A Structural Theory of Drama

The characters exchanged role, initial to final.

The figure has high symmetry except, but the figure being small, the difference is significant.

Ruby’s matrix displays the relationships between the characters and their political support. It can be said that they derive their power from their groups. Thus the political power relationships can be talked about as the foundation for interpersonal dominance. Ethics connects to politics. 

In the following chart, ‘1’ indicates a positive personal relationship to the political group. 

John’s family and real estate can also be brought in as support for the Professor. Carol makes allies of them all. The symmetry is similar to the figure above.

The characters exchange relationships, initial to final. The female role, at first submissive, finally conquers the male.

The matrix does not illustrate the richness of the play but perhaps its resonance.

Using only the initial and final states, the matrix could illustrate the precipitous fall of the professor, who holds onto his dominance until he is utterly defeated.

If Carol is initially scored as in control of herself, the play has additional asymmetry. The actor playing her part would be in charge of her certainty.

John loses everything: his job, his freedom, the deposit on the house, possibly his wife and child. 

Carol achieves victory, although she suffers physically and emotionally from the battle. 

Carol wins more support from her Group. 

Two characters begin with formal cordiality and end in familiar hatred. 

Neither character wavers in their self-interest. The question is their effectivity. 

Carol helps John down the staircase of his destruction. 

Reversibility: Carol offers to retract her claim before the Tenure Committee. John sees the price that he must pay for the restoration as a profound loss.

He refuses and commits an irreversible crime. 

Questions 

Can the play be measured in another way? 

The John claims to value his intellectual freedom.

Honor? It seems like a duel, at times, ending in dishonor. 

Sexual dominance.

It's about hunting. 

The following chart identifies dialogue illustrating attempts to seize control of the conversation.

John defends Carol from her guilt/confession.  

Carol offers to defend John from the committee.  

Carol claims injury several times but these actions are included as Accusations. 

Coding was problematic: 

Every line in the play attempted to seize control. 

Time division was arbitrary. Cut into scenes. 

Carol exhibited more opportunities to seize control of the conversation (47 to 33)

Carol displayed more variance in her operations from beginning to end

Carol displayed  less variance independent of time.   

Carol attempted to dominate the conversation 47 out of 80 times. 

The frequency of attempt was about once per minute. 

By identifying a dozen or so dominance-techniques that the characters used to try to seize control of the conversation, the reader can speak about the pacing, tension, morality, changes, and poetics of the play.

The very limited cast contributes to the simplicity.

The pacing of the play arises in part from the frequency (about once per minute) with which the dominance-techniques are applied. The play can be scored like a boxing match, counting the hits delivered.

There is tension: Who will win? Because the characters take their hits so well, the winner is not obvious until the end.

At the end, John has lost and he discontinues his effort.

Characters want to dominate the conversation and each other. Game-like. Barbarian.

Post-Modernity: There are no absolute rules.

The play can be talked about as if:

1. John determines the rules

2. Carol learns the rules from John

3. Carol beats him at his own game

While not appearing explicitly in the play, morality might be talked about as though it were lurking behind the play, that the play was a cautionary tale. The reader should approach this cautiously, as this is not in the play itself and is the reader’s idea.

Dialogue does not call attention to itself.

Clean and simple. Without ornamentation. Like a building whose every part holds up the building. No gingerbread. Neither Victorian nor Baroque.Modern but not post-modern.  

Each line is driven by the desire to dominate.

John loses everything.

Desperate men do what they must to get the objects of their desire. 

The characters themselves become mere objects, steps in the maze of obstructions and opportunities for advantage. Everyone wants the good sales leads.  

It seems to be an analogue of hunting.

Interpretative drama can be a lab for postmodern experimentation.

Construct a chart with a character per row and column.

Eliminate characters whose relationships with the other characters do not change with respect to initial state.  

