FINAL EXAM PAPER: THE FUTURE OF COMEDY: Due May 4th

INTRO: For your final exam, instead of giving you a comprehensive test over the various plays and authors we’ve read in class, I want you to apply your knowledge to a more modern branch of drama. As we’ve seen, even the most popular drama becomes dated when the allusions, genres, and characters fall out of fashion. To understand what made audiences laugh in ages past, it requires a bit of scholarly translation via footnotes and other editorial comments to help us “see” this world as clearly as the groundlings. However, the same will be true of our own entertainment. In one or two hundred years, students will dread taking Introduction to 20th Century Sitcoms since the language is “so hard,” and the situations “totally confusing.” The writers of Seinfeld or Friends could be seen as modern-day Shakespeares and Middletons, their scripts lovingly preserved in the pages of Penguin Classics and the subject of learned dissertations.

ASSIGNMENT (Part 1): to help future scholars appreciate the comedy of yesteryear, I want you to pick a short scene from a relatively recent comedic television show or movie (from the past 20 years at least, but the more recent the better) and add at least 3-4 double spaced pages of footnotes to it (consider those you see in Middleton’s books, or our Shakespeare and Marlowe volumes). These footnotes should gloss phrases that might not survive the ages, or allusions to other cultural practices or examples of popular culture. Try to imagine the ‘head scratching’ moments that your great-grandchildren will have when reading or watching this show. What knowledge is required to make the scene funny—to help people laugh? Remember, comedy is often entirely situational: if you don’t get the allusions and the references, the jokes simply aren’t funny.

ASSIGNMENT (Part 2): Additionally, I want you to add a 2-3 page double spaced introduction to your footnotes, explaining the cultural significance of this show/movie to its period. Why did people like it? Who watched it? Why did it matter? What made it “great”? Help future audiences understand its place in the literary firmament. Why are the writers of this show/film the next generation of Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Middleton?

REQUIREMENTS

• 3-4 pages of footnotes and 2-3 pages of Introduction
• Quote examples from the show/movie in your footnotes so we can understand what you’re glossing. Try to help your future audience as much as possible get the jokes/references.
• Have fun! Look at the footnotes in our Penguin and Folger books and try to write accordingly. Write about popular culture seriously.
• DUE ON OUR FINAL EXAM DAY: Thursday, May 4th by 5pm  
  

For Tuesday: Middleton, A Chaste Maid at Cheapside, Acts 3 and 4

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: If we squint, we can almost see the outline of Romeo and Juliet in this play: parents trying to marry a daughter off to a suitor she doesn’t love, while she meets her real lover in secret (and tries to run away with him); the daughter is threatened by her own parents, the lover fights a duel, and a lot of bawdy humor is thrown about. Though the plots are superficially similar, how does Middleton make sure his plays feels and ‘plays’ differently? What keeps this play a comedy despite events and circumstances which easily could—and maybe should—be tragic?

Q2: When we were reading The Revenger’s Tragedy, I asked about the play’s morality, and I want to ask them same question of this play: what seems to be acceptable ethical behavior in this play/society? How can people act and what can they get away with that the audience is supposed to take offense at? How does Middleton make sure we understand when he disagrees with the morality of his characters? How do we know to laugh (or sneer) at them?

Q3: When Maudline Yellowhammer’s son, Tim, arrives back at home from Cambridge, he insists his name is “Timothius,” and he tries to speak Latin as often as possible. Though Middleton (as a playwright/poet) is not against learning or Latin, how does he satirize Tim’s character? What might he represent about the Yellowhammers in general? You might also think about modern parallels to his character in TV/film.

Q4: One of the more humorous scenes in the play is also one of the least important to the plot: Act Three, Scene 2, when all the Gossips and Puritans converge on Mistress Allwit and her newborn child. What is the significance of this scene, and why might this have been written specifically to delight his audience? What might make them laugh or nod with recognition throughout the scene?

For Thursday: Middleton. A Chaste Maid at Cheapside, Acts 1 and 2

General Synopsis of the Play, from Shakespeare's Globe: 

Under the Lenten laws, the buying and seeling of all flesh is forbidden. The avaricious goldsmith, Yellowhammer and his wife, Maudlin, plan to marry their daughter, Moll, to the decadent knight, Sir Walter Whorehound and their son Tim to the knight's supposed Welsh cousin. However, Moll is in love with Touchwood Junior and Tim seems too naive to wed the Welsh gentlewoman.

Sir Walter, meanwhile, has secretly sired six children by the wife of Jack Allwit, who is very happy to earn an easy living from the knight. Mistress Allwit is about to give birth to her seventh child. Sir Walter's cousin, Sir Oliver Kix, is unable to have children. The cousin knights are competing for an inheritance that will pass to the first child, born within marriage, that either manages to produce. Promiscuous Touchwood Senior, elder brother of Moll Yellowhammer's suitor, to made aware of the Kix's situation and offers them a remedy - at great expense - that he guarantees will end their childless plight...

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: The play takes place at Cheapside, once a famous marketplace in London; this allows us to see various classes mixing in one place (much like a theater) with all the comedy inherent in this mixing of classes. Discuss a scene where we see Middleton satirizing a specific class or type of person in a way that might have delighted Londoners (who all knew these types--and some of whom WERE these types).Consider some of the types of people who mingle in the first two acts: Puritans, goldsmiths, maids, gentlemen, promoters, gossips, etc.

Q2: Unlike all of the previous plays in class, A Chaste Maid at Cheapside is an almost documentary account of the people who really lived in London just outside the theater doors. What strange customs or realities does the play reveal about early 17th century England that we could never otherwise see or know? What makes this such a strange, energetic environment?

Q3: Comedies require more translation than most plays, since most of the humor is topical and easily lost on a modern audience. Discuss a brief scene where you were completely lost without the footnotes, and show how the footnotes help restore some of the sense and humor to the play. Or, what are you still confused about? Why doesn't the scene 'play' in your mind?

Q4: In a play about the lower strata of society, the play has surprisingly little prose (though it often does lapse into prose). Why do you think Middleton had some many of his characters, even the Wench in Act 2, Scene 1, speak in verse? Discuss a brief scene where the use of verse is important to what is being said and who is saying it.