AFFECTIVE
ANALYSIS
THEA291
Dr. Larsen
The
techniques of "affective analysis" lead the analyst to an answer to
the question: "What kind of emotional experience may a production
of this play provide an audience?"
Critics,directors,
actors, even casual readers or viewers needing an answer to the question,
"What feeling is the playwright trying to express?" can read
prefaces, prologs, the author's letters, or transcripts of his speeches, or
they can, sometimes, ask the playwright what attitude or emotion prompted the
writing of the play. Unfortunately, however, many playwrights simply never
leave any explanatory documents for the aid of bewildered and curious
investigators. Some playwrights will try to explain the emotional
foundations of their plays, but the explanations often have little apparent
relevance to the plays, either because playwrights are not adept at explaining
themselves, or because they don't know what prompted them to begin writing or
what feeling sustained them during the period of composition. Even if they
know what drives them, they may refuse to explain because they want readers and
viewers to experience their plays: They'll say, "If I could explain
the pathos of the play, I wouldn't have to go through the agony of writing
it!" Still more important for the play analyst is the possibility
that the emotion the playwright is conscious of may not be the emotion
expressed in the play. The conclusion of all this is that reference
to sources outside the play in itself can be only
secondary indications of the pathos of the play. The primary source of
information about the potentialities of a playscript is the playscript itself.
One can further conclude that the emotional power or significance of the play
is a product of the playwright's manipulation of character, setting, action,
theme, language. The answer to our leading question: "What kind of
emotional experience may a production of this play provide an audience?"
can be answered best in terms of the techniques employed by the playwright
to facilitate expression of the play's unique pathos.
Please
note: An affective analysis is aimed at discovering the
unique and individual pathos of a play, not merely at discovering whether a
play is a "comedy" or a "tragedy." Such gross
classifications are helpful only when they suggest avenues along which the
critic pursues the deeper significance of the play's experience.
THE
TECHNIQUE OF AFFECTIVE ANALYSIS:
1. What do the character’s want?
The technique of dynamic analysis combined with a close reading of the text
will lead the analyst to an understanding of character motive. Express in
active verb statements.
2. What is the main action
of the play? Summarize the wants of the character; the play’s dynamic substance is the sum of the dynamic attributes
of the dramatis personae to find the main dramatic action.
3. What is the play
about? In other words, what subjects dominate the dialog? Note
the subjects of each speech. What do the character’s talk about? What are the main attributes of the
world of the play? No play is about everything, about “life.” Each play creates a circle of interests and the characters live in that circle and no
other.
4. How do the MAIN characters perceive the world of the
play? What are the attitudes of the characters toward
their situation? Two kinds of evidence are available:
a. Lyrical statements by the characters’ outpourings of feeling about a situation gives the analyst
an overt, self-conscious version of the character’s pathetic qualities.
b. An indexing of subject talked about, actions
performed, and lyrical expressions provides the analyst with a deeper insight
into the character’s emotional
make-up. With regard to each theme, what does
each character do? What other themes crop up in dialog in association
with the central theme? What does the character confess to feeling about each
theme and of what strategic value is each confession?
5. Once the analyst knows what
the characters want and what they feel about what they want, the analyst can
ask, "What has the playwright done to promote an audience's
identification with each MAIN character?"(for doing this professionally,
you would consider each character).
a. How does the playwright manipulate elements of the
mise en scene to promote an audience's sympathy for a
character? to promote an audience's rejection of a character?
b. How has the playwright selected events for
dramatization which promote or diminish audience identification?
c. Has the playwright used familiar or unfamiliar
character types?
d. How has the playwright manipulated language, gesture,
movement, to promote or diminish identification?
e. Do characters' expressed attitudes promote or inhibit
identification?
Assignment
For
the assigned play, perform the technique of affective analysis as outlined
above. Start with an introduction. Where
it states, each character, use the main characters in your analysis (protagonist and
antagonist/s). Make sure you first identify who the protagonist and
antagonist(s) are along with proper support for your choices. End with a summary paragraph that answers the
question: What kind of emotional experience may a production of this play
provide an audience?