Choose a state to measure: Love/Hate, Respect/Disrespect, Reward/Steal, Give Pleasure/Give Pain

Code the initial and the final states

Calculate the amount of change per character

Total rows and columns

Make inferences based on the totals and changes

Initial: at first appearance of the character

Final: at last appearance of character

Loves: wishes the beloved to succeed in life

Self-Love: Will the character sacrifice himself for the benefit of another? Is the character suicidal?  

There is a severe loss by the end of the play.  From initial to final, there is a 33% loss of love.  

Hamlet is the least loving character.  

Polonius is the most loving.  

The Hamlets love the Polonians most of all. 

The Polonians love themselves more than they love the Hamlets.  

The Polonians love the Hamlets more than the Hamlets love themselves.  

The Hamlets love themselves least of all.  

At first, Hamlet can have no objection to his uncle marrying his mother.  Henry VIII married his brother's widow, Kathryn. 

Hamlet seethes with anger over the usurpation of his throne by Claudius.  

With Claudius and Gertrude sleeping together, there could be another claimant to the throne. Claudius might trump Hamlet.  

Hamlet's chastisement of Gertrude after the mousetrap scene is designed to drive her from her marriage bed and deny Claudius an heir.  

Claudius tries to prevent the marriage of Hamlet to Ophelia. Hamlet's son might claim the throne.  Claudius is glad Ophelia died and is glad that Hamlet killed Polonius.  His enemies are taking care of each other.  There is much hatred in the family. 

The Ghost's tale gives Hamlet cause to do something about Claudius.  

Polonius works for the king; that is his job. However, the grandson of Polonius might become king if Hamlet and Ophelia married. Polonius tries to channel Hamlet's trifling with Ophelia into a marriage with her cooperation.  Is Ophelia pregnant?  

Polonius brings the madness of Hamlet to the attention of Claudius and Gertrude, diagnosing the disease and prescribing a cure.  

Hamlet and Claudius detest the self-serving and ingratiating Polonius. 

Hamlet detests Ophelia's complicity in the schemes of Polonius.  She wants to be queen and needs the use of Hamlet.  

Polonius views the prospect of Claudius and Gertrude producing an heir as a race.  He rushes the marriage between Hamlet and Ophelia.   Laertes has an avuncular interest in a nephew on the throne.  Gertrude has everything she wants, is amused by Polonius,  and would like Ophelia as daughter-in-law, a grandchild, and a child of her own.  

Hamlet and Ophelia were intimate but he suspects her of betrayal.  She works in her own interest.  

Ophelia loses much with Polonius: his protection and her reason to be at court.  

Laertes will not inherit his father's position as the king's councilor.  

If Ophelia is pregnant, she may not be able to go to the nunnery and her marriage prospects fall further.  She has lost everything.  When she has nothing more to lose she mocks of the king.  Her suicide can be contemptuous: the world is not good enough for her.  Claudius is glad she is out of the way.  

Hamlet, Ophelia, and Laertes are self-sacrificing. 

Hamlet is suicidal.  

Ophelia commits suicide.  

Claudius and Polonius are hedonists. They love themselves from beginning to end. 

The hedonists (40) are in more loving relationships than the stoics (28).  

Not counting their self-love, 36 and 24.  

Gertrude changes from hedonist to stoic.  

Reversibility in structure provides symmetry and conservation.  

In comedy, people can fall in and out of love again and again.  

In the old days, marriage was irreversible and thus could become tragic.  

Death is irreversible.  

Birth is reversible by death.  

Is death reversible by birth?  

All six characters die.  

Each researcher may generate their own rules.  

Even using the same rules, different researchers can derive a different set of values for the relationships.  

Each researcher may measure a different metric:  Love, Respect, Fear. 

Each researcher may view a different production or read a different edition of the text.  

Hamlet's final hatred of Claudius is certain. Hamlet kills Claudius with the poisoned sword. 

Clearly, after Hamlet discovers the poisoned sword, he detests Laertes and tries to kill Laertes, although they forgive each other as they die. I still code them as non-Loving finally. 

Self-love: Claudius loves himself above all. He conspires twice to have his wife's son killed. He chooses not to save his wife from poisoning. 

