The execution scaffold is a central totem, motif = conspirators are put to death, the English string up traitors, justice is swift and violent: Beware disloyal Welshmen!
Gruffydd Rhys
Master Rice - the universal understudy
12 Owen
13 Dick Burbage
Cuthbert the entrepreneur
Richard the actor
29 Mr Phillips at the theatre
30 Shakespeare & fictional Gilbert Shakespeare his brother
32 theatre musicians play non-speaking parts
Quill - memorable character at the Globe
Kemp's dog
Research the plays Titus Andronicus, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Love's Labour Lost, Tamerlaine, 53 The Two Gentlemen of Verona, 54 Comdy of Errors38 an uncertain living in the theatre - no room for infighting
46 Elizabethan era fears
Summarise the story. Why does it lack an action climax?Why is it less important to Lilly than the setting?
List themes you perceived: loyalty, patriotism, heritage (one's own roots), finding hidden talents in oneself, etc.A Critique of UK 1995?
The United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland now experiencing devolution - these coutnries wanting some control over their affairs and greater distinctive identity. Who commissioned Lilly to write it? Why?
© G. Smith 1998
1. Compare Cue for Treason (1940) with On a Scaffold
High (1993).
2. Read pages 49-50: the young Shakespeares and the property deck
in the Globe. Give word meanings for these:
helms
provenance
sundry
grisly
gruesome
properties
property tree
confection
3. Inevitably novelists must give descriptions. Comment on the effectiveness and purpose of this description.
4. Although this is a fictional novel, does such description need to be researched/factual/realistic? Why?
5. The girls experience the exotic and the macabre in the variety
with wonder but Owen does with a sense of dread: ". . . hadn't the
heart o explain the true nature . . ." Comment on how this
anticipates another poignant moment in his own revealing life story
in this novel.
What feature of Owen's character is further developed here?
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