Identification of the specifics of teaching a dramatic work based on the play by A.N. Ostrovsky "Dowry". Epic and dramatic works

Literature. Recommendations
"Analysis of a dramatic work."
It is preferable to begin the analysis of a drama with the analysis of a small fragment, episode (phenomenon, scene, etc.). The analysis of an episode of a dramatic work is carried out practically according to the same scheme as the analysis of an episode of an epic work, with the only difference that the reasoning should be supplemented with the point of analysis of the dynamic and dialogic compositions of the episode.
So,
ANALYSIS OF AN EPISODE OF A DRAMATIC WORK
The boundaries of the episode are already determined by the very structure of the drama (the phenomenon is separated from other components of the drama); give the episode a title.
Characterize the event underlying the episode: what place does it occupy in the development of the action? (Is this an exposition, a climax, a denouement, an episode in the development of the action of the entire work?)
Name the main (or only) participants in the episode and briefly explain:
Who are they?
what is their place in the system of characters (main, main, secondary, off-stage)?
Reveal the features of the beginning and ending of the episode.
Formulate the question, the problem that is in the spotlight:
author; characters.
Identify and characterize the theme and contradiction (in other words, mini-conflict) underlying the episode.
Describe the characters participating in the episode:
their attitude to the event;
to the question (problem);
to each other;
briefly analyze the speech of the participants in the dialogue;
analyze the author's remarks (explanations for speech, gestures, facial expressions, poses of the characters);
identify the characteristics of the characters’ behavior, the motivation for their actions (the author’s or the reader’s);
determine the balance of forces, grouping or regrouping of heroes depending on the course of events in the episode.
Characterize the dynamic composition of the episode (its exposition, plot, climax, denouement; in other words, according to what pattern the emotional tension develops in the episode).
Characterize the dialogical composition of the episode: what principle is used to cover the topic?
Understand author's attitude to the event; correlate it with the culmination and idea of ​​the entire work as a whole; determine the author’s attitude to the problem.
Formulate the main idea (author's idea) of the episode.
Analyze the plot, figurative and ideological connections of this episode with other episodes of the drama.
Now let's move on to comprehensive analysis dramatic work. The success of this work is only possible if you understand the theory dramatic kind literature (see topic No. 15).
So,
The time of creation of the work, the history of the concept, a brief description of era.
The connection between the play and any literary direction or cultural era(antiquity, Renaissance, classicism, Enlightenment, sentimentalism, romanticism, critical realism, symbolism, etc.). How did the features of this direction appear in the work?1
Type and genre dramatic work: tragedy, comedy (of manners, characters, positions, cloak and sword; satirical, everyday, lyrical, slapstick, etc.), drama (social, everyday, philosophical, etc.), vaudeville, farce, etc. Meaning Check these terms in the reference literature.
Specifics of the organization of drama action: division into actions, scenes, acts, phenomena, etc. The author's original components of the drama (for example, “dreams” instead of acts or actions in M. Bulgakov’s drama “Run”).
Playbill (characters). Features of names (for example, “speaking” names). Main, secondary and off-stage characters.
Peculiarities dramatic conflict: tragic, comic, dramatic; social, everyday, philosophical, etc. Features of dramatic action: external - internal; “on stage” - “behind the stage”, dynamic (actively developing) - static, etc. Features of the composition of the play. The presence and specificity of the main elements: exposition, increasing emotional tension, conflict and its resolution, a new increase in emotional tension, climaxes, etc. How are all the “sharp points” interconnected (especially emotional scenes) works? What is the composition of the individual components of the play (acts, actions, phenomena)? Here we need to name specific episodes that are these “sharp points” of action.
Specifics of creating dialogue in a play. Features of the sound of each character’s theme in dialogues and monologues. ( Brief Analysis dialogical composition of one episode of your choice).
Theme of the play. Leading topics. Key episodes (scenes, phenomena) that help reveal the theme of the work.
Problems of the work. Leading problems and key episodes(scenes, phenomena) in which the problems are especially acute. The author's vision of solving the problems posed.
Specifics of the author's remarks explaining:
actions of characters (acting);
stage environment, costumes and scenery;
the mood and idea of ​​a scene or phenomenon.
The specificity of the author's position expressed through remarks.
The meaning of the play's title.
1. This point is revealed if such features are clearly expressed in the work (for example, in the classicist comedies of D. Fonvizin or in the comedy “Woe from Wit” by A. Griboyedov, which combined the features of three directions at once: classicism, romanticism and realism).
Recommendations for the topic theory >>
When analyzing a dramatic work, you will need the skills that you acquired while completing tasks to analyze an episode of the work.
Be careful and strictly adhere to the analysis plan.
Topics 15 and 16 are closely related to each other, so successful completion of the work is possible only with detailed study theoretical materials on these topics.
You should read those works of fiction that can be considered within the framework of this topic, namely:
A.S. Griboyedov. Comedy "Woe from Wit"
N. Gogol. Comedy "The Inspector General"
A.N. Ostrovsky. Comedy "Our people - we will be numbered!"; dramas "The Thunderstorm", "Dowry"
A.P. Chekhov. The play " The Cherry Orchard"
M. Gorky. The play "At the Bottom"