Ophelia refers to Hamlet's love letters early and so I code Hamlet as loving her initially, although perhaps not at first appearance of Ophelia.

Hamlet treats Polonius with increasing disdain and eventually kills him. 

Barnardo, Horatio, Marcellus, the Ghost, Fortinbras, Balderic, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern do not change in their relationships with any of the other characters during the course of the play and so are left out. 

Universal conditions such as 'Everyone loves everyone' or 'There is no such thing as Love' disallow variation and are therefore useless in this analysis. 

For totals, I add Loved and Is Beloved, which gives a better picture of the character's relationships. If the Is Beloved were not added, a character who does not love at all but is loved by all would have a total of zero. 

Why does Hamlet kill Polonius?  The action results in his deportation and the entire accidental machinery of the pirate chase.  Hamlet loses control after killing Polonius and does not regain control until his return from England.  The murder gets him out of town so that he can return for Ophelia's funeral.  

• Claudius has already sent for Rosencrantz and Gildenstern. 

• Hamlet has been swindled out of his kingdom.  

• Hamlet fears that Claudius and Gertrude might produce an heir and further displace Hamlet.  

• Claudius does not want Hamlet to marry Ophelia; they might produce a child and displace Claudius.  

• Claudius assumed the throne by murder: the way down for him is steep and deep. The chasm is without mercy.  

• Gertrude wants Hamlet to marry Ophelia and produce a child.  Gertrude wants to be queen of the house. She is pleased to be rid of Hamlet Senior. Despite all the praise lavished on the conveniently dead, he was not the party animal she has discovered in Claudius. She is satisfied with the results.  Or she could have child with Claudius, thus hedging her bet.  

• Polonius wants to be the father or grandfather of a king. In the Brevity scene, Polonius leads the Royals toward a conclusion.  Hamlet is mad with love and Ophelia is the cure.  Therefore Hamlet should marry Ophelia. Gertrude plays up to Polonius, approaching him while reproaching him, more teasing Claudius than Polonius, while Claudius glares at the possibility.  Laertes could be king if Hamlet succeeds Claudius and then dies.  

• Hamlet toys with Ophelia.  She could be useful but she is working for her father and brother. Hamlet is her chance to be queen. Hamlet is aware that he has a child coming and he can play the card whenever he wishes.  

• In the bedroom scene, Hamlet's tries to poison the sexual relationship between Gertrude and Claudius.  He has given them some more time by not killing Claudius.  By killing Polonius, he gives Claudius an excuse to send him away to be killed.  

• In Ophelia's last scene, she has lost her father and protector. Hamlet holds her distant: she will not be queen. She has nothing. She has blood on her white dress and is vengefully glad to be rid of the baby.  She is more marriageable without a child.  She had not given it a name. Gertrude is hurt by the loss while Claudius can afford to act stoic.  

Hedda’s environment is claustrophobic: her social world is closing.

Her best marriage prospect is Tesman; while not at all interesting, he is at least safe and she will have social opportunity. She abandons the open possibility of adventure for relatively closed safety.

However, Tesman’s position at the university is not assured and he must cut back on expenses. No coach with a driver? Not even a saddle horse? She is trapped in the rural manor house.

No, she cannot be queen of the house: Tesman’s Aunt Julianna is first in Tesman’s limited affections and now that her sister has died, Julianna will stay with Hedda and Tesman.

Her safety in the house is threatened by Commissioner Brock, who wants her as his toy. She is able to keep him at arm’s length.

No, she may not go to the party. It is for men only and their riotous behavior. She must stay at home with her even more socially deprived friend.

She sees her friend Luvborg as the soul of adventure and notes the heavy fee he must pay for his freedom. He is shunned and condemned, at war with disgrace.

Perhaps, she thinks, all freedom is doomed to self-destruction. She provides him the cause and the means of his destruction, incidentally providing Brock with the ammunition for sexual blackmail and her world shrinks further.

She cannot even talk about it. She conceals her anguish from the others. Occasionally an aside suggests her inner thought.  Death is an irreversible process.

