WHOM DO YOU SEEK (QUEM QUAERITIS)
Anonymous

We don't want to make too big a deal out of this very short work, but we do think it offers an admirable introduction to the nature of drama. Most of what we have to say about it we say in our lead-in on page 5 in Types of Drama, in the two paragraphs we give after the play on page 6, and in the two paragraphs about "Mistakes and Conflicts" on page 7, but here we can add a few words. Of course in class, many more words can be added, concerning such large issues as (a) drama and ritual, (b) males performing female roles, and (c) the audience's response to a familiar story versus the response to an unfamiliar story. This last point gets into the issue of: To what extent is surprise important in a play? Yes, it is important in certain kinds of works (such as mysteries), but for the most part, plays that are good can be seen a second and a third time, and the audience, thoroughly familiar with the plot, enjoys the plays no less—and indeed perhaps even more—than on the first viewing. Why? On this point, you may want to refer the students to the entry on suspense in our glossary (page 1527), which briefly touches on suspense versus surprise. Discussion with students will elicit the fact that even some sitcoms hold up very well under repeated viewing; the pleasure in the first viewing is largely in being surprised by unexpected responses and situations, but the pleasure in subsequent viewings is largely in the anticipation, "Just watch what he does now, and listen to what she'll say to him."

There is always the question of what to do at the first meeting of a course. Many students will not have the book in hand, other students who will end up taking the course may not even be present at the first meeting. For these reasons, some instructors do not do much more than say a few words about the scope of the course, including the requirements ("one short paper and one long paper, attendance at a performance of two plays that the college will be giving, a mid-term and a final examination"), distribute a handout that names the text and includes the syllabus, and then send the students home. Our own practice is different: We keep the students for most of the hour, talking about the nature of drama and theater, and we discuss Quem Quaeritis. Invariably, we spot some students who have the text in hand, and we draft them to perform the play. First we talk a bit about it, read the lines ourselves, then ask the students—who by now are familiar with the whole of the play—to perform it. And then we talk about the issues that we raise in the text—such as imitation and action—and sometimes the issues we introduced in the first paragraph of the present discussion. It usually works nicely for us.

TRIFLES
Susan Glaspell

Some students may be familiar with Glaspell's other version of this work, the short story entitled "A Jury of Her Peers." Some good class discussion can focus on the interchangeability of the titles. "Trifles" could have been called "A Jury of Her Peers," and vice versa. A peer is an equal, and the suggestion of the story's title is that Mrs. Wright is judged by a jury of her equals—Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters. A male jury would not constitute her equals because—at least in the context of the story and the play—males simply don't have the experiences of women and therefore can't judge them fairly.

Murder is the stuff of TV dramas, and this play concerns a murder, but it's work asking students how the play differs from a whodunit. Discussion will soon establish that we learn, early in "Trifles," who performed the murder, and we even know, fairly early, why Minnie killed her husband. (The women know what is what because they correctly interpret "trifles," but the men are baffled because they are looking for obvious signs of anger.) Once we know who performed the murder, the interest shifts to the question of whether the women will cover up for Minnie.

The distinction between what the men and the women look for is paralleled in the distinction between the morality of the men and the women. The men stand for law and order, for dominance (they condescend to the women, and the murdered Wright can almost be taken as a symbol of male dominance), whereas the women stand for mutual support and nurturing. Students might be invited to discuss why the women protect Minnie. Is it because women are nurturing? Or because they feel guilty for their earlier neglect of Minnie? Or because, being women, they know what her suffering must have been like and feel that she acted justly? All of the above?

They symbols will cause very little difficulty. The "gloomy" kitchen suggests Minnie's life with her husband; the bird suggests Minnie herself (she sang "like a bird," was lively, then became caged and was broken in spirit).

The title is a sort of symbol too—an ironic one—for the men think (in Mr. Hale's words) that "Women are used to worrying over trifles." The men in the play never come to know better, but the reader-viewer comes to understand that the trifles are significant and that the seemingly trivial women have outwitted the self-important men. The irony of the title is established by the ironic action of the play.

Does the play have a theme? In our experience, the first theme that students often propose is that "it's a man's world." There is something to this view, but (1) a woman kills her husband, and (2) other women help her to escape from the (male) legal establishment. Do we want to reverse the first suggestion, then, and say that, in this play, it is really a woman's world, that women run things? No, given the abuse that the women in the play take. Still, perhaps is it fair to suggest that one of the things the play implies is that overbearing male behavior gets what it deserves—at least sometimes. Of course, when put this way, the theme is ancient; it is at the root of the idea of hubris, which is said to govern much Greek tragedy. Glaspell gives it a very special twist by emphasizing the women's role in restoring justice to society.