giovanni. What changes in the adaptation?
Look at the re-writing of Shakespeare by late Renaissance authors (Voltaire, Corneille, or
Naham Tate). What does this tell us about theatre and morality at the time?
Some more ideas:
Examine race and racism in Othello.
Compare The Tragic Events to The Jealousy of Isabella. How are the same characters different in
each script?
How does Molires work incorporate elements from both high culture (written drama, court
traditions) and low culture (farce, commedia dellarte)?
Compare a noh drama by Zeami Motokiyo to a kabuki drama by Chikamatsu Mozaemon.
How would Love Suicides at Amijima be different as a puppet show and as a kabuki play?
Is Hedda Gabler a textbook example of realism or naturalism?
Compare the portrayal of racism in Othello with its portrayal in Uncle Toms Cabin.
How do some aspects of the performance of Uncle Toms Cabin undermine its anti-racist
intentions? Can it be salvaged or is it forever tainted by these problems?
Compare the use of music and drama in The Beggars Opera with a more serious opera.
How did ballad opera anticipate the conventions of musical theatre? How does it break from
them?
In what ways is Ordeal by Fire an example of Romantic thought?
How did events like the French and American Revolutions affect theatre styles?
How do theatre venues affect the reception of plays?
How is Jarrys absurdism similar and different to Kleists Romanticism?
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