View from the Bridge

In this play by Arthur Miller, we see the disintegration of the American family, a theme Miller as well as Tennessee Williams, Eugene O'Neill  and Sam Shephard have explored.  

The play can be talked about as a set of relationships centering around Eddy, the father.  His wife and niece must listen to him and his word is nearly absolute.  

Eddy displays his physical strength, neighborhood status, and generosity.  

Beatrice is the glue that keeps the family together, even to the point of bringing her cousins from Sicily to live with her immediate family.  She is perceptive, heedful, accommodating  and tries to get everyone else to share her virtues.  She also keeps the stories and aphorisms that illustrate the laws.  

Katherine is Beatrice's orphaned niece, on the threshold of womanhood, bright and ambitious but still under the guardianship of her uncle who acts as her father.  

Marco, the older of the two brothers is protective of his family, sending money back to his wife and children in Sicily, as well as protecting his brother against the increasingly patriarchal Eddy.  

Rudolfo is the romantic, artistic, younger brother who catches the eye of Katherine and brings him in conflict with Eddy.  Marriage between Katherine and Rudolfo threatens to legitimate their relationship, which is detestable to Eddy, legitimate or not.  Rudolfo never comes to Eddy to ask Eddy for the Katherine's hand in marriage.  Is something is broken in the ritual?  

The play can also be talked about as a set of relationships between three sets of laws.  Family law, given by the father, neighborhood law, upheld by the immediate community, and the national laws represented by the federal immigration officials.  

The federal law is enforced by arrest, imprisonment, deportation, and the courts.  

Family law is enforced by the father who can banish anyone from his household.  

Neighborhood law is enforced by shunning and violence.  Generally, family law is at the bottom as it must defer to neighborhood and federal law.  Neighborhood law occupies an intermediate level.  

It is part of the neighborhood and the family law to ignore the federal law but of course cannot directly challenge it, given its power.  

Conflict on the family level arrives with the merger of two families (without ceremony or ritual) as Beatrice, Eddy's wife, invites two of her cousins, brothers, to live with them.  Eddy must be generous to the undocumented immigrant .  One must not snitch to the police.  That is the neighborhood law.  

Eventually, the father, in his madness and pride, ignores neighborhood law and, in an attempt to prevent the marriage of Katherine and Rudolfo, snitches on the brothers to have them deported.  Eddy insults Marco, who feels obliged to defend his honor, a fight ensues, the neighborhood finds out that Eddy has snitched the brothers out, even his family abandons him, and Eddy is killed in the fight.  

Eddy's complaints against Rudolfo

• Eddy gave Rudolf the roof over his head, food off Eddy's plate, and a blanket from Eddy's bed.  

• Rudolfo has tried to deceive Eddy regarding Rudolfo's relationship with Katherine.  

• Rudolfo has tried to deceive Katherine into marrying Rudolfo so that he can stay in the country.  

• Rudolfo is ungrateful, disrepectful, and selfish.  

Beatrice's attempts to reconcile and facilitate

• Retells the story about what happened to the immigration snitch.  

• Tries to get Eddy and Katherine to talk to each other. 

• Eventually tries to get Katherine to move out of Eddy's house and out of his juridiction, expecting that to defuse the situation.  

• Tries to get Eddy to apologize to Marco to defuse their enmity.  

• Tries to psychoanalyze Eddy, that his waning interest in her is projected on to Katherine, thus getting to the root of Eddy's angst.  Katherine and Rudolfo are second cousins.  

The Greek Play

View from the Bridge corresponds with some Greek plays.  

Prologue: The Lawyer character tells some of the back story and points out the set of laws that they all must heed.  

Chorus: The neighbors, in their support and withdrawal of support from Eddy, represent the greater mass of the people whose power must be taken into account.  

Incest: The six main characters are all related by blood or by marriage.  Beatrice suggests that Eddy's love for Katherine is unnatural.  

Death of the monarch (family monarch in this case) leads to disintegration of the wider community (family in this case).

