A Study Guide for John Pepper Clark's "The Raft"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for John Pepper Clark's "The Raft," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Drama For Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Drama For Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Aug 3, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535839112

Book preview

1

The Raft

John Pepper Clark

1964

Introduction

The Raft is the third play in a trilogy by John Pepper Clark. With the other plays—Song of a Goat (1961) and The Masquerade—the trilogy was published under the title Three Plays by Oxford University Press in 1964. Clark wrote both The Masquerade and The Raft in the United States while on a fellowship to Princeton University from 1962 to 1963, one of the few positive outcomes of the experience. The Raft is often regarded by critics as the least solid of the plays in the trilogy, and they have given it mixed reviews. It is not often performed because of the difficulties in staging the play. The first production was in 1964 at the University of Ibadan (Nigeria) Arts