Attached files

It is preferable to begin the analysis of a drama with the analysis of a small fragment, episode (phenomenon, scene, etc.). The analysis of an episode of a dramatic work is carried out practically according to the same scheme as the analysis of an episode of an epic work, with the only difference that the reasoning should be supplemented with the point of analysis of the dynamic and dialogic compositions of the episode.

So,
ANALYSIS OF AN EPISODE OF A DRAMATIC WORK

1. The boundaries of the episode are already determined by the very structure of the drama (the phenomenon is separated from other components of the drama); give the episode a title.
2. Characterize the event underlying the episode: what place does it occupy in the development of the action? (Is this an exposition, a climax, a denouement, an episode in the development of the action of the entire work?)
3. Name the main (or only) participants in the episode and briefly explain:
   • Who are they?
   • what is their place in the system of characters (main, main, secondary, off-stage)?
4. Reveal the features of the beginning and ending of the episode.
5. Formulate the question, the problem that is in the spotlight:
   • author; characters.
6. Identify and characterize the theme and contradiction (in other words, mini-conflict) underlying the episode.
7. Describe the characters participating in the episode:
   • their attitude to the event;
   • to the question (problem);
   • to each other;
   • briefly analyze the speech of the participants in the dialogue;
   • analyze the author's remarks (explanations for speech, gestures, facial expressions, poses of the characters);
   • identify the characteristics of the characters’ behavior, the motivation for their actions (the author’s or the reader’s);
   • determine the balance of forces, grouping or regrouping of heroes depending on the course of events in the episode.
8. Characterize the dynamic composition of the episode (its exposition, plot, climax, denouement; in other words, according to what pattern the emotional tension develops in the episode).
9. Characterize the dialogical composition of the episode: what principle is used to cover the topic?
10. Understand the author's attitude to the event; correlate it with the culmination and idea of ​​the entire work as a whole; determine the author’s attitude to the problem.
11. Formulate the main idea (author's idea) of the episode.
12. Analyze the plot, figurative and ideological connections of this episode with other episodes of the drama.

Now let's move on to complex analysis of a dramatic work. The success of this work is possible only if you understand the theory of dramatic literature (see topic No. 15).

So,
1. The time of creation of the work, the history of the concept, a brief description of the era.
2. The connection of the play with any literary movement or cultural era (antiquity, Renaissance, classicism, Enlightenment, sentimentalism, romanticism, critical realism, symbolism, etc.). How did the features of this direction appear in the work? 1
3. Type and genre of dramatic work: tragedy, comedy (of manners, characters, positions, cloak and sword; satirical, everyday, lyrical, slapstick, etc.), drama (social, everyday, philosophical, etc.), vaudeville, farce, etc. Check the meaning of these terms in the reference literature.
4. Specifics of the organization of drama action: division into actions, scenes, acts, phenomena, etc. The author's original components of the drama (for example, “dreams” instead of acts or actions in M. Bulgakov’s drama “Run”).
5. Playbill (characters). Features of names (for example, “speaking” names). Main, secondary and off-stage characters.
6. Features of dramatic conflict: tragic, comic, dramatic; social, everyday, philosophical, etc.
7. Features of dramatic action: external - internal; “on stage” - “behind the stage”, dynamic (actively developing) - static, etc.
8. Features of the composition of the play. The presence and specificity of the main elements: exposition, increasing emotional tension, conflict and its resolution, a new increase in emotional tension, climaxes, etc. How are all the “sharp points” (especially emotional scenes) of the work related to each other? What is the composition of the individual components of the play (acts, actions, phenomena)? Here we need to name specific episodes that are these “sharp points” of action.
9. Specifics of creating dialogue in a play. Features of the sound of each character’s theme in dialogues and monologues. (A brief analysis of the dialogic composition of one episode of your choice).
10. Theme of the play. Leading topics. Key episodes (scenes, phenomena) that help reveal the theme of the work.
11. Problems of the work. Leading problems and key episodes (scenes, phenomena) in which the problems are especially acute. The author's vision of solving the problems posed.
12. Specifics of the author's remarks explaining:
    • actions of characters (acting);
    • stage environment, costumes and scenery;
    • the mood and idea of ​​a scene or phenomenon.
    • The specificity of the author's position expressed through remarks.
13. The meaning of the play's title.

