Author Question: Would you call this passage high comedy or low? Explain the reasons foryour choice. What will be ... (Read 37 times)

Jkov05 · **on:** Jul 20, 2018

Would you call this passage high comedy or low? Explain the reasons foryour choice.

What will be an ideal response?

Question 2

Trifles is a lousy mystery. All the action took place before the curtain went up. Almost in the beginning, on the third page, we find out who done it.

So there isnt really much reason for us to sit through the rest of the play. Discuss this view.

matt · **Reply #1 on:** Jul 20, 2018

Answer to Question 1

The definition of high comedy in the anthology states that it relies more on wit and wordplay than on physical action for its humor. It tries to address the audiences intelligence by pointing out the pretension and hypocrisy of human behavior. . . . One technique it employs to appeal to a sophisticated, verbal audience is use of the epigram, a brief and witty statement that memorably expresses some truth, large or small. It would be difficult to think of a work that better embodies this definition than The Importance of Being Earnest. The humor of the play is predominantly intellectual in nature. It resides in reversal of expectations, such as Lady Bracknells approval of smoking and of ignorance; in absurd exaggeration for satiric effect, as in Lady Bracknells comparison of Jacks origins to the worst excesses of the French Revolution; and in frequent wordplay, as seen in the double meanings of duties (obligations and taxes), make out (discern and profit), and, most famously, lose (misplace and be bereaved).

Answer to Question 2

By the standard applied here, the play is a lousy mystery; but then, so are Hamlet and Crime and Punishment. Trifles does not, any more than they do, seek to be a whodunit, in which the paramount issue is to discover the identity of the killer. What is of importance here, of course, is what happens after that identity is establishednamely, what Mrs. Wrights motives and provocations were, what the two women decide is the proper way of handling the fact, and whether and how they will act to bring about what they see as the proper outcome. It is the answers to these questions, not who done it, that the play turns on, and it is the resolution of these matters that communicates Glaspells central themes.