Dramatic World Research Articles

“What Sacrifices Are Necessary”: The Corruption of Ritual Paradigms in Euripides’s Electra

This diachronic exploration of Euripides’s Electra seeks to demonstrate that the play’s systematic deviation from normative ritual categories and experiences supplies a dramatic world congruent with the transgressive, divinely ordained violence undertaken by Orestes and Electra. Apollo’s punitive intervention, it is argued, comes after and strategically reinforces the miasma initiated by Agamemnon’s murder, and in this way the god models his retribution upon an existing pattern of Atreid transgression.

In Defense of Myrrhina: Friendship between Women in Plautus’s Casina

Introduction argumentative behavior of Myrrhina towards her friend, Cleostrata, in Act 2, Scene 2, of Plautus's Casina has struck many scholars as inconsistent with her amicable behavior elsewhere in the play. (1) When the two women meet in this scene, which is their first encounter on stage, Cleostrata expresses indignation towards her husband, and Myrrhina counters that her grounds for indignation are not valid. friction between the two women is obvious, but later they cooperate fully in Cleostrata's efforts to humiliate her husband and foil his plan to rape the slave girl, Casina. charge of inconsistency appears as early as Peter Langen (1886, 127), who stated simply, Der Charakter der Murrhina ist nicht konsequent durch gefuhrt (The character of Myrrhina is not executed consistently throughout), and as recently as Ariana Traill (2011, 502), who writes, The betrayal is as short-lived as it is unexpected. (2) To Eduard Fraenkel (2007, 204), the difference in her behavior is so striking that he concludes it must be the result of Plautine interpolation: principles which Myrrhina espouses in lines 199-211 fit neither her character nor her behaviour during the rest of the play nor the nature of her friendship with Cleostrata. two women are in complete harmony; the intimacy of their relationship is studiously emphasized at the beginning of this scene (179-83). Cleostrata is deeply worried; such cold-blooded opposition by her friend, as it is portrayed in only one set of lines, 199-211, is intolerable: it contradicts the way the Greek poet has clearly shaped the whole play. primary goal of my paper is to demonstrate that Myrrhina's behavior in Scene 2.2 is not inconsistent with her otherwise strong expressions of solidarity with Cleostrata; in fact, she acts precisely as a friend should by warning Cleostrata that her opposition to her husband could get her into serious trouble. Before delving into this, I will examine the methodological problems behind Langen's original proclamation and investigate why his conclusion--that Myrrhina's behavior is inconsistent--perseveres even though his methodology is now considered outdated. Returning to the dramatic world of the Casina, the trouble arises when Cleostrata's husband, Lysidamus, makes a particularly overt and particularly grand effort to gain sexual access to their slave, Casina, who is of marriageable age. Lysidamus plans to arrange her marriage to his personal slave, Olympio, so that he can access Olympio's chambers and rape Casina without arousing the suspicions of his own wife, Cleostrata. Their son, Euthynicus, who is also interested in the young woman, has devised a similar plan to marry Casina to his own slave. Casina has no lines and the audience is never shown her perspective; she is a hapless bystander whose future will be decided by a handful of citizens who fight for the prestige that comes from controlling Casina as property. (3) Cleostrata, aware of her husband's intentions, attempts to keep Lysidamus from Casina by lending practical support to the efforts of their son. In private conversation with Myrrhina in Scene 2.2, Cleostrata argues that she, not her husband, should be allowed to arrange Casina's marriage, because Casina belongs to her. Myrrhina objects that women have no property and, therefore, everything Cleostrata claims to own actually belongs to her husband. We will look more closely at their disagreement momentarily. Langen's search for problematic characters reflects a now outdated methodology: the nineteenth-century German philological tradition valued close reading with a view towards detecting inconsistencies, seen as corruptions created by the manuscript tradition, and then restoring the original text. While the approach was applied broadly to classical texts, it was particularly attractive for the study of Roman comedy, since the plays were adapted from now-lost Greek models, and indeed little Greek New Comedy was available at all. …

"Plagued in Art": The fashioning of an aesthetics of sacrifice in the Duchess of Malfi