Homework

on literature

What is the most effective way to study drama? modern school? Why?

The modern way of studying drama at school seems to be this: first, familiarization with the play - watching a video recording of a performance or television performance (not a movie based on it!) - familiarization with the text and its analysis - watching a performance in the theater (the last element is desirable, but not required) - discussion.

Drama - the most complex type readings for schoolchildren. The difficulty of playing the piece ininsufficient development of both recreative and creative thinking.

In a modern school, the following ways of studying drama can be used:

Traditional way (reading - studying - watching). Experience at school shows that when the teacher reads vividly, most students listen to him with pleasure, become involved in the events taking place, and realize the main qualities of the characters and the relationships between them. You don’t have to read the play to the end if the teacher is sure that interest in the action is high, and there are difficulties in recognizing the characters and in orienting art world overcome, - then the children will be able to finish reading on their own.

You shouldn’t talk about what you read immediately after reading in class: you need to give the text the opportunity to reread and think about it. Therefore, it is more appropriate to invite students at home to reflect on a number of questions that will activate all areas of reader perception. The teacher chooses the form, oral or written, arbitrarily.

The specificity of a dramatic work is that the conflict is not described, but depicted: the reader must reconstruct it, guess, understand its essence and reasons only on the basis of the words of the characters and the author’s remarks. This is the most difficult thing in reading. Therefore, the teacher’s task is to help the children clarify the conflict and see its roots. The most convenient way to do this is to move from scene to scene, from action to action. During the lesson, the focus is on action as an integral element of the composition of a dramatic work. It is necessary to highlight its stages, when drawing up a plan, we also highlight the elements of the plot: exposition, plot, episodes of action development, climax and denouement. As a result, all our events will be correlated with the plot.

Then we highlight plot elements: everything that is not directly related to the action, but slows it down, pauses it. These are monologues and dialogues that somehow reveal inner world the hero, reveal his past, indicate his relationships with other characters, etc.; descriptions contained in replicas (appearance, nature, premises), letters (their content). We pay attention to details, images-symbols (if any), motives, author's remarks that precede the action and data during the action. Thus, we get a certain portrait of each character.

And of course, a drama lesson cannot do without expressive reading of roles, dramatization of individual episodes, and creation of a play project.

In a “strong” class, where the level literary development students above should be appliedthe way of analysis is by actions.

We are designing a lesson system where we study each action in detail.

We start the lesson by setting a learning task and after creating problematic situation Let's start solving it.Action analysis will be devoted to finding an answer to these questions.

Projects for the following lessons are created according to the same principles: from text analysis, from highlighting structural elements - to questions and tasks that will help students see these elements and understand their role, and therefore come closer to understanding the essence of the conflict and its causes and to understanding the images of the characters .

In many ways, designing the stage of studying the text of a dramatic work is similar to designing lessons on epic works. However, one should take into account when compiling a lesson on drama: this is the difficulty of perceiving a dramatic text, the need for visual concretization of the images of characters that are created differently than in the epic, highlighting the event basis and considering the conflict in its development, features of the language dramatic art(importance of stage directions, superimposition of cues, antithesis in mise-en-scène, role of music, lighting, manners and gestures). Inclusion of latent analysis in the project, creative activity students helps children look at the world created by the author from different points of view, which means they understand more deeply and more accurately the characters’ characters and their feelings.

