Charles Baxter: Dramatic Interventions: The Request Moment (July 2013)

Dramatic situations are often set into motion when one character makes a request of another; poems, too, may acquire a certain energy from requests made within them. These requests tell us something about the social group in which they occur, and they tell us about the obligations one character may have for another. Examples are offered from Shakespeare, A. E. Housman, Shirley Jackson, Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, and others.