This article offers a reading of John Webster‟s masterpiece, The Duchess of Malfi (1614), as an exemplification of an „aesthetics of sacrifice‟ in which human agency is first presented – in the character of the widowed Duchess – and then radically undermined. The reader/receiver of the text, it is argued, rather than encountering the ultimately positive, secular humanism that many critics have discerned in the play, is left with an impression of the dramatic world as devoid of purpose, its central character denied subjectivity as the playwright traces the tight arc of the Duchess‟s trajectory from the laughing decider of her own destiny in Act 1, to her abjection and death at the instigation of her murderous, controlling brothers in Act 4. In support of this reading of Webster‟s vision, the paper draws on the work of the phenomenologist Roman Ingarden‟s insights into the construction of the literary work of art, adapting his constructionist view of such works to the drama. Close textual analysis – augmented by the experience of two exceptional recent productions of the play – offers a rationale for a reading of The Duchess of Malfi as the depiction of a world ultimately devoid of meaning. While this chimes with early modern theorists‟ notions of „the‟ Jacobean world-view as nihilist, what is offered here is an explication of the underlying (dramatological) mechanisms that infuse and construct the reader/receiver‟s response to a work in which the central character retains a fascination for audiences, arguably equal to that usually reserved for the best of Webster‟s more famous contemporary, Shakespeare.

Home in the Dramatic World of the Father by August Strindberg

Strindberg’s The Father Home, within the dramatic world of the text in question, becomes a space which the characters, especially Laura inscribes rather than just inhabits. The metaphor of home is a popular metaphor in literature, especially in the postcolonial and social drama of Ibsen and Chekhov and other such playwrights of the modern era. House or home plays a significant role in plays like Hedda Gabler, Doll’s House, The Cherry Orchard and also in other plays by Strindberg (2006) like The Dance of Death and to an extent in Miss Julie too. In The Father however, it changes its connotations, especially with respect to Laura’s character as the plot develops. It becomes from a place of oppression to that of power for her and finally a Sibyl’s cave where she uses her sorcery and creativity in a somewhat twisted way to mould things according to her desire. This paper seeks to critically analyze the space which defines “home” in The Father, how it is used and consequently differed in meaning through the intervention of Laura. For this purpose it will draw upon “The Parables of the Cave” written by Sandra M.Gilbert and Susan Gubar. This essay talks about how the simile of the cave corresponds with womb and the female abode.

Shakespeare’s Drama in View of the Indian Aesthetic Theory of Rasa

Human feelings have been categorized into several kinds of emotions according to their cultural traditions. Indian aesthetic theory of rasa divides emotional states up into eight rasas common to human beings: Sringara Rasa (pleasure or love), Hasya Rasa (laughter or humor), Karuna Rasa (sorrow or compassion), Raudra Rasa (anger), Vira Rasa (heroism or courage), Bhayanaka Rasa (terror), Bibhatsa Rasa (disgust), and Adbhuta Rasa(wonder or awesome). We could have some experiences like these in Shakespeare’s plays with all the complex human emotions shown in his dramatic world. Rasa theory deals with entire literary process: from the artist through the work of art to the reader or audience. Thus, Shakespeare’s tragedies could be read or watched in view of the theory, so that we could find the similarities and differences between ‘catharsis’ in Shakespeare and ‘santa rasa’ in Indian arts. Santa rasa is enlightenment like silence, peace or bliss: all rasas of eight emotions rise from and fall into santa rasa. As Shakespeare creates and destroys the world of his own dream in his drama, his tragedies go beyond the effect of catharsis and come near santa rasa. When Shakespeare creates dramatic illusions and he himself destroys them, he has at once the subjective and objective vision of the world. This is breaking the spell of our lives full of various kinds of emotions like eight rasas. Through the process of aesthetic experiences in Shakespeare’s drama, we could attain to enlightenment like santa rasa.

