Plays on the campus of Oakland University
About the play Something Wicked this Way Comes in Aristotle's six elements:

The play, “Something Wicked This Way Comes”, is a thrill and gives the audience goose bumps. To get the full aspect of the play, it would be best to break it down into Aristotle’s six elements: the plot, characters, the theme, diction, music, and spectacle.

            First is the plot. In “Something Wicked This Way Comes”, the plot is very confusing at times. Two neighbors, Will Halloway and Jim Nightshade, hear from a lightning rod salesman that there is a carnival coming to town. The two boys go to check it out and realize that it is not an ordinary carnival. Depending on which way the carousel turns, they figured out that it could change anyone’s age. Mr. Dark is the owner of the carnival and plans on taking over all the people in their town. Will and Jim find themselves figuring out a way to save their friends and families. The climax of the story is when Mr. Cooger climbed aboard the carousel and turned into a little boy because that is when it became real that the traveling carnival arrived in town for bad intensions.

            The second is character. The protagonist comes easy to the audience. Will Halloway and Jim Nightshade are the protagonists in “Something Wicked This Way Comes” because they are on a quest to save their friends and family. On the other hand, there is always an antagonist to every story line. The antagonist in this play is Mr. Dark because he is the one that brings the carnival and try’s to take over the souls in town.

            The third element of Aristotle’s elements is theme. The first theme that comes off the top of my head is friendship. Will and Jim’s friendship is key throughout the play because without them, their town would be taken over by Mr. Dark. It is their friendship that keeps them together and motivates them to help out their friends and family. Another key theme would be journey. I believe that “Something Wicked This Way Comes” is all about journeys that the two boys take to saving their town. The whole play is a journey whether it’s the beginning of the play on the journey to go find the carnival, or the rest of the play on the journey to save their friends and family.

            The diction of the play is the fourth of Aristotle’s elements. Diction is used to learn more about the insights of the characters. We learned whom the characters are through their words more so than how they acted. Throughout the play, Jim always seemed more of a rebellious character with his choice of words. His choices of words were stronger than Wills. We found Jim swearing along their journey. Will would scold Jim whenever he swore. Will was more of a quiet, laid back character who believed in doing everything how it was supposed to be done.

            Fifth is music. Music engages our emotions and help set the mood of the play. In “Something Wicked This Way Comes”, music played a huge role in the story. The types of music playing gave the audience a better understanding to what was about to happen. For example, whenever there were sounds of lightning, it made the audience feel like something bad was about to happen in the next scene. Also, during the carousel scenes, creepy carousel music would come on. It made you feel like you were in an atmosphere where something bad was happening.

            Finally, spectacle is the last of Aristotle’s elements. I did not feel like the main characters, Jim and Will’s, costumes were anything special, but they did fit in with who they were playing; two ordinary boys, wearing ordinary clothes. The costumes that stood out to me were the carnival costumes. They did not seem like ordinary costumes, they had a creepy twist to them. Since they were playing creepy carnival performers with bad intensions, they had to dress the part. The lightning went along to what I thought about with the music. Whenever something bad was about to happen, the lightning flicker would happen. Or for example, during the carousel scenes, once the music started to play and the carousel would start to turn, there were lit up beams all around set that would flicker on and off. That also made the atmosphere feel like something bad was happening.

            Although I thought the play, “Something Wicked This Way Comes”, was very confusing at times, Aristotle’s six Elements of Drama were very easy to point out and recognize.