okay folks today we are gonna be talking about analyzing drama and thinking about how drama is different from other kinds of texts hi guys welcome to analyzing drama and we are gonna be looking at a couple of ways that reading a drama is different than reading other kinds of text there's not a whole lot that's different you will be just fine but I just want to go over some things with you so if you haven't already go ahead and download and print or have pulled up your copy of trifles by Susan Glaspell the text is available in the Schoology course so pause the video and make sure you have your copy so that you can kind of take notes or jot down or highlight or underline or whatever will help you understand what we're supposed to do okay so hopefully you have gone ahead and printed out your copy so that we can kind of get started so the first thing I want to point out to you is that unlike a short story or a novel a play will often have usually italicized text at the beginning of the play that describes what the scene looks like the playwright puts that in there so that the director of the play and the actors who are gonna act in the play know what it's supposed to look like they have an idea of what the author's intentions were because remember a play is not written with the intention that somebody's going to be sitting at their house reading it plays are intended to be watched so the author will give you that setting information in a different way where in a short story the setting is sort of in the exposition of the story it's just the author kind of weaves it in and you sort of have to infer it in a play they straight out say this is what it looks like so let's read the scene together it says the kitchen in the now abandoned farmhouse of John Wright a gloomy kitchen and left without having been put in order unwashed pans under the sink a loaf of bread outside the breadbox a dish towel on the table other signs of incompleted work at the rear the outer door opens and the sheriff comes in followed by the county attorney in hail the sheriff in hail are in middle life the county attorney is a young man all are much bundled up and go at once to the stove they are followed by the two women the sheriff's wife first she is a slight wiry woman a thin nervous face mrs. Hale is larger and would ordinarily be called more comfortable looking but she is disturbed now and looks fearfully about as she enters the women have come in slowly and stand close together near the door so the author has given us some information about what the stage should look like but we also have some information about what the character should look like so if you're reading a play on a test or a just for fun you need to pay attention to what the setting looks like and what the characters look like it's gonna help you picture what's going on a little bit better and give you important information about the play so we know that this kitchen is basically a hot mess it there's dirty dishes foods out somebody left there in a hurry and they did not put away their things and the police are coming and a lawyer and they're all bundled up so it must be cold out because you wouldn't be all bundled up if it was hot out and then the women come though sheriff's wife comes and in mrs. Hale the lawyers wife comes or mrs. Hale comes and it tells what they look like the sheriff's wife is really skinny and kind of nervous looking mrs. Hale isn't really skinny but she's all disturbed so something bad must have happened because she's looking fearfully about so and they're coming in really slowly so these women are kind of nervous and fearful so that gives us an idea of what kind of play this is going to be so it's super important don't skip over the scene explanations when you're reading drama okay so we talked about looking at the part of the play that has the scene and looking very carefully at that the next thing I want to point out is that in a play its dialogue right it's just people talking to each other and that's where you need to get your information about what's happening in the play that's where you're gonna get most of your characterization and then there are also embedded stage directions within the dialogue that would tell the director of the play or the actors of the play how the actor should move and what the characters would be doing with their hands so we're gonna look really closely at part three just really quickly and it this part that's all bolded tells who's talking so County Attorney and while he's talking he's looking around so that tells us what his body is doing and he says I guess we'll go upstairs first and then out to the barn and around there and then he's talking to the sheriff you're convinced that there was nothing important here nothing that would point to any motive and the sheriff says nothing but kitchen things so I included some questions the questions were not originally in the play that's just me as a teacher making you do lots of work because teachers like to make kids do work we think it's fun so question number one says what gender are kitchen things usually associated with and this is kinda to prompt you to think about your inferences but this is an old-fashioned play written in the 1920s and especially back then it was the women who were in the kitchen so I'm gonna help you out with the answer here if your teacher is having you do the questions surprise surprise and I'm gonna write in complete sentence women are or were are most often associated with kitchen things and then what does that tell you about the sheriff's attitude about the importance of women well he says the county attorney at says you're convinced there was nothing important here and the sheriff says nothing but kitchen things so that tells us something about the sheriff that he thinks that women and kitchen things are not important right he's overlooking possible evidence because it just has to do with women it's not that important he doesn't think women are very important so you can write that down all right and then it says the county attorney after again looking around the kitchen opens the door of a cupboard closet he gets up on a chair and looks on a shelf pulls his hand away sticky and then he says here's a nice mess so again the stage directions tell what the actors are doing and give us some information about the setting and also about some of the characters so he's looking at the house of the woman who is accused of murdering her husband and again we're getting evidence that she was pulled away from the kitchen either really quickly we know without warning or that she was a very messy person because it's not just leaving stuff around like it's actually sticky up there it's pretty gross so that tells us something about the county attorney that he's very inquisitive and wants to look in cupboards even though he can't reach it he actually gets up on a chair opens the door and also that the house is not in good shape and then it tells us what the women are doing the women draw near and mrs. Peter says to the other woman oh her fruit it did freeze and then to the lawyer she worried about that when it turned so cold she said the fire to go out and her jars would break and the sheriff says well can you beat the women held for murder and worrying about her preserves in the county attorney I guess before we're through she may have something more serious than preserves to worry about Anne Hale says well women are used to worrying over trifles okay so although the women in the story are sad because this woman who had been accused of murder who's not in the scene had spent a lot of time picking berries and cooking them and preserving them in mason jars and then because everybody left the house and it was really cold out the jars broke and that that sticky stuff is so the sheriff of the county attorney are kind of making fun of the women saying they're worrying over trifles and if you're not sure what trifles means remember it is the title of the play so it's probably important that's something we can look up so if you are not sure what a word means you should definitely use the dictionary to look it up and find out what trifles means because that's going to be important to them to the play so we can look it up I'm going to dictionary.com because we have to look up the meaning of the word in order to understand and I'm gonna type in trifles and it says an article or thing a very little value a matter a fare or circumstance of trivial importance or significance and trivial is another word that means not very important a small inconsiderable or trifling amount of money a small quantity or amount of anything or little so a trifle means something that's not very important and that does fit what Hale is saying because they think what the women think about is not important because they don't feel like women are important so those are just some things to look at you look at the dialogue because that's going to give you information about the plot and it's going to give you information about characterization and we always need to look at the stage directions because that also tells us information about what it might look like so we can imagine it better in our minds and also information about characterization so those are the things that are really important when you're reading a drama