Dickens' Holiday Classic
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Play Guide HOLIDAY 2020 Dickens’ Holiday Classic A VIRTUAL TELLING OF A CHRISTMAS CAROL DECEMBER 19–31 Inside THE NOVELLA Synopsis • 4 “This Ghostly Little Book”: Comments on A Christmas Carol • 5 THE AUTHOR About Charles Dickens • 6 Charles Dickens: A Selected Chronology • 7 A Novel Petition for London’s Poor • 8 CULTURAL CONTEXT Dickens and the Christmas Tradition • 9 Dickens, Scrooge and British Diplomacy • 11 A Scrooge Primer • 13 Victorian Parlor Games • 14 EDUCATION RESOURCES Discussion Questions and Classroom Activities • 16 ADDITIONAL INFORMATION For Further Reading and Understanding • 18 Guthrie Theater Play Guide 818 South 2nd Street, Minneapolis, MN 55415 Copyright 2020 ADMINISTRATION 612.225.6000 BOX OFFICE 612.377.2224 or 1.877.447.8243 (toll-free) DRAMATURG Carla Steen guthrietheater.org • Joseph Haj, Artistic Director GRAPHIC DESIGNER Brian Bressler EDITOR Johanna Buch The Guthrie creates transformative theater experiences that ignite the CONTRIBUTORS Matt DiCintio, Hunter Gullickson, imagination, stir the heart, open the mind and build community through the Jo Holcomb, Matt McGeachy, Siddeeqah Shabazz, illumination of our common humanity. Carla Steen All rights reserved. With the exception of classroom use by teachers and individual personal use, no part of this play guide may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publishers. Some materials are written especially for our guide. Others are reprinted by permission of their publishers. The Guthrie Theater receives support from the National Endowment for the Arts. This activity is made possible in part by the Minnesota State Arts Board, through an appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature. The Minnesota State Arts Board received additional funds to support this activity from the National Endowment for the Arts. 2 \ GUTHRIE THEATER PLAY GUIDE DICKENS’ HOLIDAY CLASSIC It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour. Charles Dickens Stave Three, A Christmas Carol IMAGE: “SCROOGE’S THIRD VISITOR” HANDCOLORED ETCHING BY JOHN LEECH FROM 1843 PRINTING OF A CHRISTMAS CAROL (PUBLIC DOMAIN) About This Guide This play guide is designed to fuel your curiosity and deepen your understanding of a show’s history, meaning and cultural relevance so you can make the most of your theater experience. In the virtual landscape, sharing resources is one way to foster a sense of connection. That’s why we packed this play guide with information, historical context and curriculum ideas for the K–12 schools who will be streaming Dickens’ Holiday Classic. We hope you enjoy mining the depths of Charles Dickens’ extraordinary story. FOR MORE INFORMATION Thank you for your interest in Dickens’ Holiday Classic, a virtual telling of A Christmas Carol. Please direct literary inquiries to Dramaturg Carla Steen at [email protected] and education inquiries to Education Manager Siddeeqah Shabazz at [email protected]. 3 \ GUTHRIE THEATER PLAY GUIDE DICKENS’ HOLIDAY CLASSIC THE NOVELLA IMAGE: WOOD ENGRAVING OF PEOPLE BUYING TICKETS FOR DICKENS’ READING OF A CHRISTMAS CAROL AT STEINWAY HALL IN NEW YORK CITY, HARPER’S WEEKLY, DECEMBER 28, 1867 (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS) Charles Dickens took Scrooge’s tale of transformation on the road beginning in 1853, standing at podiums and reading a self-edited version of A Christmas Carol in front of large crowds from London to Boston and beyond. We are using a modification of Dickens’ own performance script, so the synopsis for both the novella and Dickens’ Holiday Classic are one and the same. Synopsis Ebenezer Scrooge, a miserly businessman, moves past memories to recall the misfortunes, joys and through the streets of London with tight fists and a mistakes of his youth. Next, Scrooge is thrown into closed heart. He shuns light and love offered by those the world around him by the Ghost of Christmas around him and greets each Christmas with a scowl Present, who shows him the happiness and community and a “Bah! Humbug!” of people in his life who celebrate the holiday with gratitude no matter their wealth or poverty. Finally, On Christmas Eve, the ghost of his former business Scrooge is visited by the silent Ghost of Christmas Yet partner, Jacob Marley, appears before him wrapped to Come, who reveals his dark fate if he remains on his in the chains of his own greed and callousness. He current path. warns Scrooge of the similar fate that awaits him if he doesn’t change his ways. Before vanishing into the Scrooge awakes to discover it’s Christmas morning, darkness, Marley tells Scrooge to expect visits from and he’s fully resolved to be a new man — a better three more spirits on successive nights. man. He greets everyone with a positive outlook, begins to make amends to those he has wronged As promised, when the clock strikes one, the Ghost of and embraces all the happiness his second Christmas Past appears and draws Scrooge through chance brings. 