2.What techniques are actively used in the study of drama? Why?

Methods and techniques for working on drama are varied. Let's look at some of them:

1. “Point of view from the audience”, installation on visual perception. Schoolchildren should imagine themselves mentally seeing the play; for this purpose, it is useful to use fragments of memories of performances.

2. It is important to encourage students to IMAGINE what is happening on stage for this purpose to suggest the situation: “Imagine, you are sitting on the stage.”

Another technique that encourages students to penetrate into the text of the play iscreating imaginary mise-en-scenes, those. students are asked to think about how they would arrange the characters in certain moment actions, imagine their positions, gestures, movements.

The core of work on each act is consistent observation of the development of the action, the internal logic of this development in a given act. Students’ observations of the development of action should be inseparable from insight into characters characters. Questions help with this.

When analyzing drama with a subject constant attention isspeechcharacter, its originality, since the character's character, his social person, state of mind reveals speech. The way speech sounds plays a big role in who it is addressed to. We must remember that the selection of words and their sound - intonation is directly related to SUBTEXT. To reveal the subtext means to reveal the essence of the play, the relationship between the reasons for the character’s actions and their external manifestation. If students are taught to understand subtext, then we are raising a good reader and viewer.

It should not be forgotten that when analyzing the play great importance has the speech of the characters, and the authors’ remarks, the poster and the remark to it (students often miss this when reading) For this purpose, the following tasks are important: give a remark for the actors, following the example of how Gogol does this in “The Inspector General” or “What He Says” remark in the second act of “The Thunderstorm” in the scene of Katerina’s farewell to her husband.”

Of great importance in working on a play is expressive reading. In this case, the student moves from the position of a spectator to the position of a performer.

The author, his attitude to what is happening - main question when facing the study of any work. In a dramatic work, the author's position is more hidden than in works of other types. For this purpose, the teacher has to: draw the attention of students to the comments made by the author for the actors and invite them to think about how the writer relates to his characters? Or he suggests answering the question: “How does Ostrovsky force the viewer watching act 3 to justify Katerina?”

In the process of analyzing the observations obtained, the teacher must generalize for this purpose important summative questions, such as: “What have we learned about the life of the county town? How did the city officials appear before us? What is the nature of the measures taken in Gorodnichy? or “What do the characters of Dikoy and Kabanikha have in common, and what are their differences? Why is a conflict between Katerina and the world of Kabanova inevitable?”

At the final lessons, the questions that the students were looking for answers to in the process of analyzing the drama arise in a generalized form.

The final lesson, in fact, begins with work on last action plays, when the conflict is resolved and the author-playwright, as it were, sums it up. For this purpose, expressive reading by students is of particular importance: this is a test of the depth of their understanding of the characters of the characters.

Reading by roles also shows the degree of students' understanding of a dramatic work. A teacher can approach the distribution of roles in different ways. Homework for such a lesson can be written or oral composition characteristics of the hero whose role the student will play.

At the final classes there are competitions for reciters of individual scenes, stage history dramas, watching the film adaptation, discussing it.

In connection with the study of drama, the student must master a number of theoretical and literary concepts. A number of them should be included in the active vocabulary of schoolchildren: act, action, phenomenon, monologue, dialogue, list of characters, remarks. As students penetrate into drama, the vocabulary of schoolchildren is replenished: conflict, plot, exposition, plot, climax, denouement, genres: comedy, drama, tragedy.; play, performance. The performance is not an illustration in the play, but a new piece of art, created by the theater, interpreting the playwright’s plays in its own way.

3. How to “translate” literary analysis of drama into students’ questions and assignments?

The method of conversation used in the study of epic and lyrical works, is also effective for dramatic purposes. Most methodologists recommend using it mainly when analyzing the development of an action, clarifying the conflict, issues and ideological meaning dramatic works. One cannot but agree with this, since the conversation makes it possible to widely use the text of the work and use the facts obtained by students as a result of independent work on the work.

Of particular importance when analyzing dramatic works is independent work students over the text of the work. Analysis of the speech and actions of characters helps students understand the essence of their characters and create in their imagination a specific idea of ​​their appearance. In this case, the students’ analysis of a particular phenomenon or scene of a dramatic work will to some extent resemble the work of an actor on a role.

