The Return of the Native is the most overtly theatrical novel of a writer whose artistic instincts were theatrical, and for whom the world, always intensely seen, is the more poetically charged when it is also dramatically rendered. ‘The stage world,’ Fuchs writes, ‘never obeys the same rules as ours, because in its world, nothing else is possible besides what is there: no one else lives there no other geography is available no alternative actions can be taken’. It takes the form of a checklist of primary questions students might or should ask of the space-time dynamics, social structure, and patterns of change in a play. Having spent long periods over several years on a small planet of my own, Thomas Hardy’s Egdon Heath, this essay caught my eye. My daughter is taking an undergraduate course in Shakespearean theatre this semester, and one of her foundation readings is Elinor Fuchs’s influential short essay, ‘E.F.’s Visit to a Small Planet: Some Questions to Ask a Play’.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |