The Great Adventure: A Play of Fancy in Four Acts

Bennett, Arnold, 1867-1931Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.9
Word count
150K words
Chapters
16

Tags

English Originals Dramatic Literature Fantasy ThemeLife ChoicesTurning PointMistaken IdentityFour-Act PlaysPlayStage PresentationBritish HumorLight ComedyPopular Explanation

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Great Adventure: A Play of Fancy in Four Acts by Arnold BennettAuthor: Bennett, Arnold, 1867-1931,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Oct 29, 2004

Editor's review

This four-act play comes from the British writer Arnold Bennett and belongs among his dramatic works that have drawn relatively little attention from Chinese readers. Labelled a “play of fancy,” it relies more on the interest of situation and dialogue than on realistic narrative, and is best appreciated as a literary-historical and dramatic text. Bennett is known for his novels and essays, and his plays often retain fluent dialogue and vivid characterization; this work lets us see his experiments with stage form. As a public-domain ebook, it is convenient for researchers to search the original text and compare editions, and for theatre enthusiasts to practise reading aloud or adaptation. There is no need to hurry after plot; instead, note the pacing between acts and the shifts in character relationships. Read in the context of early twentieth-century British theatre, it better reveals the period taste behind its “fancy” manner.

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Reading tips

  1. Read the whole play first to grasp the four-act structure, then return to key dialogue and character turns.
  2. Compare with Bennett’s major novels to observe similarities and differences in his dramatic technique.
  3. For reading aloud, assign roles by act and pay attention to tone cues in the stage directions.
  4. Jot down the core conflict of each act as you read to help trace the overall rhythm.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16

FAQ

Is this play suitable for beginners to drama? It can serve as an introductory text, but readers need to get used to the script format. It is short and dialogue-driven, suitable for first understanding the basic structure of a four-act play and then gradually appreciating the “play of fancy” approach. If you have never read an English play before, it is advisable to start with one or two more conventionally structured plays.
How should “A Play of Fancy” in the title be understood? “Fancy” here means closer to “fantasy, imagination” than “liking.” It signals that readers should not judge the plot by realistic standards but focus on how the author uses imaginative situations to arrange characters and dialogue. While reading, concentrate on the interest of situation and the rhythm of language.
What should be noted when reading a public-domain ebook? Public-domain ebooks usually preserve the original layout, and the acts, character names and stage directions in a play need careful attention. It is advisable to use reading software that supports table-of-contents navigation, and to note that different editions may differ in punctuation and line breaks; when quoting, it is best to check the original book information.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Bennett, Arnold, 1867-1931 Author

Arnold Bennett (1867–1931) was an English novelist, essayist and playwright. Publicly available information is limited, so his early life and education cannot be described in detail, but his work is clearly recognisable. He often set his writing in the five pottery towns of Staffordshire, his home region, portraying the daily livelihoods and emotional ups and downs of ordinary people in a meticulous, restrained style, and revealing character and circumstance through everyday detail. The collection here holds 45 of his works, including The Old Wives' Tale, Riceyman Steps, Clayhanger and several Five Towns story collections, as well as essays such as The Author's Craft and How to Live on 24 Hours a Day. His writing thus spans fiction and essays on life and the craft of writing, drawing its material from ordinary life with a plain style and close observation.