A lady of letters and A cream cracker under the settee. In both of these plays the main characters are both isolated and sad.

A monologue is an extended speech given by one speaker. Sometimes a distinction is made between a soliloquy and a monologue, with the term soliloquy describing the extended speech of a character on stage that is, in effect, talking to him or her and expressing inner thoughts aloud. These musings are supposed to be known only to the audience and not to other characters. A monologue is a really good way of revealing character and in particular a good choice to help tell story of middle aged women/old women, because there's only a solitary person talking, they are telling us the story from their point of view and because they are isolated and don't have anyone to talk to. In both of the plays Alan Bennett only has one character talking; I think this is because it makes the play more effective. In both of the plays the main characters are talking to themselves.

Both of the plays are mainly set in the main characters house, but in "a lady of letters", the setting changes a few times. In "a cream cracker under the settee" Bennett used props; he used a photo and a leaflet. These props are very important because they lead us to Doris' past. As the audience it makes us feel that Doris loved her husband very much. The setting of the play "a cream cracker under the settee" changes three times. At the start when Doris is sitting on her chair, and then she is sitting on the floor with her back to the wall and finally she crawls to the door to get the leaflet. In "a lady of letters" the setting changes six times.

Bennett was a very intelligent writer, in this case he used the setting to make the character very small, sad, and this is because she is isolated.

Bennett makes Doris and the audience claustrophobic, he does this to release the characters inner most feelings.

Alan Bennett used the technique "go to black" in his monologues to divide up sections of the monologue. This gives us time to figure out what the character is up to and what his feelings are. Bennett also used a lot of pauses throughout his monologues, he uses pauses when a character is thinking of something very deeply, and I think this is very effective because it releases the person out of their shell. "I'm just waiting for the paper coming. Not that there's much in it". She was waiting for this, waited and then just released it out. Throughout the play "a lady of letters", there are a number of twists, for example when she goes to the funeral, her past and the couples who went out every night because their son was sick, but in the end Bennett reveals the truth. He does this because as the play goes on it makes it more exciting and makes the audience want to watch on. In the play "a cream cracker under the settee", we do not see Doris die at the end, Alan Bennett leaves this to us to decide, whether she's dead or not.

Miss Ruddock writes formally in her letters, this is because she is writing it for a purpose. This tells us that Miss Ruddock is very serious about her letters and is not joking around. Miss Ruddock's thought processes are more informal, because she writes it as if she was talking to the person write their when the incident happened. The language Doris uses clearly indicates that she is an old lady, because she says that she doesn't want to go to Strafford house because all the people there stink of pee. Other examples are, "We were always on our own me and Wilfred", "Love god close all gates". Meanwhile you can tell that Miss Ruddock is a middle aged woman of the way she writes her letters and how she complains about little tiny details, and if she was old I think that she wouldn't bother writing letters because she would have enough common sense to think that it is nonsense writing letters for tiny details. Miss Ruddock comes across a lot of different characters. These are the characters, the policeman, doctor, the vicar and the inmates in the prison. When Miss Ruddock is in prison she makes inmates, and the inmates make a lot of change to Miss Ruddock because they make her happy and Miss Ruddock learns new things from them. On the other hand Doris comes across a policeman and the social worker Zulema. I think that Zulema gives a bad impression of herself to Doris by telling her that she should go to Strafford house because this just makes Doris angrier.

First of all I would like to say that Alan Bennett was a terrific writer who makes the audience enjoy whatever he writes. The techniques Bennett used were very effective the "go to black", and the "pauses". He also used the twists in between that made it very effective and kept the play rolling along very nice. Finally he used props these played a key role in the play because they lead us to Doris past.

I think that Bennett's techniques "go to black" and "pause", were very effectual but I think that the props were effective because the lead us to the characters past and tells us a little bit more about the character feelings and thoughts.

Ali Raza