Describe, Examine and Analyse how Willy Russell uses dramatic devices to illustrate issues in "Shirley Valentine".

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Describe, Examine and Analyse how Willy Russell uses dramatic devices to illustrate issues in “Shirley Valentine”

The 1980’s was a time of great change in Britain, but it was the changes to who worked,

where they worked, and how society changed. In this play “Shirley Valentine”, by Willy

Russell, many different aspects of the change are shown on an average forty something

housewife. The changes included the privatisation of public companies and economic

growth, but the factors that would have impacted on Shirley the most would have been

the rise of women out of the home and into work, feminism and the package holiday. The

play also highlights stereotypes, which it then (in most cases collapses). Audiences would

have been able to relate to these issues and so would be able to understand and enjoy the

play more than if it had been about everyday life in somewhere like the Amazon

rainforest.

 Russell himself was born in Liverpool in the 1940’s to working class parents. His parents

wanted him to get on in life, and rise from his “low beginnings”. In the play, Russell may

have meant to make a reference to his home life, when Shirley’s father is mentioned as

buying the whole encyclopaedia Britannica for his children and then wondering why they

weren’t clever. Russell himself left school at 15 with just a basic English qualification-

hardly the dizzy heights of academia which his father hoped for him to reach. Shirley also

disliked school, due to a bullying headmistress, she could never reach her potential.

Shirley is stuck in a loop of cooking and cleaning- Russell ended up in a cycle of moving

from place to place himself, but, as Shirley goes to do, he defies the odds and makes an

account of himself to the world. Whereas Shirley goes to Greece on her own and doesn’t

come back, Russell wrote a series of successful plays. To see how he made a success of

his plays, we must look at the dramatic devices he used to get the audience emotionally

involved and to make the play believable.

 The first of these dramatic devices is the flashback. Most of the play is a flashback- we

never actually see Shirley talking, in the present reality, to anyone else- she is always

talking to herself or an inanimate object. Flashbacks are useful tools because they allow a  

playwright to tell a story in the past except with “live action”- the actor doesn’t have to

simply stand on the spot and tell the audience what happened. It allows an element of

freedom in movement and expression that the actor(s) would not otherwise have. Also, it

helps keep the audience’s attention on what’s happening at the time in a way that a

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simple description would not. For example, it is easier to keep your attention on a

dynamic play than a speech.

 The second is the use of humour. The play is full of humourous references to everyday

things- for example, Shirley says how Joe had better not get the washing machine and the

microwave mixed up or he “might end up with socks on toast”- an example of the cynical

and often sarcastic wordplay used in the play.. This device is used to lighten the mood of

the ...

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