Struktura perspektive u kazalištu za djecu i mlade

The paper shows how the authorial choice of perspective influences the spectators’ understanding and the experience of performance, and how it can be used for educational and/or artistic purposes. Starting with Pfister’s (1998) categorisation of perspective structures, it focuses on the theatre for young audiences (TYA). The authorial choice of perspective is examined in the context of the inner structure of dramatic situation (Greimas’ actantial analysis). The results of an empirical investigation on the effects of experiencing dramatic action from different points of view are discussed with respect to perspective structures in TYA. The effects of perspective choices are further investigated using two examples (a performance and a play), which leads to the conclusion that the understanding of the effects each actantial position has on the viewer’s perception and understanding of the dramatic world can be used in planning perspective strategies in writing plays, and in preparing and analysing performances.

Bonfire of the Vanities: Pleasure, Theory, Shakespeare

This essay critiques the rhetorical and ideological strategies by which aesthetic pleasure has been devalued in both Renaissance and contemporary humanism. Through a close reading of Shakespeare's Richard II, the essay shows how the abjection of vain (both narcissistic and futile) pleasures lubricates the play's ideological machinery. It demonstrates further that, as a play, Richard II is itself a manifestation of the forms of vain pleasure that the dramatic world within the play aims to scapegoat. This reading of Shakespeare's play is framed by an argument against commonplace narratives about the legacy of deconstructive theory. Just as Shakespeare's second tetralogy reinforces the submission of pleasure to use and vanity to virtue, so have critics tended to redeem the forms of pleasure for which deconstruction has been routinely vilified. Because the demand for ethical responsibility reinscribes antifeminist and homophobic energies, it is worth reexamining the abjection of vanity on which the Western socioethical sphere depends for its force.

Successful Fraud: Édouard, A.K.A. The Duchesse de Langeais

Most of Michel Tremblay's writings fit together like a puzzle to reveal a microcosm of characters that speak “le joual” and operate in a very Québécois universe distanced from the grip of the French classics. Nonetheless, one of the most emblematic characters of Tremblay's novelistic and dramatic world, Édouard, a.k.a. the Duchess of Langeais, builds his identity of drag-queen-supreme by displaying his Frenchness. To stage his persona of “femme du monde” he alludes to French literature, culture, and cinema, often imitating Parisian celebrities and recalling his stay in the capital. A closer reading of Édouard's diary will reveal the painful experience of crossing linguistic and cultural boundaries while exposing him as a fraud. The France depicted in the Duchess's stories and the “real” Paris where Édouard travelled on his journey of initiation and where he acquired his titles have little in common. Following Édouard's thread through numerous plays and novels we will examine the mechanisms of his reappropriation of the Idea of France and assertion of his status as “other” by constructing a (false) French identity.

Interpreting Social Violence in French Culture: Buzançais, 1847–2008 by Cynthia A. Bouton

