User:Willee1938/sandbox

The Tragedy of Mariam Evaluation
This evaluation will compare the current information on the Wikipedia page for The Tragedy of Mariam to more developed pages such as Romeo and Juliet or Richard III. I will acknowledge where parts of the page can be explained in further detail, or where citations are required.

Beginning Summary - A citation is needed for the statement claiming that Cary may have written a play before The Tragedy of Mariam, unless the information was already included in the first source.

Synopsis - The synopsis can definitely use more detail, since it is told through bullet points by each act rather than using multiple paragraphs to describe the story as a whole, like the synopsis sections of Romeo and Juliet. The argument to the play could be briefly mentioned, since the Front Matter was given its own section. Richard III started its synopsis with a section from the opening monologue of the play. The synopsis for The Tragedy of Mariam could benefit from that as well in order to contextualize Mariam's soliloquy on the possible death of her husband.

Critical Reception - Although there isn't much information in this section, it could benefit from being split into two separate sections, since both the history of the text and its themes are discussed in the same section, while the other Shakespeare dramas had their own sections that discussed the plays' themes and motifs. More detail could be given to the themes of female agency, while another theme throughout the play was the idealization of male friendships. Every separate theme could be in bold, while a description of each can be given in a paragraph below, like the sections for the other plays.

A Game At Chess Implementation
My Wikipedia implementations can be found under Ivy's sandbox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ivyeon/sandbox). I added a summary of Sargent's interpretation of the chess allegory and the anti-Catholic sentiment present in the play, and I peer reviewed the summaries for Howard-Hill's and Heinemann's interpretations of the play. This can be found under the Criticisms and Interpretations section. My additions are listed below:

"Through the use of the chess allegory, Middleton protects his play from censorship by naming his characters after chess pieces instead of actual political figures while depicting the struggle for power between the Protestant and Catholic churches." (Chess Allegory section)

"Middleton antagonizes the Spanish Catholics and the Jesuit order by portraying them as schemers intent on the domination of the world, and uses black and white imagery throughout the play that portrays them as blind, dissembling, and evil in their ambitions to convert the pure and virtuous English nation to Catholicism. (Anti-Catholic section)"

The edits I've made are to these sentences in the anti-Catholic section:

"Given that scholars have been unable to find any reference to a sponsor of the play and the ambiguous composition of the characters, Howard-Hill concludes that A Game At Chess is not a result of any specific state-craft, but was merely taking advantage of the popular anti-Spanish and anti-Catholic sentiments of the period.[2] However, other scholars pin the sponsorship of the play to not one person, but to a number of Parliamentary Puritans and continental counterparts, mainly the Dutch, to galvanize the masses against the Spanish hegemony.[3]"