Notes

After the Shakespearian era theatre was florid and overacted for the next couple of centuries. During the late seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries plots focused on larger than life events, kings , heroes and members of the nobility and so on . However in the mid nineteenth century (1800's) and twentieth century (1900's) a new style emerges known as Realism. In Realism plots focus on the problems and lives of every day middle class people. Among the famous playwrights that work in this new style are Anton Chekhov, Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Eugene O'Neill and Lorraine Hansberry. We will be examining two of these playwrights through monumental works that they wrote.

Henrik Ibsen's A Dolls House is a classic example of nineteenth century Realism. Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a major example of twentieth century Realism.

Ibsen was concerned with the limited rights that women possessed in the late 1800's. However, conditions were changing for women. New professions such as nursing, shop keepers, secretarys and telephone operators were emerging and complementing tradition ones such as teaching and shopkeepers. In the western United States many states were allowing women to vote and some were being elected to public office. The same kind of thing was happening in the Scandinavian nations. Great Britain and the Netherlands. In A Dolls House Ibsen writes of Nora the wife who is treated as a toy and a plaything by her husband and eventually divorced and thrown out on the street. Please watch the video of the play presented here. Try to understand all the steps that Nora utilized to deal with her marriage and family. Finally at the end try to answer the question How do you think Nora felt about her situation at the end of the play? Many of these plays were transferred into film and you will be watching film versions.