among groups of Americans and French in their countries and in public spaces in Paris. Likewise, the arrival of the American Legion for a parade down the ChampsElys ées three weeks after the Sacco-Vanzetti riots evoked some of the same polemics and fears, although Blower adeptly explains why the outcome was much calmer. Inserted between these two chapters is one devoted to the reactionary Prefect of Police Jean Chiappe, whose polarizing tenure (1927–34) provoked dissention between the left and the right and paved the path for the contentious decades leading to and following World War II. Cultural and political transnational history comes alive through Blower’s engaging presentation of facts and analysis, accompanied by extensive notes and a comprehensive bibliography. Her rhetorical strategy of opposing arguments or viewpoints, drawn from primary and secondary sources, renders particularly cogent her final assessments, offered as section and chapter summaries. Blower, whose flowing prose is replete with precise, varied vocabulary and syntax, alternates concrete examples, regularly drawn from the writings of well-known personalities , with overarching paradigms of public sentiments and events. Although sometimes authenticating the romantic images of Paris in the Roaring 20s, Blower juxtaposes an era in which Americans may have arrived in the capital as innocents abroad, but who became inexorably more politically knowledgeable about the world. Gradually, Americans understood their own cultural values and the reciprocal influence of dramatic world events upon themselves and other global citizens. In the final chapter, “The Expatriates Reconsidered,” Blower follows American writers whose travels further afield led initially to enthusiasm for leftist, even communist, viewpoints, but eventually devolved into disillusion. Whereas these expatriates, often returning to Paris or setting out from the French capital, may have found a new voice by either isolating themselves or by trying to warn their compatriots, Blower points out that the 1950s brought a return to the nostalgia of the 1920s, selectively remembered by Hollywood. Rather than supporting the myth of American culture being a one-way street, Blower has demonstrated persuasively that “the making of American culture and influence has been a twoway street” (266), transported to Paris, leavened, and repatriated. Northwestern University (IL) Margot M. Steinhart BOUTON, CYNTHIA A. Interpreting Social Violence in French Culture: Buzançais, 1847– 2008. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2011. ISBN 978-0-8071-3686-7. Pp. 256. $39.95. With hindsight the facts of the matter seem clear-cut, and one wonders how anyone can contest what actually happened in Buzançais on that fateful, bitter cold January day in 1847 when a grain convoy, passing through this sleepy village in the Indre was commandeered by a motley crew of hungry peasants. Within hours an angry mob had invaded granaries and mills and forced resale of the grain at a just price set by the people. The mob violence cost several lives on both sides, and after the authorities had restored order, of course, there was hell to pay for the losers: after a speedy trial three insurgents were sentenced to death and executed by guillotine on market day in the town square. In this wellresearched and immensely readable cultural history, Cynthia Bouton focuses on 770 FRENCH REVIEW 85.4 how the initial food riot of January 1847 was essentially retold in a variety of venues: in local and national political discourse, the press, literature, visual culture , popular and scholarly historical narratives, and local spectacle. Each retelling is a de facto interpretation, a reenactment, as it were, of the 1847 “primal” scene, which has lived on as event, as experience, and as myth, doing valuable cultural, social, and political work for more than a century and a half. Specifically , the author studies how four defining moments of the riot (the initial hijacking of the grain convoy, the fatal shooting of a rioter by a notable who was subsequently lynched, the leadership of women, and the inadequate responses of the authorities) have been represented over time in both words and pictures. In chapter 1 Bouton recounts the facts as we know them, but already the first renditions of the riot underscore the difficulties involved in understanding the past, which range from assigning guilt (“Who shoved whom when?”) to assessing long...

Immersive Theatre and the Reception Process

Immersive theatre, a performance style introduced by the company Punchdrunk first to London and subsequently to New York, has been one of the most popular new approaches to theatre staging in both cities in the new century. Although individual productions differ, immersive theatre in general encourages the audience to intermingle with the actors in a common space. This freedom of mobility has encouraged some theorists to hail this type of theatre as one that makes possible an actively engaged spectator, like that proposed by Rancière, but this essay argues that such emancipation is basically an illusion, and that the control of the dramatic world remains almost totally in the hands of the producing organization.

Negotiating Nation-building and Citizenship through the Truth and Reconciliation Committee’s ‘Dramatic’ Spheres: A Reading of Two Post-apartheid Plays

Having a voice, either at the level of the individual or the community, has been one of the atavistic ways of defining or asserting humanity. This allows for the inscription of the twin-capped hegemony of successes or victories and frustrations at both the private locus and the public sphere. The disruptions of this possibility by rifts between natives in pre-colonial South Africa were aggravated in the heat of the colonial suppression it suffered, and was compounded by the operation of apartheid rule. By reason of this misrule, voices were suppressed, with a few cacophonies of dissention breaking forth. The culmination of these disenchantments into the demise of apartheid significantly presaged the need for reconstruction and redefinition of citizenship and cohabitation, and hence the necessity for establishing a public sphere, or put alternatively, a public domain in the form of the Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. This paper, therefore, seeks to interrogate the dramatic world(s) created using the material properties of the TRC in John Kani’s Nothing but the Truth and Zakes Mda’s The Bells of Amersfoort . The paper argues that the domination and manipulation of this public realm by the state at the expense of the individual is not only counterproductive, but constitutes a denial of the relevance of such spheres. The paper, going by indices in the plays, therefore, concludes that every individual should not only be: given a voice, and be heard, but be allowed equal unbiased participation. Otherwise, the public sphere would not just be impotent, but the idea of nation-building and desirable citizenship would be a mere ruse.

