123 School Work

assay on Ben Johnson And Sam Shepards approaches to theater

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  Writing workshop
  18.12.2001
  David Wilson
  
  BEN JONSON AND SAM SHEPARD:TWO DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO THEATER
  
  Here are some points of analysis on Ben Jonson's Volpone and Sam Shepard's The Rock Garden.
  The first thing that we notice when we compare these two plays is the way of describing and using characters.
  In Volpone, every single character has his own personality and function in the plot. They are all well described, Ben Jonson using for that purpose of names related to his characters' nature and showing us the way they behave in some given situation. Volpone the fox- is the perfect name for a crafty person;, Mosca the fly- suits very well the personality of a parasite; Voltore, Corbaccio, Corvino, belonging to the birds of prey show the very nature of a pretendant, waiting for their prey to die.
  Even if those names were not given, we could guess the nature of Jonson's characters by analysing the way they behave. Volpone acting as a sick person shows his perverse and greedy personality; Corvino's agreement to prostitute his wife lets us know that the only thing that matters for those pretendents is money.
  But in Sam Shepard's The Rock Garden the characters are given no name but "boy, woman and man", which gives very few information about their nature...