Students should consider the text as incomplete in written form, a blueprint for performance that needs the directors' and actors' input and interpretation, and should note how little or how much direction and specific detail playwrights give about aspects of stagecraft, such as: inclusion of protagonist, antagonist and catalyst.naturalistic, non-naturalistic dramatic effect.how the drama is set up and resolved in the opening and ending of the play.linearity, chronological events, flashbacks, climax, anti-climax, cyclical effect, repetition.the use of features such as sub-plot, frame, the ‘Green World’ etc.the division of the play into acts and scenes.conventions of structure in both traditional and modern drama eg a classic five-act Shakespearian play includes: introduction, exposition, complication, crisis, resolution and denouement a classic three-act ‘wellmade play’ can be in real time (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof).Students will consider how meaning is enhanced by the organisation of events in a play how playwrights add to the significance of certain events by the position of those events in the play’s narrative what characters know and don’t know at specific times. Students will necessarily explore the dramatic methods chosen by playwrights to convey meaning: dramatic structure, stagecraft, dramatic characterisation and dramatic speech and language. The ways that meanings are shaped in drama texts The ways listed are not exhaustive nor will discussion of all of these be relevant to all texts. Students may find the following useful in starting to think about some of the ways in which meanings are constructed in their chosen texts. Strong essay responses often demonstrate perceptive and assured overview as well as provide analysis of detail. It must be more than mere feature-spotting, and must be relevantly integrated into students’ arguments and discussions, and grounded in understanding of the whole text. In both exams and NEA responses students should select those ways they think most relevant and appropriate to the discussion of their chosen texts.
Within this, English Literature A welcomes a particular focus on the structures of texts as a form of constructing meaning. AS and A-level English Literature require students to analyse a range of ways in which meanings are shaped in literary texts.
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