Shakespeare's Critique of Friendship in Timon of Athens

This essay argues that Shakespeare's Timon of Athens dramatizes Timon's four types of human relationship in terms of both the possibilities and impossibilities of friendship. It further claims that the play uncovers the complexities and ambiguities inherent in the practice or ‘malpractice’ of friendship. Timon's relationship with what I call “false friends” is the first case in point. Timon takes them for his true friends, but they betray him. This mistake, however, is not something that gullible, giving Timon can only make. Rather, it is a structural problem of friendship within which his own experience with “false friends” is possible. Anyone who desires to pursue friendship would face the same dilemma as Timon has. Betrayal, in other words, is the very condition of friendship. Or to say the least, it is the only way to experience the possibilities and impossibilities of friendship at the same time. Timon's three other types of relationship with Steward, Alcibiades, and Apemantus respectively can be understood in this context. For instance, Timon's relationship with Steward is complex and ambiguous. Whether or not Steward is Timon's true and faithful friend depends on one's perspective. Shakespeare seems to intentionally open both possibilities in order for the audience to see the ways in which the complexities and ambiguities operate in the name of friendship. In a similar fashion, the bard creates his own version of Alcibiades from a historical figure presumably for the sake of his dramatic purpose. In doing so, Shakespeare seems to suggest that Alcibiades's apparent or dubious acts of friendship may or may not fulfill his alleged purposes. One can interpret them one way or another, to simply put. This is why Timon's relationship with Apemantus can be addressed in the light of friendship as well. When true friendship is always already a matter of the future tense in both Shakespeare's dramatic world and the world in which we live, Apermantus's unfriendly, or even antagonistic relationship with Timon can be seen as a quasi ideal case in which deception and falsity in the guise of friendship might be hardly at work. Perhaps Apermantus is Timon's true, if not best, friend in an ironical sense. The tragedy, of course, is that Timon's relationship with him ought to be understood only in terms of the self and the other, which absolutely resist any possibilities of unity. Their friendship, in other words, is an ironic and paradoxical case in which something is possible only by negating itself. To conclude, this play hardly dramatizes exemplary friendships as best shown in relationships between Hamlet and Horatio, Antonio and Basanio, and Prince Hal and Falstaff, but it nevertheless successfully examines the fundamental nature of friendship.

China's exports in a world of increasing oil prices

PurposeThis paper aims to examine the impact of oil prices on trade's sensitivity to distance. Furthermore, it seeks to investigate if the nature of trade and the type of goods have a mediating role on the oil prices' impact on trade.Design/methodology/approachA set of gravity models are estimated on a unique panel dataset from China Customs Statistics that reports trade by customs regime (processing trade vs non‐processing trade) and by transportation mode (air vs sea) for the years 1988‐2008.FindingsHigher oil prices increase the sensitivity of China's exports to distance. This effect is especially pronounced for processing exports, where goods cross borders multiple times. On the other hand, it is smaller for exports shipped by air. While these results are statistically significant, their economic effects are relatively small. This paper estimates that the quadrupling of oil prices between 2002 and 2008 has increased the elasticity of Chinese exports with respect to distance by a mere 5‐7 per cent.Social implicationsThe surge of oil prices in recent years has led to speculation that rising transportation costs could end the period of dramatic world trade growth – in the words of Rubin, “[…] Your world is going to get a whole lot smaller.” This paper suggests that this concern is overstated.Originality/valueThis is the first paper that estimates the mediating role that the nature of trade and the type of goods play on trade's sensitivity to distance.

Is Our World Going to Get a Whole Lot Smaller?

The surge of oil prices in recent years has led to speculation that rising transportation costs could end the period of dramatic world trade growth —in the words of Rubin (2009), “…Your world is going to get a whole lot smaller.” Using data from China’s Customs Statistics, we examine the impact of oil prices on trade’s sensitivity to distance. We find that higher oil prices increase trade’s elasticity to distance, but that the economic effect is small. We also find that the effect is more pronounced for trade within global production networks, and less large for goods shipped by air.

