Dramatic Significance:

1. Dramatic Significance: A close reading of theatrical excerpts

2. “Dramatic Significance” refers to the function and importance of a scene, character, incident, and speech (dialogue, soliloquy, or aside)

3. Determining Dramatic Significance Does the quotation: 1. Advance the plot: • Plot = series of related events that make up a story. • Advancing plot = because of this, something else will happen

4. 2. Establish a conflict: • Internal – character has internal struggle concerning emotion & decision • External – two or more characters have a struggle • External – person vs. nature or person vs. society

5. 3. Illustrate a literary device: • foreshadowing • Irony: dramatic, verbal, situational • imagery • atmostphere/mood • figurative language: simile, metaphor, hyperbole, alliteration, personification, onomatopoeia

6. 4. Reveal characterization: • Show us a significant personality trait of a certain character or show character development • Through actions and speech of character • Through actions and speech of other characters

7. 5. Illustrate a theme • There can be more than one theme in a single work • Can be illustrated through actions and speech of characters,“lessons learned”, and action & events • Look for repetition

8. 6. Provide background information • History of story 7. Create or withdraw pathos (pity/compassion) in the viewer/reader 8. Establish or develop relationships between characters

9. When Citing Dramatic Significance… You must include the following: • The speaker; • To whom the speaker is addressing; • Its meaning, or what is being said, in your own words; • And most importantly, its significance to the play as a whole.

10. Example: …you should be women, And yet your beards forbid me to interpret that you are so.

11. In Act 1 of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the characters Banquo and Macbeth come across the three Witches. This passage represents the first contact Banquo makes with the witches, and he attempts to discover not necessarily who, but what they are. He says they “should be women” yet they have “beards”, which “forbid [Banquo] to interpret” their true form. …

12. …These few short lines serve to cement the Three Witches in a paradoxical identity. Their gender is confused—they seem at once male and female. They similarly speak in paradoxes: “fair is foul, and foul is fair,” and later, “Lesser than Macbeth, and greater”. …

13. …By physically embodying and communicating through paradox, the Witches gain a supernatural, or at least unnatural quality to their characterization, and it leaves the audience with a similar task to Banquo’s: to “interpret” their true form and intentions.

14. You Try! That, trusted home, Might yet enkindle you unto the crown, Besides the thane of Cawdor. But ‘tis strange: And oftentimes, to win us to our harm, The instruments of darkness tell us truths, Win us with honest trifles, to betray us In deepest consequence.

15. What might you have found? • Establishes conflict between Banquo & Macbeth: they respond differently • Reveals personality trait of Banquo: more suspicious of the Witches prophecies • Illustrates a theme: “instruments of darkness” (Evil) • Illustrates foreshadowing: “to betray us/ In deepest consequence” (Macbeth’s death)

16. Remember! • The best answer is one that draws evidence in. Refer specifically to the passage that you are working with, but also try your best to bring in specifics from other parts of the text. • Also, create balance and symmetry in your answers. They should have an opening, relevant evidence, and a closing.