Perceptual experience dramatic genre, acquired by students in the process of studying literature, is the most important aid for the perception of a dramatic work. This refers to the student’s certain knowledge of the specifics of the genre - its structure, elements, features of recreating characters, etc.

Another thing is the circle of historical and everyday realities, human relations, linguistic idioms.

So, merchant life, shown by Ostrovsky, or a certain “freedom” with which the wife and daughter of Gogol’s Gorodnichy perceive Khlestakov’s courtship will definitely require special commentary.

Sometimes, to activate the imagination of students, one should turn to historical and everyday commentary. This is done in cases where students who are far from the era depicted in the drama do not have the necessary ideas and knowledge and cannot recreate in their imagination the details of the external appearance of the character in the play, for example: the mayor’s uniform, Kabanikha’s clothes, etc. If students are not helped, then they will not have the appropriate ideas and will only learn the meaning of the word.

The action of the drama is manifested in the characters coming into conflict. This means that when analyzing drama, we must consider the development of action and the revelation of characters in organic unity. Also V.P. Ostrogorsky suggested that a teacher analyzing a dramatic work pose the following questions to students: Are people’s actions completely consistent with their characters? What motivates the hero to act? Does the idea or passion excite him? What obstacles does he encounter? Are they within him or outside of him?

“Some methodologists and practical teachers believe that the first stage of work is a commentary reading of each action, either in full or selectively. The selection of phenomena depends on the tasks that the teacher sets for himself.

From the point of view of other researchers and teachers, before moving on to work on actions, it is necessary to get an idea of ​​​​the play as a whole in the minds of students. Therefore, the first questions should fix the students’ attention on the entire play and help them comprehend it. The questions posed in this lesson should make students feel the main conflict and its emergence. This could be, for example, a question about the title of a play.

On initial stage Studying a dramatic work at the same time as clarifying the main conflict should, as it were, be the first acquaintance of students with the characters, with the role they play in the struggle. One can raise the question of their grouping. For this purpose, in some cases, the teacher dwells on the list of characters, especially in those plays in which names and surnames hint at the character of the character and speak about the author’s attitude towards them (“Minor”, ​​“Woe from Wit”, “Thunderstorm”, etc. .). The title of the play often helps clarify the main conflict (“The Thunderstorm”, “Woe from Wit”, “The Cherry Orchard”, etc.). The path to clarifying the main conflict is also paved by establishing the boundaries of the play - where it began and how it ended.

The correlation of the beginning in a dramatic work and the end contributes to the emergence of a general view of the play.

It is important to draw the class's attention to the time covered by the play. What we see on stage always happens in the present. The time of the viewer and the time of action of the play seem to be combined, but days, weeks, and sometimes years pass between phenomena and actions.

The action of "Woe from Wit" covers the time from morning to evening, but in the theater it is compressed to several hours. Two weeks pass between acts III and IV of The Thunderstorm, but they directly determine the climax of the play.

The emergence of a conflict, its true causes, the foundations of existing relationships, the origins of characters are usually determined by life events that occur outside the play. Thus, at the first stage, the questions that the students will think about next, the angle from which they will view the play, are outlined.

Preparing to analyze a single action, the teacher determines for himself central problem work on it.

To solve this problem, phenomena are selected and basic questions are posed. Of course, action work also includes explanation unclear words and historical and theatrical commentary, but all this is subordinated main task. Therefore, we must give ourselves a clear account of what phenomena should be isolated for detailed analysis. The selection of phenomena for reading in class depends on the tasks that, according to the teacher, should be solved both when studying the entire play and when working on individual actions. This selection is determined in the process preliminary preparation teacher to study the entire play. It is then that the teacher outlines in which lesson and why it is necessary to turn to reading certain phenomena. In addition, during the preparation process, he must decide what is more appropriate to read himself, when to turn on the audio recording, what and for what purpose the students will read.”Methods of teaching literature: A textbook for students of pedagogy. institute, specialty No. 2101 “Russian”. language and literature” / Ed. Z.Ya. Res - M.: Education, 1977, p. 234-235..

But it is especially important to encourage the children to imagine what is happening on stage. One of the methodological techniques that encourages students to penetrate into the text of the play is the creation of imaginary mise-en-scenes - in other words, in the process of analysis they are asked to think about how they would position the characters at a certain moment of the action, to imagine their positions, gestures, movements.

