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The Second Shepherd's Pageant: Play Analysis

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Engaging the audience is an incredibly vital factor for the success of any play. Without an audience, there simply is no play. In order to become successful, the people watching need to be engaged in what’s happening on the stage and in the stories that are unfolding. The best way of achieving this is by having elements of personability, humour, and themes throughout the play that which the audience is familiar with. In the case of The Second Shepherd’s Pageant and Joseph’s Trouble about Mary, the two plays discussed in this essay, all of these elements are found in abundance. Both of these plays manage to effortlessly use these elements to grab a hold of the audience’s attention, and to keep that hold throughout the entirety of the play. The first of these three elements that needs to be executed is personability: humans are attracted to that which we see ourselves in. If a play promises to bring elements of real life humanity, people will be sure …show more content…

This leads into the third element: familiar themes. For both Joseph’s Trouble about Mary and The Second Shepherd’s Pageant, this theme is decidedly Christian. It is easy to see where the Christian themes come in Joesph’s Trouble about Mary, as it is a play about Joseph and Mary from the New Testament, but at first glance it would appear that the only connection between The Second Shepherd’s Pageant would be in the very ending scene. Upon deeper reading, it is revealed that there are Christian tropes throughout the play. Coming back to the dreams of Mak wearing wolf skin, it reminds the viewers of the warning about the ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing.’ The dream is the first shepherd’s subconscious warning that Mak is not who he appears to be. The entirety of the play, in fact, is meant to mirror and reflect the nativity scene, and this is only reinforced by the three shepherds showing up to the actual location of Mary and baby

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