Spreading the News Essay Example
Spreading the News Essay Example

Spreading the News Essay Example

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The play, Spreading the News, was written by Lady Gregory in Dublin in December 27, 1904. The play was written mainly as a comedy that regained vast popularity among English audiences. It started its act at Abbey Theatre and up until today, the play progresses as part of English heritage.

The short play of Lady Gregory was set in the fictive village of Cloon. Figuratively, the setting of the play became a valuable symbolism that interprets a certain connection between the Irish society and English worlds.Culture, traditions, society’s behavior and the overall sociology present between the two civilizations were intertwined by a certain feature presented in the play – the society’s love for gossips. In some sense, the play portrayed a usual stereotype that had previously dominated English society. The blends of Mrs. Tarpey’s character (hearing impairment), the people’s love for spreading

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news, and the participations of Bartley Fallon, Mrs.

Fallon, Jack Smith and the Magistrate had all contributed significant illustrations of these English and Irish stereotypes.In an overview, the play involved an action that spins out a single minor incident into fast-paced, extravagant farce, with an old woman’s misunderstandings, which eventually resulted in one man being arrested for a murder and another thinking his wife ran off with a lover. The humorous character of the film disguised the ways in which the play offers a telling critique of the Cloon peasants’ preference for extravagant “talk” over the reality or productive action, and the characters’ inability to assert themselves politically.In this discussion, the emphasis provided distinct perspective in the interpretation of the play’s impact to contemporary English-Irish society. Discussion Interpretations of the Play Within th

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consorts of Cloon Village (a rural village of Ireland), a new English magistrate was able to take hold in the examination of the situations involved with the false accusations of murder.

The play opened in a scene wherein the Magistrate (symbolizing the English society) surveyed the district with local Policeman with hopes of satisfying his idea of criminal character present among Irish society.Magistrate: homicide, then! This district has been shamefully neglected! I will change all that. When I was in the Andaman Islands, my system never failed. Yes, yes, I will change all that… (Gregory 1904)” The magistrate had previously worked in a British penal colony of Adaman Islands and his hopes for his new task upon arriving to Cloon were similar with a prison warden. The magistrate stalled at the local fair with expectations of the possible worst-case scenarios.

With the opening of a new scenario between Jack Smith and Bartley Fallon, the start of the conflict in the play aroused. Mr. Smith had left his hayfork to Fallon’s residence; hence, Ms. Bartley requested his husband, Bartley, to bring it back to Mr. Smith. When Mrs.

Fallon informed one of her neighbors about the incident, she mentioned that her husband “gone up the road… following Jack Smith with a hayfork. ” This news was misunderstood by the neighbors and thought that a conflict between Mr. Smith and Fallon had aroused.Mrs.

Tarpey’s hearing impairment had caused the start of the news spread on a murder that occurred within the community. Eventually, the villager’s love of gossip became the main channel that aided the spread of the news. The spread of news led to a misunderstanding about

a false arrest for a murder that never occurred. The small town gossip had eventually led to a major farce presented in the neighborhood.

Gossip, the main component of the play, satirized the stereotype present within the society.The issues on the fast-phased spread of the news illustrated how the contemporary society would prefer to take the benefit of talking without further realizing the possibilities of misunderstanding and distortive violence. The play of Lady Gregory portrayed the Cloon peasants as attractive in their imaginative creativity and disingenuousness, and these qualities provided them the characteristic to remain inscrutable to colonial outsiders who sought to bring order to the community. Such scenario was depicted by the laughably earnest Magistrate, who was formerly an administrator in the Andaman Islands.From the author’s perspective, Spreading the News was regarded as Lady Gregory’s one way of illustrating a nostalgic piece about the universal conditions within the lifestyle of Galway peasants from Cloon village. Her most successful characters embrace a wide range of social types and her ear for the sentence patterns of those English speakers who think in Irish provided broad human nature a local dialect.

Somehow, Lady Gregory provided the interpretation of Irish culture through the medium of language.The concern of the Irish (portrayed by Mrs. Tarpey) was the “minding of one another’s business”, which somehow became an irony of the play. The English Magistrate and the neighborhood’s love for gossips had opposed the context of individuality and the areas of minding own businesses, rather the English went into the scenes initially treated Irish peasants as warded prison mates.

While the Magistrate branded these peasants with suspicion, the peasantries further announced

the gossips.Symbolisms from Spreading the News The News: Spreading the News was perhaps influenced by Synge’s tragic-comic vision of the dysfunctions of Irish peasant life portrayed in In the Shadow of the Glen. From the statements of Mrs. Fallon, “it’s time for ourselves to be going home.

I have all I thought put in the basket. Look at there, Jack Smith’s hayfork he left after him! He’ll be wanting it. Jack Smith! Jack Smith! –He’s gone through the crowd – hurry after him, Bartley, he’ll be wanting it (Gregory 1905). ” The news from Mrs. Fallon was interpreted by neighbors as an arising dispute between the Smith-Fallon parties.From Tim Casey, it was expanded further by Mrs.

Tarpey, “Tim Casey: Jack Smith with hay-fork! Did every any one hear the like of that. Did you hear that news, Mrs. Tarpey? Mrs. Tarpey: …Wait till I tell James Ryan that I see below, he is a neighbor or Bartley…” From a literary perspective, Lady Gregory used this scenario in order to portray an illustration presented in the contemporary Irish society. Irish peasants present in the rural areas were fond of gossips, which somehow became part of their lifestyle. Relationship between Irish and English:Like many other plays of Lady Gregory, the play was poised between admiration for the distinctive, vibrant culture of the Irish peasantry and the critical impatience responded towards their circumstances.

Lady Gregory portrayed different stereotypes that occurred between Irish and English relationship in the past. Being a member of the upper Protestant Irish classes, Lady Gregory sided a non-biased analysis if the relationship between Irish and English society. The character of the Magistrate was the main

symbolism of English society, who had portrayed a sense of racial prosecution.The magistrate arrived within the consorts of Cloon village with high expectations of criminal offenses and an imposition of corruption in his own idea. In Spreading the News, the main emphasis was portrayed by the social activity of gossiping within the Irish peasantry. The play was written for the sole purpose of reflecting the flaws between the two societies and on how each previewed one’s cultural background.

Exaggeration of the simple piece of news had become the cause of misinformation that eventually led into a full-scale tragedy of murder and adultery.There were threats of violence in Cloon due to the vast misinterpretations; however, the anger was almost invariably discharged in verbal tirade. On the other hand, the entrance of the play with the policeman and the Magistrate had already revealed the flaws of English society on contemporary Irish communities. Conclusion Within the play written by Lady Gregory, the main symbolical feature was the activity of gossiping present among Irish neighborhood at Cloon rural village.The exaggeration of the details from Mrs.

Fallon had cause the transformation of a small news to an overly complicated issues of murder that was never committed and the act of adultery. Meanwhile, the Irish-English relationship was portrayed by the characters of Mrs. Tarpey and the Magistrate wherein the English-oriented authority branded the Irish as criminally inclined society. The instant view of the Magistrate over Irish as criminal offenders was regarded as a symbolism of racial branding or stereotyping.

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