This is the blog for the Stage Movement Class at Metro State University in Denver. We'll be discussing our readings and viewings for class here.

Feb 27, 2014

Chapter 13 and Comedy of Manners

As I read the Comedy of Manners chapter, several things stood out to me. I completely agree that watching someone work at the mannerisms appropriate to the time period gets boring quite quickly but it's also hard to seem like you were born with those mannerisms when we move very differently today. It also seemed odd to me that aristocrats would enjoy watching a play in the comedy of manners style because it seems to me that they took themselves pretty seriously and they would be watching plays that were poking fun at their lifestyle.  I really liked what the chapter said about behaving truthfully in the circumstances and that if you dig deeper into the text of the play, you can find the truth of their objectives and approaches. Language was used as "a medium for intellectual flirtation and display" which is a method of expression that we use less today. The final line in the chapter that struck me was that the people most successful in comedy of manners plays are the ones who take "life as a game to be played with consummate ease" and I thought that was the perfect example of the way many characters treat their decisions.
Although some of the jargon in Chapter 13 was a little hard to adjust to initially, I enjoyed reading about the personal space spheres and thinking about my answers to the questions on page 8.  Each answer I came up with for me personally was very dependent on the context of the situation I was in but the questions were also helpful when thinking about how Julia would answer the questions and who she would accept into her structural space sphere :).



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