Similarities Between The Crucible And Mother Courage

1- Discuss the role of historical references in The Crucicle, by Arthur Miller, and in Mother Courage and her children, by Bertolt Brecht.

Both plays, The Crucible and Mother Courage and her children, deal with historical material, so they can be considered epic plays. Epic plays provide a historical distance from the event the playwright wants to analyze. In The Crucible, Arthur Miller made an analogy using the episode about witches hunt occurred in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692, as a metaphor for McCarthyism to criticize it. In Mother Courage, Bertolt Brecht used the Thirty Years’ War to criticize the system, since “war is business” in its point of view. Therefore, the essential in these plays is not the exposure of the past itself, it is used to defamiliarize the event that is analyzed, to eliminate its illusion and to show how things took place. In this sense, these plays have a didactic purpose, the one to incite people to struggle for their freedom of thought, of life, etc.

2- What aspects of the epic

theater are present in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town?
Our Town by Thornton Wilder can be considered an epic play, first of all, because it is divided into episodes that do not need to contain in themselves the next one, they are not particularly linked. In Wilder’s play it is the narrator ‒ another epic element ‒ which is the stage manager character, who dictates the flow of the episodes that is why it has a narrative frame for each character and a time frame through the narrator. This play has three different times: the childhood, the puberty and the afterlife of the main character, Emily. According to the stage manager’s narration, the action goes forward and back depending on which episode of Emily’s life he wants to show. He does that because he knows what happens, he is an omniscient narrator, and then he can be more critical, he can ponder and comment what he is showing. In fact, in epic theater, the analysis is disguised into the dramatic form, and its complex material is revealed through the dialogues, so the exposure is essential in this type of play.
3- What characteristics of Race, by David Mamet, differ from the ones in conventional bourgeois drama?
Race by David Mamet differs from the bourgeois drama since it has time and setting unity and its setting is not the domus as in the bourgeois drama.

It prioritizes likelihood over truth. Its audience does not identify themselves with the characters, which can intensify their empathic emotion; in this way, it obscures the notion of class. In Race, some actions are shown through dialogues rather than pantomimed. The bourgeois drama was a way of bourgeoisie to build their world-view; instead, Mamet wanted to focus on the role of the system. He wanted to show how the law system functions in people’s mind; therefore, he presented the institutionalization of race as a topic for law, for this reason the characters are what the system made of them.

4- Speech is crucially important in both The Bald Prima Donna, by Eugene Ionesco, and in Krapp’s last tape, by Samuel Beckett, but its role is drastically different in these two plays. Briefly comment on the

difference.
In The Bald Soprano, dialogues are non sequitur and give the impression that the characters do not listen to each other; they are only trying to make their own voices to be heard. Ionesco linked unrelated sentences, as the ones he found when learning English, to express the futility of communication in modern society. For this reason, there are a lot of repetitions in the play, which create an echo effect representing this meaningless communication. In Krapp’s last tape, there are also repetitions but they aim to establish a relationship of dialogue between Krapp and his past selves. Although there is only one character on the stage, there are many characters in the play, especially Krapp’s other selves, and it is listening to their tapes recordings that the dialogue is created, and which aims recognition. However, Krapp’s speech can be understood as egocentric, since he speaks only to himself and of himself, so these dialogues do not have a communicative intent either. And more, the fragmentation of his speeches highlights the impossible stabilization of meaning of the past event. This play is nothing more than a mise-en-abîme of Krapp’s speeches in different moments of his life and whose only subject is Krapp himself. In conclusion, both plays have a different dialogic structure, and even if in both dialogue does not lead to communication, its role also differs because one intends to show the lack of communication of modern society and the other shows the quest for a life meaning.
5- What characteristics make The Baden Baden Lesson on consent, by Bertolt Brecht, a “learning play”?