By Hilary Donatini
Last semester, I decided to include George Etherege's Restoration comedy The Man of Mode (1676) on my syllabus for English 406: Seventeenth-Century English Literature. Unlike teaching Shakespeare, where film versions of even the less popular plays exist in abundance, preparing lessons for The Man of Mode did not turn up any full-length, quality film productions. In many of my previous literature courses, I have involved students in short performances of scenes, whether or not we were watching video clips of plays as well. This time around, I wanted to try a read-through of an entire play.
About half of the class, in addition to my colleague Dr. Russell Weaver, congregated at my house on December 1. Fueling ourselves with pizza and pop, we were then ready to transport ourselves to Restoration London and enjoy Etherege's glittering and mordant take on the fashionable world. For me, the experience exceeded my expectations in terms of how fun and instructive it would be, and I hope to hold such an event again. Below you will find reactions from some of the participants. Thanks to all involved for their commitment to the event!
Corinne Spisz:
Reading the play out loud helped me to understand the relationship between the characters that I was not getting by reading it by myself. I was also more aware of the humor when we read it as a group. It was fun to hear everyone's different "voices" of the characters.
Jakob Demers:
The most useful and enjoyable part of the situation for me was the experience of the dialogue. It’s witty and fast-paced, which I think can be somewhat ignored in a nonperformance experience of the play. Ultimately I think my takeaway is just how cynical the play seems to be. Affectation paired with wit is celebrated, affection and honesty is shunned, and love seems to have no true power at all. It also seems like it would be a logistically difficult play to perform purely for the size of the cast and the blocking of the scenes.
Sabrina Maristela:
To read through a play in your head is one thing, but I think the reader misses an essential part of any play when they don’t get to hear the words spoken out loud as they were intended to be presented. We were very fortunate to have some great readers bring the characters of Man of Mode to life, and hearing the words definitely helped me notice and understand things like the timing of certain scenes and the relationships between characters that I never would have considered related.
Dr. Russell Weaver:
This was my first time to do something like this. I have come to understand more and more as I teach that hearing and pronouncing the words of a text are the most fruitful ways of engaging it, and although The Man of Mode is a work I have never read or seen, after participating in this joint reading, I came away with a significant first step towards grasping what it is about. It was also exciting to hear students and other faculty giving themselves over to the parts they were reading. Even though I confess that there were some nerve-wracking moments in preparing for this reading, I am eager to try it again should the opportunity present itself.
