What is the "passion"—that is, what exactly do these people desire who "want their ain way"? What forces favor these desires, and what oppose them—for instance, David Pirnie's determination to tell wee Alexander a bit story, in The Philosopher of Butterbiggens? Can you always put any one character altogether on one side? Or does his own weakness or carelessness or stupidity, for example, sometimes work against his getting what he wants, so that he is, in part, not on his own side, but against it, as Brutus is in Julius Caesar? Are there other forces in the play besides the people—storm or accident or fate? With what side or what character are you in sympathy? Is this constant throughout the play, or do you feel a change at some point in it? Does the author sympathize with any special character? Does he have a prejudice against any one of them? For example, in Campbell of Kilmhor, where is your sympathy? Where is the author's, apparently?
2. The Beginning and the End.
What events important to this play occurred before the curtain rises? Why does the author begin just here, and not earlier or later? How does he contrive to let you know these important things without coming before the curtain to announce them himself, or having two servants dusting the furniture and telling them to each other?
What happens after the curtain falls? Can you go on picturing these events? Are any of them important to the story—for instance, in The Beggar and the King? Why did the author stop before telling us these things?
Does the ending satisfy you? Even if you do not find it happy and enjoyable, does it seem the natural and perhaps the inevitable result of the forces at work—in Riders to the Sea and Campbell of Kilmhor, for instance? Or has the author interfered to make characters do what they would not naturally do, or used chance and coincidence, like the accidentally discovered will or the long-lost relative in melodramas, to bring about a result he prefers—a "happy ending," or a clap-trap surprise, or a supposed proof of some theory about politics or morals?
Does the interest mount steadily from beginning to end, or does it droop and fail somewhere? You may find it interesting to try drawing the diagram of interest for a play, as suggested in chapter X of Dr. Brander Matthews's Study of the Drama, and accounting for the drop in interest, if you find any.
3. The Playwright's Purpose.
What was the author trying to do in writing the play? It may have been:—
Merely to tell a good story To paint a picture of life in the Arran Islands or in old France or in a modern industrial town To show us character and its development, as in novels like Thackeray's and Eliot's (Of course, brief plays like these cannot show development of character, but only critical points in such development—the result of forces perhaps long at work, or the awakening of new ideas and other determinants of character.) To portray a social situation, such as the relation between workmen and employers, or between men and women To show the inevitable effects of action and motive, as of the determined loyalty of Dugald Stewart and his mother, or the battle of fisher-folk or weavers with grinding poverty.
Of course, no play will probably do any one of these things exclusively, but usually each is concerned most with some one purpose.