AGDIGITALNOTES

  The Cocktail Party as Revival of Poetic Drama Significance of Last Act Feminism and Feminist Theory The Cocktail Party is one of the most successful poetic plays of T.S.Eliot, The reason is that the Christian theme and spiritual message are carefully mingled with many other factors that impress the audience. The contemporary London society, the drawing room atmosphere, familiar characters surprise; and above all the human tone and the use of verse pattern resembling ordinary speech, accent for the popularity of the play. Besides the major theme of martyrdom, there are other subsidiary themes seen in the play. It is remarked, Christian martyrdom is the obvious theme in Murder in Cathedral and implied theme in The Family Reunion. Eliot has introduced his favourite theme of Christian martyrdom, which has relevance to the contemporary world, in The Cocktail Party also. Primarily, the play deals with the different levels of spiritual experience; of the saint and of ordinary life...

  The Cocktail Party as Revival of Poetic Drama Theme of The Cocktail Party Growth and Status of English Language in India T he Cocktail Party , a poetic drama by T.S.Eliot is divided into Acts and Scenes quiet contrary to his usual practice of dividing a play into two parts. The plot is made up of two actions. The main plot consists of Edward-Lavinia story. It may also be called as ‘Domestic Comedy’ for it deals with the private married life of the Chamberlaynes and shows how they succeed in working out a tolerable adjustment. The sub-plot consists of Celia’s martyrdom. The main plot is light and comic, while the sub-plot is serious and tragic. Sir Henry Harcourt Reilly is the connecting link between the two stories. The last Act is an integral part of the play. It shows the Chamberlaynes living the ordinary life of give and take, which is their choice. Celia and the Chamberlaynes have chosen different ways, but Act III shows that their choices are ‘different parts of a simple p...

  Theme of The Cocktail Party Significance of Last Act Alchemist as Comedy T.S.Eliot the most important and Significant dramatist of the twentieth made a permanent name in the history of poetic drama by his Murder in the Cathedral, The Family Reunion, The Cocktail Party and The Confidential Clerk. Infact, Eliot along with W.B.Yeats and J.M.Synge took upon himself the task of reviving the verse drama. He says, I believe…that poetry is the natural and complete medium for drama; that the prose play is a kind of abstraction capable of giving you only a part of what the theatre can give, and that the verse play is capable of something much more intense and exciting. The Cocktail Party is a landmark in the history of poetic drama because in the play Eliot comes very near to solving the problems of poetic drama in the modern age. The main problems are two- a suitable theme and a suitable medium of communication. Traditionally, mythological and historical subjects were considered su...

Character Sketch of Eliza Doolittle Pygmalion as a Problem Play Henry Higgins is the central character of the play Pygmalion by G.B.Shaw. He is infact Shaw’s Pygmalion. But unlike the Pygmalion of legend he does not make statues, he is a Professor of Phonetics. Not a worshiper of physical beauty and looks; rather he enlightens the mind of his pupils. Phonetics is his first love, his ruling passion. He finds people interesting chiefly because he can note down their dialects. That is the main reason why he lets Alfred Doolittle come to his house. When he thinks about Eliza he only thinks about her vowels and consonants. He undertakes the task of transforming her into a duchess within six months not because he was interested in her; rather it was a challenge to his knowledge and teaching methods. This shows his positivism and challenging nature. Wit and humour are natural to Higgins. Interesting words and phrases are always at his command. He calls Eliza deliciously low . Fu...

Pygmalion as a Problem Play Best Quotes Mingling of Genres in Pygmalion Character Sketch of Henry Higgins Colonialism History of English Language Eliza Doolittle, the daughter of Mr. Alfred Doolittle is one of the chief protagonists of the play Pygmalion written by G.B.Shaw around which all the events revolve. As the play opens Eliza is presented before us as a poor, ignorant and rustic flower girl. After three months of training when she appears in the drawing room of Mrs. Higgins, she produces such remarkable impression that everyone rises from their seat. Finally, at the Ambassador’s Party everyone was charmed by her looks and behavior and took her to be princess. The radical changes can be noticed not only in her speech but also in her appearance. She turned to be a pretty and graceful young lady under the training she received from Higgins and Pickering’s treatment of morality. However, this was not entirely Higgins’s achievement. Without Eliza’s self-discipline an...