At the same time, the teacher makes sure that schoolchildren, working on a separate act, perceive it as part of a whole that occupies a certain place in the development of the action, in its forward movement towards the finale of the play; so that they understand how the main elements of the plot are implemented and how they are prepared in individual acts: exposition, plot, climax, denouement.

Children's observation of the development of action should be inseparable from a deep penetration into the characters of the characters.

By observing the behavior, actions, and experiences of the character in all changing situations, schoolchildren gradually clarify the essence of the character of the various characters.

The character of the character, his social face, and state of mind are revealed by speech. Therefore, when analyzing a drama, the subject of constant attention should be the character’s speech and its originality.

Prostakova's ignorance and rudeness are manifested in her every remark. The uncertainty of Khlestakov’s thoughts affects the construction of his monologue ( Act III comedy).

When analyzing a play, it is of great importance to clarify the subtext of the characters’ remarks. Work on clarifying the subtext of the characters’ speech can be done already in the 8th grade when studying “Woe from Wit” (act. 1, phenomenon 7, - Chatsky’s meeting with Sophia).

In the process of analysis, the observations of schoolchildren are generalized. For this Z.Ya. Rez suggests posing so-called summative questions after individual, particularly significant phenomena and the end of the action: “For example, after reading the I and II phenomena of The Inspector General, you can ask the questions: what have we learned about the life of the county town? How did the city officials appear before us? What is the nature of the measures taken by the mayor?

After Act I of “The Thunderstorm,” one can ask: what do the characters of the Wild and Kabanikha have in common and what are their differences? How is Katerina different from all the Kabanovs? Why is conflict inevitable between Katerina and the world of the Kabanovs? To establish connections between actions, so-called perspective questions are of great importance, asking students to imagine themselves as spectators who do not know how the action will unfold next. Do you think further fate Katerina (after the end of Act II)? - the teacher will ask. Is it possible to predict who will be the winner in the world of the Famusovs - Chatsky or Molchalin (after Act I “Woe from Wit”)? - the teacher asks a question to the class.”

1. The ideological and artistic meaning of the title of the play. The title is introduced into a work of any genre. What is his uniqueness in dramaturgy? The title of the play does not strive to fully cover life material, as in an epic work, where the title sometimes seems to muffle, absorbing its main idea in order to emphasize the importance of depicting reality in its entirety.

The title in dramaturgy does not, like the lyrics, give an extremely generalized and personal name (even to the point of frequent refusal of the title in poetry). In the play, the title more openly, purposefully leads to the very core of the central conflict, condenses the meaning of the work, often concentrating it to the point of an aphorism, a proverb, a “sentiment.” The poetics of the title refracts and common feature dramaturgy - its two-dimensionality, its symbolism.

In the play, the title “Forest” obviously sets up an assessment of the main conflict in the perspective of ontological values ​​- this impulse is then realized in the course of the play in the cross-cutting motif of the purchase and sale of forests as an everyday situation, as a social collision of the replacement of noble rule by merchants, as a philosophical understanding of the “ecology of the soul” .

2. The most specific feature of the drama genre is the originality of the action in it: in the play, all lines, monologues, dialogues, polylogues, details, facts, events in individual scenes, phenomena and acts are combined into a single integral conflict, into an end-to-end “stage action”.

In the very first scene of the play “The Forest,” in the very first dialogue, the dowry-less student Aksyusha, summoned by the lady for a conversation, asks the servant Karp about the sale of the forest by the mistress: she timidly hopes for a dowry - that is, the very first remarks related only to a specific local situation, and also with the general, prepared conflict of purchase and sale of forests. The dropout high school student Bulanov, ready to marry for profit, covets the possible dowry. On the other hand, the merchant Vosmibratov connects the purchase of the forest with the matchmaking of his son to Aksyusha, hoping to snatch the forest as a dowry.

3. Expressive means the characteristics of a hero in a dramatic work can be indirect ways of presenting him - this is what Neschastlivtsev’s letter and his comments by all the characters in the play are like in Act 1. Reading the nephew’s letter, depicting his knightly idealization of a “loving aunt” and comments to it, in which the sentimental self-attestation of oneself as the benefactor of a poor relative-pupil is refuted by the fact of the heir’s robbery, creates another contrasting correlation that ties up another main plot line of the play: the Gurmyzhskaya clash and Neschastlivtsev.

