How much time is represented? Are there significant gaps?
Does the play move in chronological order?
Does the act show a change of time, place, character?
How does the scene contribute to the whole action?
Space
What kind of space is represented?
What role does scenery play?
Things
What roles do props play? Think about props as “objects” and “motifs”
Does the action require hand props? Trace their movements.
Characters
How many figures appear on stage at once? How would you block
the scene?
What motivates the character(s)?
What kind of language does the character use?
Does dialogue or more complex conversation rely on contrasting ways
of speaking?
How does the character act?(think about blocking movements in space)
Does the character appear credible within the fictional world?
Does the play rely on our recognizing a character type? (the Vice;
hero; ingenue; straight man; Fool)
Action
Plots are made up of events. Which events are essential to the
story (kernels) and which ones are subsidiary (satellites)?
Does the story tell everything that happens, or does something important
get left out (a gap, or ellipsis) or offstage?
What kind of story does the action tell (murder mystery, love story,
etc). What sorts of expectation does the story generate? Do you find
these expectations fulfilled? If not, what happens to change the
direction of the plot, or shift the genre?
How many stories does the action tell?
Do you detect moments of dramatic irony, in which the inevitable outcome of an action, or the significance of a remark is understood by the audience, but not by the character speaking/acting?
Making judgments: for all kinds of literary works
What aesthetic values does the work embody or propose?
Does the work have a moral stance? Do you agree with its attitude?
Does the work participate in the discourses of psychology, theology,
patriotism, dissent?
Does the work have an implicit politics?
Is the work inflected by gender?
Does power operate in the work in a discernable way?
What are the work’s limitations? What can't it know, or admit?
How well integrated is the work?
Are there rough spots?
Is it uneven?
What is the worst thing about it?
What is the best thing about it?
Resources:
A Glossary of Literary Terms, 7th ed., M. H. Abrams
The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms, Murfin
and Ray.