Drama II.

Drama without resolution. George Bernard Shaw and the Comedy of Manners; Samuel
Beckett and the Theatre of the Absurd
This section spans forty important years in the history of English drama. The twentieth
century saw the emergence of a new kind of drama, the Theatre of the Absurd. This is
represented here by Samuel Becketts Waiting for Godot.
To fill in the gap between the previous section and the present one, a brief review will be
given of developments in English drama. The sixteenth century was the heyday of English
drama; the works of its major dramatists continue to be performed to the present day. The
seventeenth century represented a new era with its focus on masques, i.e. plays combining
music, poetry and spectacle, and on heroic drama, i.e. plays of honour. The masques and
heroic drama of the seventeenth century are rarely performed today. The second half of the
seventeenth century saw the emergence of Restoration drama, bawdy tragedies and comedies
satirising seventeenth-century life. Dramatists such as William Wycherley, George Farquhar
and William Congreve produced sophisticated plays which are still studied today by students
of drama and literature, but they are rarely performed on the modern stage.
Drama was generally neglected after 1700 and few plays have survived to the present day,
with the notable exceptions of Oliver Goldsmiths She Stoops to Conquer (1773) and Richard
Sheridans The Rivals (1775) and The School for Scandal (1777). English drama was in
considerable need of renewal by the twentieth century. Two important dramatists gained
recognition during this period: George Bernard Shaw and Samuel Beckett. Their plays
continue to draw large audiences.

The Comedy of Manners

The Comedy of Manners was a form revived by Shaw and Sheridan. Traditionally, the
Comedy of Manners satirises the manners and unnatural behaviour of a particular social class,
often with the aid of stock characters. The plot is usually based on a scandal. The dialogue,
which frequently comprises coarse and indecent language, is usually more important than the
plot.
Shaws Man and Superman is frequently performed as a light Comedy of Manners; Shaw
himself intended it to be more serious. The subtitle of the play is A Comedy and a Philosophy.
John Tanner, a confirmed bachelor, is the focus of the plot. Ann Whitefield, a beautiful lady,
strives to make John marry her. She is determined to succeed. In the final scene, Tanner
capitulates, he succumbs to the Life Force. Man and Superman is a fine comedy with superb
characterisation and irresistible wit. You are about to read Act 1 of the play.

Man and Superman (George Bernard Shaw)

You will find the full text at the following address (this cannot be reproduced here for
copyright reasons):

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http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/3328
Choose one of the folders to open.

Selected bibliography
Crompton, Louis. Shaw the Dramatist. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1969).
Hirst, David L. Comedy of Manners. (London: Methuen, 1979).
Peters, Sally. Bernard Shaw. The Ascent of the Superman. (Yale: Yale University Press,
1998).

The following websites may be of assistance:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/audiointerviews/profilepages/shawg1.shtml (Extract from a
BBC interview with Shaw in 1937)
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1925/shaw-bio.html
http://www.online-literature.com/george_bernard_shaw/
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Jshaw.htm
http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25338-2277082,00.html

Literary Theory
Select the theory you consider most useful in analysing the above play, justify your choice,
and analyse the text with the aid of your chosen theory. N.B. Choose only one theory from the
theories presented here.

The Theatre of the Absurd

Samuel Becketts Waiting for Godot (1956) belongs to the genre of the Theatre of the Absurd
which was made popular by primarily European playwrights in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.
These plays do not feature realistic characters or situations. Time and place, cause and effect,
merge into one another, giving an impression of chaos. Underlying the apparent chaos is,
however, a structure and a logic.
The origins of Waiting for Godot are in clowning and slapstick, mime, verbal gaming, and
other tricks taken from boulevard theatre. The plot is slender and dominated by a mood of
uncertainty and circularity. A series of comic and sinister rituals emphasises the hopelessness
of the characters situation, caught between an unspecified past and a perpetually postponed
future. Waiting for Godot presents two tramps, Gogo (Estragon) and Didi (Vladimir). They
are waiting by a tree. Their conversation ranges from the trivial to the serious. Didi introduces
the story of two thieves crucified by Jesus. Christian symbolism permeates the play. Gogo and
Didi are waiting for Godot, who consistently fails to turn up. The play may be seen as a
tragedy or a comedy, as profound or as nonsense, according to the reactions of spectators and
readers. It has been performed many times since the 1950s and has made Beckett world-

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famous. It is generally considered to be an excellent reflection of the spirit of the times. You
are going to read the first of Becketts two-act play.

Waiting for Godot. A tragicomedy in 2 acts.

You will find the full text at the following address (this cannot be reproduced here for
copyright reasons):
http://samuel-beckett.net/Waiting_for_Godot_Part1.html
N.B. You are asked to read Act 1 only although it is advisable to read the whole play if
time permits.

Selected bibliography
Esslin, Martin. The Theatre of the Absurd. (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961).
Esslin, Martin. Absurd Drama. (Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin, 1965).
Marranca, Bonnie and Gautam Dasgupta. Eds. Theatre of the Ridiculous. (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, for PAJ Publications, 1998).

The following websites may be of assistance

http://dana.ucc.nau.edu/sek5/classpage.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre_of_the_Absurd
http://samuel-beckett.net/

Literary Theory
Select the theory you consider most useful in analysing the above play, justify your choice,
and analyse the text with the aid of your chosen theory. N.B. Choose only one theory from the
theories presented here.

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