Character Sketch Eliza Doolittle Character Sketch of Henry Higgins Best Quotes Mingling of Genres in Pygmalion Oedipus Complex in Sons and Lovers Pygmalion is a richly complex play written by George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950).   He was deeply interested in the sound of words as well as in their sense of meaning. As such, he wrote Pygmalion a play about speech and phonetics. It is particularly a problem- play and the problem goes much deeper than the bare story as told. Shaw demonstrates how speech and etiquette preserve class distinctions. It encloses within itself assumptions of social superiority and inferiority that underlie the class system, middle class morality, identity and kinds of manners. It shows the transformation that happens in a person’s life by teaching correct pronunciation and good manners. The problem in the play, therefore, is the world problem of education.                  ...

Pygmalion as a Problem Play Explanation of best quotes of Pygmalion 1     1)  “Of Course! I do, you little fool. Five minutes ago you were like a millstone round my neck. Now you are a tower of strength: a consort battleship. You and I and Pickering will be three old bachelors instead of only two men and a silly girl.” The above lines are spoken by Higgins in G.B.shaw’s play Pygmalion , Act V. After the Ambassador’s Party Eliza exchanges hot words with Higgins and leave the place. The next morning Higgins and Pickering starts search for Eliza and finds her in his (Higgins) mother’s house. Higgins becomes furious but Eliza was very formal. She asks him to apologise to her as now she was not afraid of Higgins and could do without him. Higgins responds that he also wants to apologise and get reconciled to her. Sometime back he thought that Eliza was a great burden on him, but now she has become independent and confident. Now she was so strong that she could p...

Mingling of genres More quotes             Pygmalion as a Problem Play           Eliza Doolittle       1)    “Remember that you are a human being with a soul and the divine gift of articulate speech; that your native language is the language of Shakespeare and Milton and the Bible; and don’t sit there crooning like a bilious pigeon.” These words are spoken by Higgins in G.B.Shaw’s famous play Pygmalion , Act I. Eliza, a flower girl is infuriated when she finds Higgins noting down her spoken words. Even she warns him of not doing so, to this Higgins sternly replies. He remarks that Eliza’s pronunciations of English words are so bad that it depresses and disgusts an educated person. He asks her to remember that she is a human being and god has given her the gift of speaking clearly with well defined words and sounds. However, she is uttering words like a pigeon while she is speaking a great langua...

Relevance of Title                             Christy Mohan John Millington Synge (1871-1909) is considered as the greatest dramatist of the Irish Literary revival. Along with W.B.Yeats and Lady Gregory he made the Abbey Theatre of Dublin a famous centre of dramatic activities. He wrote several plays- The Aran Islands, The Shadow of Glen, Riders to the Sea, The Tinker’s Wedding, The Playboy of the Western World, The Well of the Saints and Deirdre of Sorrows .   These plays provide evidence of his versatility and have won and preserved for him a permanent place among the great names in the British drama.     The Playboy of the Western World, a highly controversial play exposed the middle class audience to a different portrayal of Irish countryside life as opposed to the traditional idyllic image they were accustomed to. The play has been looked at variously from the point of view of its genre, ...

Relevance of Title                            Theme John Millington Synge (1871-1909) is considered as the greatest dramatist of the Irish Literary revival. The characters drawn by him were real human beings of flesh and blood. He did allow his feelings to colour his portraits. A.C. Collins notices a Shakespearean touch in The Playboy of the Western World. He says, No doubt, neither Pegeen nor the other girls, nor indeed any of the characters are even likely, but, whatever Ireland thought the outer world could rejoice is the vitality and humour of the conception. Here was human nature simple and crude, cunning and brutal, greedy, spiteful and changeable but warm in the blood and capable of poetry… Synge did not agree with the Irish patriots who presented all Irish men as noble and women as virtuoso. He presents real life human beings at its best and at its worst, in spirituality and in animal savagery. In th...

One of the most significant developments in the English Theatre in the Modern Age came to be called as The Theatre of the Absurd .  Gorky’s Lower Depths was the inspiration for this kind of play. Some of the playwrights who adopted this method are Eugene Ionesco, Jean Genet, Arthur Adamou, Edward Albee and Samuel Beckett. The absurdist playwrights deal with purposelessness of life and human existence. Their plays seek to explore the spiritual loneliness, complete isolation and anxiety of the downs and outs of a society, of those who are social failures and social outcasts. Oliver I.William remarks, The absurdist playwrights believe that our existence is absurd because we have been without asking to be been, we die without seeking to die…there ultimately comes a sense of helplessness and impotence, something which the plays of Beckett also deal with. The Absurd Theatre came under the influence of existentialism- a school of thought which believes in the absurdity of the unive...