Shakespeare and Amateur Performance: A Cultural History. By Michael Dobson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011; pp. xiii + 265, 29 illustrations. $88 cloth, $70 e-book.

Abstract

In Chapter 5, "Imagery of Death in Dramatic Geopathology," Hernando-Real explores this fascinating and relatively overlooked aspect of Glaspell's dramaturgy, demonstrating that "[t]he presence of death is palpable in almost every play by Susan Glaspell" (114). There are corpses onstage (or just off) in, for example, Bernice, The Outside, Alison's House, The Verge, and The Comic Artist. A corpse has just been removed from an unseen room in Trifles, and images of death occur in even the (more or less) comic Chains of Dew. The buried child motif (references to dead or unborn children) haunts Trifles, The Verge, Inheritors, Bernice, and Chains of Dew. Glaspell's portrayal of war is a subtheme within this chapter, in which Hernando-Real notes that Glaspell brings onstage the American Revolution, the Civil War, the Black Hawk War, the Hungarian Revolution, the anticolonial movement in India, and both World Wars, situating war as conflict over space (127), and images of war as provoking "a sense of paralysis in the onstage characters" (129). Hernando-Real's final chapter, "Dramatic Principles of Departure," considers what the author identifies as the mission shared by all of Glaspell's geopathic characters (in common with many characters in modern drama): escape from the "victimage of location." The various means by which they accomplish this mission include art (Mother's doll making in Chains of Dew; Alison's poetry in Alison's House), nature (The People's Woman from Idaho), and the "heroism of departure" (146). Elsa in Alison's House, for example, leaves the ancestral home with her lover. Trifle's Minnie Wright and Inheritor's Madeline Morton leave their homes for prisons. Bernice makes use of her death to "exert her power over the other characters" (149). The Verge's Claire Archer escapes through insanity; Chains of Dew's Dotty enacts a metaphorical "departure" by reshaping her environment, as well as changing herself physically to fit her evolving identity. Hernando-Real sees all these means of departure as liberatory-a debatable perspective, but one that she presents with persuasive authority. Throughout this meticulously researched and well-written study, Hernando-Real's attention to detail mirrors that of Glaspell's two most noted female characters, the farmwomen of Trifles, whose perceptive readings of geopathic space inspire their "departure" from patriarchal law in aid of their neighbor's escape. Enhanced by eleven recent production photos and an extensive bibliography of Glaspell's works, Self and Space in the Theater of Susan Glaspell will be of significant interest to anyone desiring a deeper understanding of Glaspell's plays as well as the cultural and historical issues manifested within her dramaturgy.

Comparison of solidification behavior between in situ observation and simulation of Fe–C–Si system

“…The Scheil approximation are the other extreme and assumes no diffusion in solids and infinitely large diffusion in the liquid [9]. In the Fe-C related systems, the carbon diffusion in solids is considerably fast, thus the Scheil model is not valid.…”