4 \ GUTHRIE THEATER PLAY GUIDE DICKENS’ HOLIDAY CLASSIC THE NOVELLA “ This Ghostly Little Book” Comments on A Christmas Carol I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it. Their faithful Friend and Servant, C.D. Charles Dickens IMAGE: “MARLEY’S GHOST” HANDCOLORED ETCHING BY JOHN LEECH A Christmas Carol, December 1843 FROM 1843 PRINTING OF A CHRISTMAS CAROL (PUBLIC DOMAIN) [A Christmas Carol] is a national benefit, and to every Nothing is more Dickensian than the Dickens man and woman who reads it a personal kindness. Christmas. It is a Christmas in which hobgoblins are more apparent than the Holy Spirit, a Christmas which William Makepeace Thackeray may seem to glorify the Altar less than the Hearth; Fraser’s Magazine, February 1844 and, since more households have hearths than they have altars, a Christmas which has dominated the There was indeed nobody that had not some interest home-festival for well over a century. in the message of the Christmas Carol. It told the Eleanor Farjeon selfish man to rid himself of selfishness; the just man Introduction to Christmas Books by Charles Dickens, 1954 edition to make himself generous; and the good-natured man to enlarge the sphere of his good nature. Its cheery voice of faith and hope, ringing from one end of the As much as A Christmas Carol is about spiritual island to the other, carried pleasant warning alike redemption, it’s about money and poverty and to all, that if the duties of Christmas were wanting, work. … If Dickens bequeathed us a consoling vision no good could come of its outward observances; of Christmas, he also bequeathed us an image of that it must shine upon the cold hearth and warm it, urban poverty. When we think of the working poor in a and into the sorrowful heart and comfort it; that it city — the evictions, the health problems — the image must be kindness, benevolence, charity, mercy, and that haunts our minds is essentially one that Dickens forbearance, or its plum pudding would turn to stone first vehemently brought to our attention. and its roast beef be indigestible. Jerome Weeks John Forster “Turning Marley’s Face Into a Doorknob is Just Problem Number One The Life of Charles Dickens, Volume Two, 1874 for Carol Adaptors,” American Theatre, December 2000 5 \ GUTHRIE THEATER PLAY GUIDE DICKENS’ HOLIDAY CLASSIC PLAYTHE AUTHORFEATURE About Charles Dickens 1812–1870 By Carla Steen Charles John Huffam Dickens was born in Portsmouth, along the southern coast of England, on February 7, 1812, and was the second child of Elizabeth Barrow and John Dickens. The family moved frequently during Charles’ childhood, and he recalled an especially happy time of several years in Chatham, Kent. The family moved permanently to London in 1822, and their finances deteriorated as John Dickens was never particularly responsible with money. At age 12, to help his family, Charles was sent to work at Warren’s IMAGE: WOOD ENGRAVING OF CHARLES DICKENS, THE ILLUSTRATED Blacking Factory, where he put in 10-hour days pasting LONDON NEWS, APRIL 8, 1843 (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS) labels on shoe polish bottles, sometimes working at a window in full view of passersby, for which he earned That same year, Dickens began writing The Pickwick six shillings a week. Papers, a weekly serial that continued into 1837, which was met with enormous popular acclaim and solidified Several days after Charles started to work, John his reputation. The next few years saw a burst of Dickens was arrested for debt and put in the activity, both personally and professionally, as he Marshalsea Prison. As was the custom, his family produced the novels Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, joined him there — all but Charles, who boarded The Old Curiosity Shop and Barnaby Rudge; began to near the blacking factory. The dashed hopes, family edit the new monthly periodical Bentley’s Miscellany; separation and horrible conditions of this work and, with Catherine, welcomed the first four of their experience stayed with Charles into adulthood; it 10 children. inspired not only instances and characters in his writing but his advocacy to improve conditions for the In 1842, Dickens and Catherine took a six-month poor and working classes. sightseeing tour of the U.S. where his work was extremely popular. He met American authors An inheritance relieved the family’s pinched Washington Irving, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and economics, eventually allowing Charles to quit the Edgar Allan Poe but raised hackles when he spoke factory and spend the next two years at school.