In a drama, assume that the characters are the elements and assume one or more relationships between the characters. The relationship can be loves/hates, dominates/submits to, etc.  

For each relationship, list the characters twice in a column, once labeled for initial state and once labeled for a final state.

List each character in a row.

Code each relationship, character-to-character, once for the beginning (or first appearance) and once for the end or last appearance. Include the characters’ relationship with themselves.

Identify characters that do not change and eliminate them from the matrix.

For each character, total the number of Loves and Is Loved, initial and final.

Calculate the amount of change per character and in total for the play. Expect that tragedy will have a net loss.

Assume that the characters each have an objective that only one character can achieve. For example, there can be only one king or a man can have only one wife.

Assume that there are a small number of techniques that the characters can use to further these objectives. The techniques can be vulgar, such as flattery, bribery, or threats of force.

For each character, list the techniques in a column and mark a ‘1’ for each occurrence of that technique in all the lines or beats in the play.

List nouns as elements and verbs as operations.  

You won't know where it will take you.  

Knowing what will happen means less reason to do it.  

Art is not necessarily the manifestation of a plan nor imagination's slave, remembered and then jotted down.  

Art is not necessarily a delivery service for philosophy, politics, or art.  Let the pack mule throw off his burden and dance for us! 

Art might not so much as map these topics as make them unnecessary, to include, exceed, evolve, and obliterate them. 

Comedy is a food-fight.

Tragedy is a fight to the death.

In either case, the author’s job is to provide ammunition.  

The characters must be resourceful with respect to intelligence and persistence. The characters must stay in the running to be eligible for the increasingly high stakes. No one is going to help you. No one has time.  

Plot is not a member of the structure, nor is premise, theme, opposition, or the author or his ideas. 

The well-adjusted character is useless. They stay out of trouble. Drama is the collision of obsessed characters, the intersection of their hungers. Characters take risks.  They are willing to go to extremes.   Characters kill.

By their operations, characters attempt to influence each other to advance their individual causes. 

It is the exposure, by means of the operations, that we in the audience see character and establish our participation in the production, our relationship with the characters, and our investment in the outcome.  

Characters move toward their objectives. They drive relentlessly around, over, and through the opposition.  

A player reaches for an object, trying to possess it exclusively, but the object is illusive.  The player experiences tension. 

Characters raise the stakes of the game they are playing.   Character drives tension.   

If a state of tension is an anti-objective, one that is to be avoided, then tension is part of the structure.  

If tension is an overlay then tension is not a part of the structure. If  the writer is brought into the structure, the play inherits all the objectives of the author as well as those of the characters.  

As tension can be an overlay, so can irony, climax, and other techniques of exposition. The human preference for the dualistic in art can be implemented structurally by coupling an action with its opposite, thus making the process reversible. 

The audience is convinced by irony.  

The dramatist creates something out of nothing with irony. With contrast, order apparently arises from chaos.

Exposition is the provision of interpretation for the benefit of the audience. Exposition is the relationship between the production and the audience.

The audience can be viewed as an element in a larger structure that includes the production, the house, the promotion, and critics.  

As each character raises the stakes, at some point they risk breaking the rules. The rules can include the law and subsequent punishment, which can defeat their quest for their objectives.  

Climax is an expected event in the relationship between audience and character.  

The restricted set of operations the players can perform convincingly on the audience closes the production, closure being fundamental to structure.  

Physical violence is difficult to stage realistically. Fight scenes on stage are seldom convincing. The climax can be achieved when a character approaches physical violence. Will he strike? He gets louder and more physical, approaching closely, menacing. You don’t know what he’s going to do.

The play should end swiftly after the climax. Count the bodies and briefly expose the new equilibrium.

The structure does not have a purpose. It has only its elements and operations.  It is as blind as an amoeba.  

In drama, each character has an objective, which is generally self-indulgent.

The author may choose to design the story as an example of that kind of behavior.  The author might also make an aesthetic or philosophic judgment and set his characters to the task of illustrating his views.   The author takes risks before a sophisticated audience that has had much experience with plays, movies, and TV drama.

