Comparing Types of Outcasts in Stage Plays

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Introduction

One of the notions frequently used by dramatist is outcast. According to Collins COBUILD Advances Learner’s English Dictionary 2006, an outcast is “someone who is not accepted by a group of people or by society.” In this world, there are various types of outcast, but some patterns are similar or slightly different. In this essay, 3 types of outcasts will be focused on: Women, Boy Heroines and Black Slaves, and all outcasts come from stage plays and literatures, which can be adapted for stage plays. So, when this text refers to audiences (stage play) or reader (literature), it will use “spectators” for both words.

This essay is divided into 2 parts. The first part will begins to represent and give some examples in 3 notions: status degradation, trapped characters in a stereotype, and caricature style, and the second part will discuss the response of spectators in many aspects.

The 3 important traits of outcasts

Trapped characters in a stereotype

The outcast are always trapped in a stereotype. According to Waters ( 2007, cited in Zither, 2009 p. 87 – 88 ), black slavery has usually presented in negative ways for a long time. In the seventeenth century in Europe, there were dramas that depict them as ‘terrific Moor’, or little better, in eighteenth, as ‘figure of sentiment.’ Moreover, in America, black slaves were solely deemed as a character of weird and joking such as an ignorant black actors or a lazy runaway slave. And in the nineteenth century, blackness was considered as “a marker of inferior intelligent and black of nobility.” ( ibid, p.87 - 88 )

On the other side; however, in Elizabethan era, the spectators of theatre is brought by cross-dresser, London magistrates would punish women who dre...

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...general people may increasingly aware these problem. Furthermore, awareness of the problem can prevent new occurrence of the outcast in the future.

Works Cited

Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner’s English Dictionary 2006 ( Harpercollins Publisher 2006 )

Edward Ziter, (review book) Racism on the Victorian Stage: Representations of Slavery and the Black Character by Hazel Waters, in Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film. Manchester: Jun 2009. Vol. 36, Iss. 1; pg. 87, 2 pgs

Berry, Ralph, “Gender in Play on the Shakespearean Stage: Boy Heroines and Female Pages” by Michael Shapiro ( Book Review ), comparative Drama, 29 : 4 (1995 / 1996 : Winter) p. 521 – 523.

Thomas, Claudia Newel, “ Interpreting Ladies : Women, Wit, and Morality in the Restoration Comedy of Manners ” by Pat gill ( Book Review ), Comparative drama, 29 : 4 ( 1995 / 1996 : Winter) p. 523 - 526.

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