English XII Ch  5 Act III of The Silver Box SQ & Notes FSc FA ICS ICom Karachi Sindh

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Q1 .What do you imagine to be the unspoken plea that Mrs. Jones makes to Mr. Barthwick at the very end?

Answer: When the case was disposed of against Mr. Jones for stealing the silver box form Barthwick’s house and misbehaving with the police officer; Mr. Barthwick goes out of the courtroom. On his way, Mrs. Jones turns to him with a humble gesture. It is her unspoken plea to Mr. Barthwick to let her continue her job at his home as a charwoman. To this request, Mr. Barthwick gives a response to his nerves and in a hesitating manner makes a gesture of refusal to poor Mrs. Jones.

Q2. Assuming that Jones has received a fair trial, why does this act of the play leave us with a feeling that injustice has been done?

Answer: This act of the play leaves us with a feeling that injustice has been done to Mr. Jones and his family because our sympathies are with the poor and deprived family of society. If Mr. Jones would be sent to prison and Mrs. Jones lose her job then who would be responsible for providing food and other necessities of life to three little children of Mr. and Mrs. Jones as they are totally dependent on their parents for their survival.

Q3. Briefly discuss whether the Magistrate gives Jones a fair trial.

Answer: The Magistrate doesn’t give Jones a fair trial as it is evident that both Mr. Jack and Jones are guilty the same crime but the Magistrate is not willing to listen to anything against the rich and influential family of the society. Therefore, he gives punishment to poor Jones only and leaves Mr. Jack as he does not want to spoil the good name of Mr. Barthwick to be affected in his social circle. According to the Magistrate, he is giving punishment to Jones not only for the commitment of crime but for his resistance and violent act against the police.

Q4. Briefly give the probable reasons for the Magistrate’s decision to discharge Mrs. Jones.

Answer: Following are the probable reasons for the Magistrate’s decision to discharge Mrs. Jones:

Mr. Barthwick declared through Roper that he did not want to proceed the case further seeing the poverty and circumstances of the prisoners.

Mr. Jones accepted his crime of theft by saying that he took the silver box from Mr. Barthwick’s house in a drunken state.

With all this, it became clear that Mrs. Jones was innocent in the case as no single evidence went against her as guilty of theft.

Q5. What led the Constable to arrest and charge Jones as well?

Answer: After the recovery of the silver cigarette box from the house of Mr. and Mrs. Jones, the police arrested Mrs. Jones for the theft as the case was registered against her. At the time when police arrested Mrs. Jones, Mr. Jones many times said that he had stolen the silver box and his wife was innocent in all that. Due to this, he was stopping the officers to perform their duty. As the police was not paying any heed to what Mr. Jones was trying to tell them so he became violent and struck a blow to the police constable. Thus, the police arrested Mr. Jones too for this act of violence against a police officer.

Q7. From the Constable’s evidence, we learned that Mrs. Jones was the first to be charged with the theft. Why was this so?

Answer: According to the constable, Mrs. Jones should be the first one to be charged with the crime of theft because when the police reached Jones’s house, James was there with his wife and the box too was recovered from the room. It is quite evident that suspicion should first fall upon Mrs. Jones as she was the one who worked at Mr. Barthwick’s house as a charwoman and might be involved in the act of stealing the silver box from the residence.

Q8. What facts does Marlowe’s evidence establish?

Answer: Following are some of the facts that are established by Marlowe’s evidence as he serves as a butler at Barthwick’s residence:

The silver cigarette box belonged to Mr. Barthwick and he placed it on a tray on the dining – room table at 6 Rockingham Gate between 10: 45 and 11: 00 P.M on the night of Easter Monday.

He testified that when he went to remove the tray the following morning, he found Mrs. Jones alone in the dining room and the silver box was missing from the tray.

He assured that Mrs. Jones the lady prisoner was the charwoman employed by Mr. Barthwick at 6 Rockingham Gate.

Right after that, he communicated the loss to the employer Then Mr. Barthwick sent him to the police station in order to register the case of theft against Mrs. Jones.

Q9. What function is Mr. Roper discharging in the Magistrate’s court?

Answer: Roper is the advocate of good reputation who is hired by the Barthwick’s to present their case in the court before the magistrate. The primary function of Roper is to hide the base of crime to such an extent that it must not be known to the general public. If it is revealed to the masses then definitely it becomes a matter of shame for the respected family of the society and people would surely stare at them with curious degraded eyes.

