Shaw-  What struck me as interesting was the discovery part of the play.  If I may connect both readings, Sporre describes discovery as “the revelation of information about the characters” and this is precisely what happens when the Clandons discover that Mr.Crampton is their father at the lunch. I thought the play was going in a direction, prior to that lunch scene, more focused on the story of Valentine and his love interests and/or monetary situation with the landlord, and that the whole discussion about prying for information about their father from Mrs.Clandon was a supplement back-story to Valentine and his situation.  I found this interesting because it was a very quick change for me to see a discovery alter the trajectory of the plot completely.  So my question is did anyone else feel the plot go in a direction opposite where they thought it would go initially?

Sporre-  Sporre’s views on formal and contextual criticism intrigued me because I immediately thought of how different the view of a play must be to a critic and to the average person.  Sporre mentions several times that critics have a lot to consider when forming a critique, so in my mind formal and contextual criticism are different levels of critiquing in themselves.  Is that possible?  One would assume that solely looking at the artwork purely for its merit, which formal criticism asks us to do, will surely distance us from the motivations for said artwork.  However, this angle would be much simpler for an average play connoisseur to practice.  The contextual form of criticism is more complex because it uses the artwork itself as a basis for the interpretation of the writers’ intentions, the period in which the play was written and so on and so forth.  So is it possible that the two forms of criticism are at different degrees of difficulty or are they just two different ways any critic of any caliber can choose to approach writing their own critique?