The questions for Act One here
The questions for Act Two here
The questions for Act Three here
The questions for Act Four here
The questions for Act Five here
Formal Characteristics of the Well-made Play |
| 1] The play follows a strict logic of cause and effect. |
| 2] The plot is based on a secret known to the audience and withheld from the major characters so as to be revealed to them in a climactic scene. |
| 3] The plot usually describes the culmination of a long story, most of which has happened before the start of the play. This late point of attack requires that the audience be informed of the antecedent material in exposition in the form of dialogue or monologue. Scribe frequently used soliloquies and asides. |
| 4] Action and suspense grow more intense as the play proceeds. This rise in intensity is arranged in a pattern achieved by the contrivance of entrances, exits, letters, revelations of identity, and other such devices. |
| 5] The protagonist [hero] in conflict with an adversary, experiences alternately good and bad turns of fortune. This creates the emotional rhythm of the play. |
| 6] The lowest point in the hero's fortune occurs just before the highest. The latter occurs in a scene a faire or obligatory scene, that characteristically hinges on the disclosure of secrets. |
| 7] The plot, or part of it, is frequently knotted by a misunderstanding, a quid pro quo, in which a word or situation is understood in opposite ways by two or more characters. |
| 8] The denouement--literally, the "untying"--(the resolution) is logical and, hence, clear. It is not supposed to have any "remainder" or unsolved quotient to puzzle the audience. |
| 9] The over-all action pattern of the play is reproduced on a small scale in each act. It is, in fact, the principle according to which each minor climax and scene is constructed. |