Some Early Tips on How to Read a Play

        Since Everyman is our first drama in the syllabus, here's some advice about how to read plays.  First, like Chaucer's poetry, drama is made to acted out loud, so if you're stuck on a line's meaning, read it aloud to yourself.  Second, after you've read through the play once, try to sketch out the plot quickly in your own prose--just the big sections.  This play has no act and scene divisions because it's so early in the reawakening of the theater and those conventions hadn't yet been reinvented.  (See the note on the "Quem quaeritis trope" if you want to learn more.)  However, the plot has a lovely structure which you can even draw as shapes if you pay attention to the order in which certain kinds of characters arrive and depart.  Third, to appreciate the author's art, become a specialist in one character other than the protagonist, Everyman.  Re-read that character's dialogue carefully.  How has the playwright individualized her/him, and in what ways is s/he "flattened" to work as an allegorical figure (one that stands for an idea)?  Because it's an early play, there are no stage directions, but you can infer what would have to happen if you have a creative mind.  How would you stage the character's actions to work with the dialogue s/he is given?  How would other characters on stage react?  (And while we're on the subject, why did you pick that character?--you might be finding out something!)