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IMPORTANT QUESTIONS - DRAMA II HEDDA GABLER BY IBSEN

1. Explain the following extracts with reference to the context.

(i) Yes, but have you noticed how strong and healthy she's looking? And how she's filled out
since we went away?

(ii) Quite irreproachably, I assure you. In every respect. All the same -- in this big city -- with
money in his pockets -- I'm so dreadfully frightened something may happen to him.

(iii) (nervously, walking across the room) Sometimes a mood like that hits me. And I can't
stop myself. [Throws herself down in the armchair by the stove.] Oh, I don't know how to
explain it.

2. Explain the following extracts with reference to the context.

(i) Oh courage --- oh yes! If only one had that --- Then life might be livable, in spite of
everything.

(ii) Do you find it so incredible that a young girl, given the chance in secret, should want to
be allowed a glimpse into a forbidden world of whose existence she is supposed to be
ignorant?

(iii) He'll be here. I can see him. With a crown if vine leaves in his hair. Burning and
unashamed.

3. Explain the following extracts with reference to the context.

(i) Rubbish! First you're going to have some tea, you little idiot. And then -- at ten o'clock --
Eilert Lovborg will come. With a crown of vine-leaves in his hair!

(ii) Apparently he put up a very violent resistance. Hit one of the constables on the ear and
tore his uniform. He had to accompany them to the police station.

(iii) You needn't bother. I saw the pistol Loevborg had when they found him. I recognized it at
once. From yesterday. And other occasions.

4. 'Hedda Gabler' As a Modern Tragedy

5. 'Hedda Gabler' As a Feminist Play
6. Dramatic Significance of Symbols in 'Hedda Gabler'
7. Character Sketch of Hedda
8. Character Sketch of Loevborg

2. THE CHERRY ORCHARD BY CHEKHOV

9. Explain the following extracts with reference to the context.

(i) I beg you pardon? [Joyfully]. The mistress is home again. I've lived to see her! Don't care if
I die now ... [Weeps with joy].

(ii) But suppose I'm dreaming! God knows I love my own country, I love it deeply; I couldn't
look out of the railway carriage, I cried so much.

(iii) O my lovely innocent childhood! Sleeping here in the nursery, looking out into the
orchard, ... every morning waking up to happiness. And it is ... the same as it was, nothing's
changed.
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10. Explain the following extracts with reference to the context.

(i) You must excuse my saying so, but I've never met such frivolous people as you before, or
anybody so unbusinesslike and peculiar. Here I am telling you in plain language that your
estate will be sold, and you don't seem to understand.

(ii) I'm quite sure there wasn't anything at all funny. You oughtn't to go and see plays, you
ought to go and look at yourself. What a grey life you lead, what a lot you talk unnecessarily.

(iii) Perhaps a man has a hundred senses, and when he dies only the five known to us are
destroyed and the remaining ninety-five are left alive.

11. Explain the following extracts with reference to the context.

(i) Think, Anya, your grandfather, your great-grandfather, and all you ancestors were serf-
owners, they owned living souls; and now, doesn't something human look at you from every
cherry in the orchard, every leaf and every stalk?

(ii) That love is a stone round my neck; I'm going with it to the bottom, but I love that stone
and can't live without it.

(iii) Well, good-bye, old man. It's time to go. Here we stand pulling one another's noses, but
life goes its own way all the time.

12. Is 'The Cherry Orchard' a Tragedy or Comedy?

13. 'The Cherry Orchard' As a Political Play
14. Theme of Change in 'The Cherry Orchard'
15. Symbolism in 'The Cherry Orchard'
16. Character Sketch of Lopakhin

3. GALILEO GALILEI BY BRECHT

17. Explain the following extracts with reference to the context.

(i) I like to think it all started with ships. From times immemorial ships had hugged the
shores, but suddenly they abandoned the shores and sailed out the oceans.

(ii) Why does he make the earth the centre of the universe? So that the See of St. Peter can
be the centre of the earth! That's it what it is all about.

(iii) An apple from the tree of knowledge! He's wolfing it down. His is damned for ever, but he
has got to wolf it down, the poor glutton.

18. Explain the following extracts with reference to the context.

(i) What do you want to explain? You are fully in line with the Holy Congregation's decree of
1616. You cannot be faulted.

(ii) They are making you plough water. They allow you pens and paper to keep you quiet.
How can you possibly write when you know what's the purpose.

(iii) The transcript is inside that globe. Should you think of taking it to Holland, you would of
course have to bear the entire responsibility. In that case you would have bought it from
someone who had access to the original in the Holy Office.

19. Explain the following extracts with reference to the context.

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(i) In my spare time, of which I have plenty, I have gone over my case and considered how it
is going to be judged by that world of science of which I no longer count myself a member.

(ii) These selfish and domineering men, having greedily exploited the fruit of science, found
that the cold eye of science had been turned on a primeval but contrived poverty that could
clearly be swept away if they were swept away themselves.

(iii) A human race with shambles around in a pearly haze of superstition and old saws, too
ignorant to develop its own powers, will never be able to develop those powers of nature
which you people are revealing to it.

20. Brecht As a Dramatist

21. Major Themes in 'Galileo Galili'
22. 'Galileo Galili' As an Anti-Religious Play
23. Character Sketch of Galileo
24. Galileo's Dilemma

4. WAITING FOR GODOT BY BECKETT

25. Explain the following extracts with reference to the context.

(i) Why he doesn't make himself comfortable? Let's try and get this clear. Has he not the
right to? Certainly he has. It follows that he doesn't want to. There's reasoning for you.

(ii) Perhaps I haven't got it quite right. He wants to mollify me, so that I'll give up the idea of
parting with him. No, that's not exactly it either.

(iii) Remark that I might just as well have been in his shoes and he in mine. If chance had not
willed otherwise. To each one his due.

26. Explain the following extracts with reference to the context.

(i) The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep,
somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh.

(ii) Is there anything I can do, that's what I ask myself, to cheer them up? I have given them
bones, I have talked to them about this and that, I have explained the twilight, admittedly.

(iii) Let us do something, while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed.
Not indeed that we personally are needed. Others would meet the case equally well, if not
better.

27. Explain the following extracts with reference to the context.

(i) We wait. We are bored. (He throws up his hand.) No, don't protest, we are bored to death,
there's no denying it.

(ii) Don't question me! The blind have not notion of time. The things of time are hidden from
them too.

(iii) Was I sleeping, while the others suffered? An I sleeping now? Tomorrow, when I wake, or
think I do, what shall I say of today?

28. 'Waiting for Godot' As an Absurd Play

29. 'Waiting for Godot' As a Tragic-Comedy
30. Major Themes in 'Waiting for Godot'
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31. Significance of the Title 'Waiting for Godot'

32. Role of Language in the context of 'Waiting for Godot'