Read since last quiz:
        Outline your notes in the patterns given below, remember what you have written down (and the approximate dates or relative ages of the authors--Johnson and Walpole are of the same generation; Goldsmith and Gibbon are the same generation, but a generation younger than Johnson; Johnson is 40 years older than Sheridan) and you will do well on the quiz and--more important--have a firm grasp on these texts.  In addition, for each work you might want to note any lines, images, concepts, sections that you personally  might want to find again some day.

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784):

•     Prologue for the Opening of Drury Lane
•     Purpose?
•     Sections?
•     Writers mentioned?
•     Relation to audience in theatre?
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• Preface to Shakespeare
•         Purpose?
•         Classics known how?
•         Shakespeare's strengths?
•         Shakespeare's faults?
•         Alleged faults that aren't really? (unities)
•         Conclusion?
•  
• Vanity of Human Wishes (as with "Prologue": Purpose, sections, specific persons discussed, relation to reader = conclusion about what we should   "wish" )
•  
•  Rasselas
• opening: setting--not set in here and now, characters are representative of perspectives on life, not psychological/biographical individuals, audience is particularly young people needing to make choices about their future
• characters: Rasselas, his former teacher, the inventor, Imlac, Nekayah, Pekuah, philosopher, hermit, bandit, astronomer, basha---thumbnail sketches of each, relation to choice of life.
• events and their significance: Rasselas becomes dissatisfied, learns what he needs ("something to desire"), daydreams, regrets daydreams, sponsors scientist, meets Imlac, Imlac describes his life and his profession, they tryto escape, Nekayah joins, they escape; try different life styles (which), argue (about what), Pekuah kidnapped, Nekayah grieves, Pekuah retrieved, they meet astronomer, choices of life, conclusion. Note use of dichotomies: marriage/celibacy, seclusion/company, education/ignorance, power/weakness, etc.  Is happiness/grief a dichotomy, or is each opposed to something in between the two?
•  Note similarities to and differences from "Vanity of Human Wishes."

Horace Walpole (1717-1797)  The Castle of Otranto  (as with Rasselas, except consider Walpole's prefaces, both the fictitious one and the one he uses to explain the "new kind of romance" he has written; characters; plot events; "Gothic" trademarks

Oliver Goldsmith (1730-1774) She Stoops to Conquer

•     prologue; idea of "laughing" comedy
•     characters: initial goals, follies, and final situations of each major figure
•     scenes: exposition, misadventures, complications, explanations
•             Think particularly and even make a list of each scene in which something funny happens: consider whether it is just amusing, just essential to the plot, or both.
•     theme: what points about human behavior in his society does Goldsmith seem to make? (parents/children, attitude towards women, attitudes towards new or old)

Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapters 1 and 6 and beginning of Chapter 15
     (outline similarly to Johnson's Preface.

• Why is this book to be written?
• The first chapter does not deal with the "decline and fall" of the empire, but rather describes it at its height.  Why does it belong in the history? What two subjects are treated in chapter I?
• How does Gibbon relate the Age of the Antonines to earlier periods? To his own time?
• What is the main story of Chapter VI?
• Who are the characters, what events occur, why does Gibbon tell us about apparently irrelevant things, such as Severus's choice of Julia because the astrologers said she was destined to be fortunate?
• How does Gibbon use wit to make his points (a) about the values and flaws of the situation he is describing, relative to what the results are going to be and (b) about the value of knowing this material to a person living in eighteenth century England?
• What does he say  he is going to do in chapter 15 and how does  he plans to do it--the five sections?)

Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816) The School for Scandal (outline similarly to Goldsmith's play; note also how the three plot lines interact and the use of characters who aren't essential to the plot for purposes of social commentary--Crabtree and Backbite, Mrs. Candour, Moses, the servants)