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Yilun Feng
Writing 2
Matt Wilson
Spring 2016
Fables and Play Scripts
We love to read fables and play scripts not only for their appealing and vivid plots, but
also for their contents, which are most based on social activities. They can always cause our
resonance, because they both have the shadow of life and sublimation from life. Fables are
short, succinct fictional stories, using the form of prose or verse to illustrate profound life
lessons. They aim to pass down and educate people from generation to generation. Play
scripts are stage directions for a theatrical production. They are trying to make sure authors
idea can be conveyed to directors, actors and audiences correctly. Their differences on
convention or rhetoric are served for their genres purposes.
To make their works spread more widely, fabulists use simple words and figure out
interesting stories to appeal audiences. Due to most fables are collected from working people
through oral tradition, fabulists choose to use simple words and limit their works into several
lines to ensure people can remember contents and retell them to others. Using the behavior
and conversations of characters in the story to illustrate the fabulists main idea may be
another mark of fables. The characters in the story can be anything: human beings, animals,
plants, objects, mythical creatures, or even the natural phenomena, such as wind. Those nonehuman beings are anthropomorphized. They can think, communicate, and behave as human.
The brief maxim, which concluded from the story, always appears at the beginning or the end
of the fable. In fables, the stories are short, and the words are plain, however, the life lessons
which derived from fabulists personal experience are profound and educational. When first

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heard a fable, children may only be appealed to the plot of the story, keep it in mind and tell
their friends. Every time they remind and retell the story, they might understand the lesson
beneath a little better. When those children grow up to the age when they can understand the
meaning thoroughly, they will tell this fable to their children. Using anthropomorphized
characters as ornate masquerades and profound philosophical thoughts as foundations can
attract both children and adults, and finally accomplish fables goal: passing down and
educating from generation to generation.
Play scripts, also faced to both children and adults, are directions for theatrical
production. They not only guide what should characters say, but also show the tone and the
movement of the characters and the change of the backdrop and circumstance. At the first
glance of a play script, we can find that the format is unique. A complete act if play script
should include: scene heading (location, date), action (characters movement at the beginning
of this act), characters name (characters who will come on stage in this act), parenthetical
(characters behavior which written in a parenthesis), dialogue (what characters say),
transition (how the dialogue end, fade or end). Playwrights follow the format rigidly, because
their purpose is to make sure that their ideas can be accurately conveyed to directors and
actors.
Examples can make it more clearly and specifically to illustrate the differences between
these two genres. Both describing tyrannical characters, Aesops fable: The Lamb and The
Wolf, and Shakespeares The Merchant of Venice differed a lot. The fable is about the process
that a tyranny wolf kept finding excuses about how a innocent lamb offend him, but rebutted
one by one by the lamb, and finally ate the lamb up. The maxim is that tyrant will always
find a pretext for his tyranny. (Aesop). Shakespeare wrote about a mean and miserly
merchant, Shylock, did many bad things. Fabulists often use the characters in the fables to

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analogy particular kinds of people in the real world. In the fable, the wolf is like the kind of
people who want to obtain their evil purposes, but also eager to figuring out reasonable
excuses to maintain their good reputations. The lamb is analogy to those people who are too
weak to protect themselves. When the lamb first met the wolf, he knew the purpose of the
wolf that the wolf wanted to eat him. So the lamb used mournful tone to respond every
wolfs provocation, and hoped to persuade the wolf to release him. When reading a fable, it is
important to consider the what can be alluded from the characters in the story to what kinds
of people real life. Sharp contrasts on characters identity or behavior are used to help
demonstrate the maxim. In the story, the fabulist used the weakness of the lamb and the
strength of the wolf, and, the meekness and softness of the lamb and the rudeness and
hostility of the wolf as contrasts. These comparisons emphasized the difference of the two
characters and helped illustrate how tyrannical the wolf was. However, fables are too short
to show the three or more characteristics while the play script can show the multi-sideness of
human nature. Limited to the length, many roles in fables are in a good-bad scale: if he or she
is not good, he or she must be bad. On the contrary, in a play script, there is enough space to
describe a role completely. Playwrights can even clean up a tyrants act later, and build a
good reputation for him. Although Shylock always quibbled, we have to admit that
sometimes his opinion was reasonable. In the whole play, he was a poor man as well. He
reflected those people who were oppressed for a very long time, and suddenly had the
opportunity to revenge on people belong to the same ethnic group which had slaved him.
Above all, the differences between conventions of fables and play scripts account for
their genres purposes. Fables, caring more about passing down, are more flexible on their
word choice and format, and shorter in length, which leads to the simplicity of characters;
while play scripts focus more on communicating and guiding directors and actors, so that

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their format and word usage should be more formal and standard to prevent misleading and
misunderstand. To make the plot more attractive, the characters may have several faces to
show in front of the audiences.

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Works Sited
Sheakespeare, William, and William Lyon Phelps. The Mercahnt of Venice. New Gaven:
Yale UP, 1923. Print
Aesop, J. M. Conde, and George Fyler Townsend. Aesops Fables. New York: Moffat,
Yard, 1905. Print.