Focus on Words

Reviewing Dickens
Rising to greatness from the middle class Dickens embodies the spirit of the
Industrial Age. And he reflected it from the debtors’ prison to the gentlemen’s club on
the Strand. Dickens is oddly in peace with his books endlessly observing, laughing,
imitating, gushing and talking, dandified and garish of task.
The greats ever. Speak about your favourite painter, composer, writer, etc
using the words after years, later, soon afterwards, meanwhile , since.
The language of drama
If the characters in plays and films
spoke like we do in conversation, it would
be a terrible mess. The audience wouldn’t be
able to make any sense of it. And it would
be almost impossible for the actors to pull it
off. Loads of characters all talking at the
same time? What many modern dramatists
are trying to do is to get close to real speech,
but without the whole thing degenerating
into mess. It’s an approximation of real
speech.
Harold Pinter’s a good example He has
got a great ear for dialogue. Pinter is one of
the most original writers to have emerged
from the new wave of dramatists who gave
fresh life to the British theatre in the late
fifties and early sixties of the XX century.
Many consider him to be one of the best
modern British playwrights. He’s famous for
his pauses which abound in his dialogue.
There is a lot of repetition too. It seems often
illogical as in conversation.. It is often called
the language of the bus-stop, the cafe and
the living-room. But Pinter also shapes it; crafts it. It’s got a rhythm. It’s a kind of
poetry.
Pinter’s plays are often power struggles, fights over territory. The characters use
language as a weapon. They often have battles with each other, linguistic battles. You
don’t know what the characters are thinking. But you have a feeling they’re about to
explode into violence
Why do these dramatists want to use this demotic language - real speech ?What
are they trying to achieve? If you have real language, the audience identifies more with
the situations and characters.
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