Q10. Why are Mr. Barthwick and his son so anxious that as little as possible should be said in court about the purse and the money that Jones had in his possession?

Answer: Mr. Barthwick and his son are so anxious that as little as possible should be said in court about the purse and the money that Jones had in his possession because they are well aware of the fact that Jack and Jones are the dwellers of the same boat as they have done the same crime. Therefore, they the idea that if this thing would be disclosed and highlighted then it must definitely come into papers and this they don’t want. If this incident appears on the record then Barthwick’s must earn a bad identity in their social circle and it would be a matter of disgrace for the rich family too. In order to keep this thing behind the veil, Mr. Barthwick gives clear instruction to his advocate by saying, “Roper! The purse must be kept out of papers. Whatever happens, you must keep that out of papers.”

Q11. What purpose, in your opinion, is served by beginning this act of the play with the case of the Livens girls, which has nothing to do with the main story?

Answer: Although there seems no link between the case of the Liven girls and the rest of the play but it gives a clear indication of the fact that there exists injustice and faulty decisions are lawfully taken in the legal system of England. The poor and the deprived ones always have to suffer in the society of the Englishmen. It is quite evident that whatever the Livens girls had to face now must be the destiny of the children of Jones. The reason behind is that their father would be sent to prison for being guilty of theft and their mother would become an unemployed lady when the whole case was revealed to all living in their surroundings.

Precis

Summarize the following passage in not more than 115 words:

Most young people enjoy some form of physical activity. It may be walking, cycling or swimming, or, in winter, skating or skiing. It may be a game of some kind-football, hockey, golf, or tennis. It may be mountaineering.

Those who have a passion for climbing high and difficult mountains are often looked upon with astonishment. Why are men and women willing to suffer cold and hardship, and to take risk on mountains? This astonishment is caused, probably, by the difference between mountaineering and other forms of activity to which men give their leisure.

Mountaineering is a sport and not a game. There are no man-made rules, as there are for such games as golf and football. There are, of course, rules of a different kind which it would be dangerous to ignore, but it is this freedom from man-made rules that makes mountaineering attractive to many people. Those who climb mountains are free to use their own methods.

If we compare mountaineering and other more familiar sports, we might think that one big difference is that mountaineering is not a ‘team game’. We should be mistaken in this. There are, itistrue.no ‘matches’ between ‘teams’ of climbers, but when climbers are on a rock face, linked by a rope on which their lives may depend, there is obviously teamwork.

The mountain climber knows that he may have to fight forces that are stronger and more powerful than man. He has to fight the forces of nature. His sport requires high mental and physical qualities.

A mountain climber continues to improve in skill year after year. A skier is probably past his best by the age of thirty, and most international tennis champions are in their early twenties. But it is not unusual for men fifty or sixty to climb the highest mountains in the Alps. They may take more time than younger men, but they probably climb with more skill and less waste of effort, and they certainly experience equal enjoyment.

Answer:

Although mountaineering involves risks and hardships still it is one of the most attractive sports for young ones. The majority of men and women are willing to take such risks just for amazement. As no man-made rules are involved in this sport hence it gives a complete sense of freedom to the climbers. There exists a perception that it is not a team game but it is teamwork as one climber depends on the other while linking with a rope to save his life. A mountaineer knows that this sport requires great mental and physical strength and he has to fight against the forces of nature. The age factor is not much involved in the sport of mountaineering.

Write an essay of between 350 and 400 words on one of the following subjects:

1. A character study of the Magistrate in The Silver Box.
2. The characters of Mr. and Mrs. Jones as revealed in Act III of The Silver Box.
3. The effectiveness in drama of trial scenes.

1. A character study of the Magistrate in The Silver Box.

In any of the trial scenes of drama, the role of a Magistrate is definitely of utmost importance, as without the presence of a Judge or Magistrate the trial scene in a court can never be completed.

The Magistrate in Act III of The Silver Box has a somewhat biased attitude throughout the act. He might be a man of wisdom as it is reflected through his eloquent conversation and authoritative attitude towards the cases that were put in front of him for judgment. On many of the occasions, he used to begin his conversation with ‘yes’, meaning that he was well aware of all the facts and minute details of the cases of both the Livens girls and Mr. and Mrs. Jones. He used to sit on his seat that was placed just beneath the canopy of justice. Many times he hissed with protruded neck and this seems to be his peculiar way of treating the people in the court.