In both cases, the drama threatens to open up into an expression of the author's opinions, ceasing to be dramatic.  The characters lose their autonomy.  They are directed in their behavior by off-stage forces.  

Theme is the thinnest shadow of drama.

When I say anything, I’m advised to consider all my critics, dead and alive, and everything they might say.  This includes grammarians, philosophers, sarcastic politicians, stubborn barroom disputants, the man on the street, scientists, science fiction buffs, the man about town, parents, school teachers, as well as my very own personal choir of superegos in their incessant cacophony of praise and chastisement.  

Additionally, I must be wary of nihilists, anarchists, democrats, monarchists, republicans, protestants, catholics, animists, in short, members of every possible tribe, committee, posse, discussion group or lynch mob with an opinion and, much more importantly, the force to impose it.  

Madmen and the very young, the disenfranchised, the ancients and those stuffed away far into the future, all the unheard, must be brought in, heard, and their pronouncements registered.  

Lastly, I must watch ever-vigilant with respect to the lone wolf and his singular genius lightning-striking out of a clear, blue sky with his concise incision.  

All these considerations must be packed efficiently into every word-choice, inserted carefully into every paragraph, appended clause-like onto every sentence, prepended to every noun, adverb on adjective, on and on, until the monolith is bullet-proofed into majestic immortality.  

Only then may I publish my modest thought.  

Each time a new character is added, the total number of relationships that require illustration in the script increases: 2(n+1)**2 - 2(n)**2, 2((n+1)**2 – n**2) being loving and loved, and the matrix square.  

More generally, the additional number of relationships to be illustrated: m((n+1)**p – n**p)

where

n is the number of characters,

m the number of states per dimension (the number of values of the relationship, minimum 2),

p the number of dimensions,

If the matrix is cubic, such as when wealth or power is added independently to love, the complexity becomes harder to manage.  At some number of dimensions, data entry becomes daunting and analysis forbidding.  

Possible dimensions

A loves B, A is loved by B.  Two states: True, False.  

A has power over B, A is powered over by B

Adding the author adds more than a single character.  Your entire choir of superegos tags along.  Not only does every critic hover over your shoulder as you dab judiciously at the words, but also several versions of yourself, some providing the continuous accolade you crave, others scourging your self-esteem with comments so personal only you can understand.  And don’t forget the legions of distractions and their camp-followers.   In a few cases, weather is an issue.  

Art must be there, in the play.  Everyone says so.  Some will claim they saw him anyway, even when he had no lines nor even appeared onstage.  Perhaps he lurked in the dressing room or wandered the lobby or posed as homeless with his hand out on the street.  Others will say they didn’t see him at all, in spite of the glorious lines.  Art could cartwheel around the stage and they'd miss it.  Just be cute.  Sit on the couch neither watching TV nor reading, neither speaking nor listening, defending yourself against all charges with a haughty patience.  

Political parties add huge new squares, unless you think the party speaks with one voice, which it does not.  

Audience.  Generally assumed to speak with one voice, although thought to be different from city to city and certainly from size to size.  Remember that crowds can get mean.  

Characters who pursue their own objectives using their own resources are empowered individuals.  

This is consistent with method-acting and with views of the individual as an independent entity.  

Actors play to the audience.  That's why actors play. 

The relationship between audience and production might be more interesting than either.  

The relationship between the audience and the cast is closed.  There are certain things that theatre-goers will not pay to witness. 

Theatre-goers are well rehearsed in entry and exit, laughing and crying, being startled and being bored.  There also known to make cunning comments over wine and cheese in the lobby.  

Structurally, politics is a system of groups of humans who operate on other groups. Each group is a system of individuals who operate on each other. The individual consciously acts as an agent of a larger group, representing his interests.

Practical politics can be thought an extension of pre-historic troop-behavior of council, debate, and consensus. In the oldest of times, there were no kings but only speakers.

Modern politics includes the king as concept, as a virtual person, someone you never meet, whose public relations effort precedes him.

The concept of sacrifice is the nucleus of order and