Topic 11 - Conversational structure and character (Session A) > Analysing Drama > Task B > Our answer

Analysing Drama - Preliminary Matters

Task B - Our answer

Most plays do not have narrators, and so drama prototypically has two levels of discourse:

On stage we watch the characters talk to one another - we just witness the lower of the two discourse levels. But when we read a play we see the stage directions, which are effectively messages to the actors and director at the upper discourse level, about how to perform particular parts of the play. And even when we watch a performance of a play we know that an author has written what the characters say (and some acting instructions too) and so we assume that we are meant to infer, from what they say and do, things that the author is telling us about them. So, for example, we infer characterisation and relations between characters. This is actually what we did when we discussed a poem by Roger McGough's, 'Comeclose and Sleepnow' in Task C of the 'Discourse structure and point of view page' in Topic 8 (indeed, we asked you to draw a discourse structure diagram for it!). You may like to have a look at that page when you have read the rest of this page, to remind yourself of what we noticed then.

Of course, although most plays don't have narrators, a few do, and so, like novels, need three levels of discourse structure to account for them, as the discussion of Robert Bolt's A Man for all Seasons immediately after the 'Comeclose and Sleepnow' task makes clear.

An interesting example of a play with a non-prototypical discourse structure is Alan Bennett's The Lady in the Van. Alan Bennett is both a character and a narrator in his own play, and onstage two different actors play him, dressed identically - one is Alan Bennett the character and the other is Alan Bennett the narrator, who comments on Alan Bennett the character, what he does and what happens to him. Then, during the course of the play, the actors playing narrator and character swap roles too. Bennett is clearly being very creative with the discourse structure of this play, and uses this creativity to create very interesting and complex point of view effects (we have covered point of view in the prose section of the course, and it is worth remembering that what we learn about in relation to one literary genre can sometimes also be usefully applied when analysing other genres, fictional and non-fictional.

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