His behavior represented a person who didn’t like anyone in the court to perturb him or create disturbance or hindrance in the way of understanding the case. As right, in the beginning, he in his paternal and ferocious voice, hissing his s’s. He had to show a strict attitude as per his designation’s demand.

The Magistrate usually used small, crisp sentences for asking questions from the culprits. For instance, how is that? Did you ill-treat her? Then what was it – did she drink? Etc.

The Magistrate was a biased individual as he showed his tilted positive behavior towards Mr. Jack as being a son of an influential rich Mr. Barthwick. That’s not all; he reflected his favoritism by giving punishment to Mr. Jones not for stealing the silver box from the residence of Mr. Barthwick but for the trivial crime of striking the police officer as well as for drinking and roaming in the drunken state in the vicinity.

At the end of the Act III of the play, the verdict given by the Magistrate against Mr. Jones without taking into account the severe effect of that on the life of the Jones’s family, has left the audience with an awful persona of the Magistrate as he promoted prejudiced attitude towards the rich and the poor of the society.

2. The characters of Mr. and Mrs. Jones as revealed in Act III of The Silver Box. Mr. Jones

Mr. Jones might be a middle-aged man as he was performing the duties of both of a husband as well as a father of three little innocent children. He belonged to a lower middle-class family. He sometimes got a job and sometimes he had to spend his days and night as a jobless person. Although it seems that Mr. Jones was not a man of loose character but he was in a habit of drinking as Mr. Jack was.

Mr. Jones always gave respect to his wife and had a soft corner for her too. At the time when his wife was arrested by the police officers, he struck a hard blow to the officer as he didn’t want his wife to be taken by the police as she was as innocent as a child in the whole crime of theft done by Mr. Jones.

Mr. Jones was a true lover and wants to have justice in its true sense. That’s why he was not contented when he got punishment and Mr. Jack didn’t.

Mrs. Jones

Mrs. Jones, wife of Mr. Jones and mother of three children worked as a charwoman at homes of various affluent families of the society. She might be a thin lady due to insufficient food. She was wearing a thin, black, wispy dress and a straw hat in the play that further showed a lady of a hand-to-mouth family. In the court, she stood motionless with her hands crossed on the rail of the dock that showed her as a law-abiding citizen of the state.

Jane Jones or Mr. Jones was a hardworking and honest lady. As she proved in the court that although she belonged to a middle-class family but she never ever had greed or lust for worldly things. While working in the homes of the rich, it happened most of the times, that she got the opportunity to steal the expensive things from there but she never involved herself in any such activity.

She used to perform her duties well and side by side took good care of her children. She basically worked to provide her children better and timely provisions.

She seems depressed when Mr. Jones got punishment for the crime of theft as she knew it well that after all this she had to lose her job and then who would be there to feed their children.

3. The Effectiveness in Drama of Trial Scenes

The life we are living is basically a ‘Drama’ at the stage of reality in which we all are performing our roles differently at different occasions and under different circumstances and again with different people around us. Hence, we all are perfect actors or performers and this is somewhat a God gifted quality with which we all are blessed.

That is the philosophical definition of drama but if we look at it under the realm of practicality, a drama is simply something that can be performed by a number of professional actors or performers enriched with the flavor of emotions, feelings, sympathy, laughter, entertainment, aggression or tension.

The effectiveness of drama actually depends not only on the dialogues, theme or plot but also on the performance, props, set, tone and ambiance of the play too. Now coming towards the trial scenes, they are such scenes of drama in which the scenario is of the court where any sort of action has to be performed by the theatre actors regarding the crime and the accused individuals for that crime and the judge has to listen to the case attentively and gives the verdict in favor or against of the suspected culprit.

The drama in trial scenes is of utmost importance and is quite effective too. The reason behind is its direct effect on the minds and hearts of the audience. One can have a close look at this perspective by keeping a bird’s eye view at the trial scenes performed by actors while performing various trial scenes of ‘The Merchant of Venice’ by William Shakespeare.

In the trial scene of (Act IV, Scene I) Shakespeare uses many different dramatic techniques to make the tension in the courtroom rise and build. He also makes effective use of dramatic irony and many other techniques to engage the audience.

Similarly, on another occasion, Portia makes an important discovery as Shylock is taking his knife to Antonio’s breast. In this way, the audience is being thrown around in many twists of emotions and situations. This is dramatically effective because the audience is left in the balance wondering what plan Portia has come up with.

At the end, one can conclude that drama is one of the most powerful tools to have a strong impact on the lives, minds, souls, and hearts of the audience in a less period of time.