Human Rights in Social Science Textbooks

In reaction to the disasters of the first half the 20th century and World War II, a dramatic world movement arose emphasizing the human rights of persons in global society. The contrast—celebrated in international treaties, intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations, and much cultural discourse—was with narrower world emphases on the rights of citizens of national states. Since the 1970s, this movement has increasingly emphasized the importance of human rights education as central to sustaining human rights principles. This article examines the rise of human rights themes in secondary school social science textbooks around the world since 1970, coding data on 465 textbooks from 69 countries. The authors find a general increase in human rights discussions, especially since 1995. Human rights receive less emphasis in history texts than in civics or social studies ones, and there is less human rights emphasis in books that discuss national, rather than international, society. Human rights emphases are associated with the pedagogical student-centrism of textbooks: The proactive student is a rights-bearing student. Finally, a number of indicators of national development and especially political culture show positive effects on human rights emphases. These findings broadly support the arguments of institutional theories that the contemporary “globalized” world is one in which the standing of the participatory and empowered individual person has very great legitimacy.

Schiller and Opera

Though Schiller's works are often characterized as 'operatic', the precise meaning of opera for Schiller has never been defined. Opera, in Schiller's thought, is always connected to tragedy, to which it offers a corrective, its music and fantasy serving to define the dramatic world in opposition to reality. Opera is primarily characterized by its non-naturalistic qualities, and is useful as a liberation from imitative aspects of art. 'Operatic' therefore is not a formal quality (as it has often been understood), but defines a specific effect created by drama. This effect is evident in the comedy of Wallensteins Lager, the fantasy of Die Jungfrau von Orleans, and the classicism of Die Braut von Messina. Lying behind the latter works is Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride, which exerted a powerful influence on Schiller, demonstrating the possibilities of the operatic in modern drama. In these works, Schiller fulfilled his own hope that from opera a nobler form of tragedy would evolve.

Entertaining the Nation: American Drama in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (review)

Reviewed by: Entertaining the Nation: American Drama in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Jeffrey H. Richards Tice L. Miller . Entertaining the Nation: American Drama in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2007. Pp. xvi + 229. 37.50. Tice Miller's new book covers two centuries of theatrical and dramatic activity in about 180 pages of text, enough to mention key writers, plays, and periods without expounding very much critically or culturally on any one playwright or work. The first chapter covers the colonial period; the second, the early republic; the third, the Jacksonian period; the fourth, the antebellum and postbellum history of melodrama; and the fifth, the rise of realism at century's end. While much of the first chapter properly focuses on the British staples that first appeared on North American colonial stages, it concludes with mention of a few writers and plays from the Revolutionary period. Thereafter, except to note certain influential foreign dramas (often French) that stimulated American productions, Miller focuses almost exclusively on plays written by U.S. American playwrights. In his view, the march of American drama is a long one towards American materials treated freshly—something that, in his analysis, does not occur until the twentieth century. Miller covers a lot of ground with economy. He notes in chapter 1, for instance, the popularity of such writers as Shakespeare, Centlivre, Farquhar, Addison, Bickerstaffe, and Garrick to New World theaters, with mention of a few other vehicles, such as Stevens's Lecture on Heads, that proved malleable scripts when colonial managers faced opposition to theater per se, but avoids critical engagement with these works. As an illustration of his basic method, he rightly notes the popularity of Bickerstaffe's comic opera The Padlock and its blackface servant Mungo, played in British America by Lewis Hallam, Jr., but does not engage with the deployment of race in the play. This pattern of identifying key plays with often complex social signifiers, but for the most part skirting the issues such signifiers raise, holds for much of the book. On the one hand, Miller clearly knows his stuff on the dramatic world of early America and packs in a lot of information in a small space; but, on the other, he has to sacrifice critical judgments of the ways the drama might have interacted with the culture of the period. This approach [End Page 511] is more or less consistent throughout, reflecting the limitations imposed upon the project, to be sure—he can only say so much in a short book—but having to ignore the cultural studies approach that has enriched recent work on the drama. Miller confines his discussion of native-authored texts to a few well-known pieces, such as Robert Hunter's Androboros, Robert Rogers's Ponteach, Mercy Warren's political plays, and Robert Munford's The Patriots, along with Thomas Godfrey's The Prince of Parthia and Thomas Forrest's The Disappointment. These are all signal texts and all well known to scholars of eighteenth-century American drama, but the scope of the book means Miller must leave out others, equally of interest, such as the other Revolutionary political plays by both whigs and tories. In this regard, then, readers would want to supplement Miller's first-chapter discussion with a book like Jason Shaffer's recent Performing Patriotism: National Identity in the Colonial and Revolutionary American Theater (2007) for a fuller context. For new republican drama, Miller hits many of the important figures: Royall Tyler, William Dunlap, Susanna Rowson, James Nelson Barker, and John Howard Payne. The discussion of Dunlap is noteworthy for Miller's stress on Dunlap as a translator of Kotzebue and the importance of the German-language writer to the development of early American theater, a fact that needs to be emphasized for understanding the stage of the 1790s. Miller also charts the rise of Yankee theater and correctly identifies Samuel Woodworth's The Forest Rose as a key text in the repopularization of the Yankee as an indigenous theatrical type. Again, though, The Forest Rose, a well-known musical comedy in its day, contains within its Yankee humor a deeply racist, often vicious characterization...