4. Already in Act 1, not only is the situation in the Penki estate recreated, not only is an acquaintance with its inhabitants and guests taking place, but the conflict of the play as a whole is being prepared: every line, every detail turns out to be a projection of the general conflict of the play. The specificity of “stage action” in drama lies in the fact that although the actions in it appear at the moment of their accomplishment, in the very course of them - but at the same time they refract the conflict of the play as a whole: the drama is distinguished by a shorter, more purposeful path of each scene to its central collisions.

5. If in an epic work the main fabric of the narrative language is the author’s speech, then in figurative system drama always dominates speech characteristic: in dramaturgy, “for a writer, the artistic word is the main and even the only means of development dramatic action. In the play, everything is accomplished through the word...” (V. Uspensky).

This feature of the drama was classically embodied by the “sorcerer of the word” (M. Gorky) Ostrovsky. He is the creator of “speech theater”, in which “every other action, every theatricality, facial expressions should serve only as a light seasoning of literary performance, action in the word...” (I. A. Goncharov). Ostrovsky's plays are not plays of intrigue, but plays of socio-psychological characters, and therefore the speeches of the heroes usually reveal not only some of the vicissitudes of the conflict, but are also a means of their self-characterization, revealing their hidden essence, the deep processes of their consciousness, the features of their thinking, emotions and feelings.

6. One of the most important ways of analysis dramatic genre is to consider the arrangement of characters in it: the ratio of the characters is one of the most effective means embodiment of the author's position.

Let us comprehend the correlation of images in phenomena 1 and 2 - these first scenes of the play are clearly built on the principle of parallelism: here the servant Karp alternately enters into dialogue with Aksyusha and Bulanov, while showing a fundamentally different attitude towards their requests.

Through unambiguous situations, the contrast of the characters of the young heroes is clearly manifested: the selfless, pure appearance of Aksyusha and the selfish, cynical type of Bulanov. These dialogues are manifested in a clear correlation and storylines plays: Aksyusha’s pursuit of happiness, Bulanov’s pursuit of wealth.

But not only this is intended to demonstrate the beginning of the play with this “rhyme” of situations: Aksyusha asks Karp to pass a note to someone, Bulanov orders the servant to fill cigarettes; Karp fulfills the first request, although he understands that it is contrary to the interests of the lady; the second request, despite the threat to complain to the lady, he refuses to fulfill.

This parallelism of unambiguous situations makes it possible to clearly demonstrate author's position: the property status of the heroes, the omnipotence of the masters of life and complete dependence on them are closely related to moral problems: Karp helps Aksyusha not because she is poor; - after all, Bulanov is poor, and not because Aksyusha is closer to the servants than Bulanov, who is eager to join the circle of the rich, - after all, Julitta is also a servant, and Karp pokes her like that. It is not the social and property status that determines whom and how Karp serves, but the moral, popular commandments of morality - and this “key” to the upcoming conflict is provided by the technique of parallelism in the arrangement of characters.

The cohesion, correlation, arrangement of characters, their mutual illumination, on which the first act of the drama is built, becomes one of the most important ways of revealing the concept of the play in subsequent acts.

7. “Stage action” in a play is expressed not only in external action, not only in statements, but also in silence, in a meaningful look, an eloquent gesture, a secret impulse - hence the importance of analyzing “non-verbal means” in a dramatic work artistic expression", pauses, remarks to the side, involuntary gestures, etc., expressed by remarks.

The emotional and semantic load of the remarks from Act 1, Phenomenon 7, in the dialogue between Gurmyzhskaya and Aksyusha is extremely effective.

Aksyusha says “downcast eyes”, “quietly”; Gurmyzhskaya delivers her lines, twice accompanying them with the author’s remark: “with laughter”; Aksyusha, unbroken and accepting Gurmyzhskaya’s challenge, pronounces her last remark before her departure, “looking into her eyes.”

Although in this phenomenon the heroines are not yet manifested in their actions, it is full of “stage action” - and the essence of the characters of its participants and conflict nodes are revealed extremely clearly in the stage directions.