The Dramatic World View Revisited: Reflections on the Roles Taken and Played by Young Children and Adolescents

In this article, the author revisits an earlier paper published in 1995, “The Dramatic World View: Reflections on the Roles Taken and Played by Young Children,” which surveyed the ways and means that children acquire and play out roles in their early development. The paper was based on Landy's role theory in dramatherapy and on the observation of his two young children from eight months to four years old. The author adds his reflections upon his children twelve years later based on his observation of their projective drawings and stories. These observations lead to a discussion of role-taking and role-playing processes in the continuing development of individuals from childhood through adolescence. Throughout the article, the author examines the continuity and change of roles as manifested in the developing child's expressive activities.

Interpretative Deviations in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, Othello, and The Tempest

If Shakespeare’s Renaissance contemporaries were keen on efficiency and “progress” (in the sense of “onward movement in space”), they also particularly enjoyed labyrinthine ways which distracted them from their primary purposes. I therefore propose to explore the deviations in three very different plays: Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida (1602), Othello (1603-1604) and The Tempest (1611). Keeping in mind that “to discourse” first meant “to run, move, or travel over a space”, today’s readers and spectators can still examine the twists and turns of seductive Shakespearean discourses pervaded by irregularities, amplification, irony and perversion. But not only is the dramatic world of the Elizabethan and Jacobean era based on stylistic erring, it is also deeply rooted in the art of perspective: we are continually made to change our points of view when we probe Shakespeare’s universes, teeming with deviant characters. Indeed, a labyrinthine scene necessarily echoes a problematic text. Oblique strategies are thus used by the playwright to generate extra-ordinary emotions: weaving a dramatic web to ensnare the spectators, Shakespeare creates a subversive art which fascinates precisely because of its refusal to follow well-traced, ordinary paths. Either in real life or on stage, only unexpected meanders can provoke men’s amazement…

Taking Time Seriously

Dramatic world change has stimulated interest in research questions about the dynamics of politics. We have seen increases in the number of time series data sets and the length of typical time series. But three shortcomings are prevalent in published time series analysis. First, analysts often estimate models without testing restrictions implied by their specification. Second, researchers link the theoretical concept of equilibrium with cointegration and error correction models. Third, analysts often do a poor job of interpreting results. The consequences include weak connections between theory and tests, biased estimates, and incorrect inferences. We outline techniques for estimating linear dynamic regressions with stationary data and weakly exogenous regressors. We recommend analysts (1) start with general dynamic models and test restrictions before adopting a particular specification and (2) use the wide array of information available from dynamic specifications. We illustrate this strategy with data on Congressional approval and tax rates across OECD countries.