Drama, the Literature of Plays
Author of this webpage: Renée Goodvin
A play is a dramatic composition in verse or prose that has been written for theatrical performance and tells a story of conflict and emotion using action and dialogue.Overview of Drama
Drama is the literature of plays. It is one of three literary genres (drama, epic, and lyric poetry) developed by the Greeks. Drama is different than other genres because the author's (dramatist's) intention is fulfilled by the presentation of actors and theatrical devices, not reading or reciting. It is an oral and visual creation whose written form is first a preparation (the script), secondly an aid to performance (the actors' lines), and lastly a printed text for critical and educational scrutiny. While the words of a dramatic text remain static, the effect of the play varies with each interpretation.
Like a short story, a play has time constraints that require continuous action moving into new situations and relationships. This makes an economical plot essential. Divisions of acts and scenes mark the passage of time and emphasize major developments.
Although some types of drama deliberately avoid a human focus, the focus of most drama is human and characterization is the device. The characters must be quickly presented and become familiar to the audience in a short time. The method of achieving this is through the primary medium of drama; dialogue. Dialogue represents people communicating through speech. Therefore, characterization in drama is dependent on the dialogue the characters speak, the actions they perform, and what other characters report.
Drama can be divided into two main categories: comedy and tragedy.
Development of English Drama
Drama has had an inconsistent history with periods of popularity and decline. Drama enjoyed immense popularity in Ancient Greece where it was associated with the worship of Dionysus. However, it was less successful in Roman times. The eleventh century saw a revival of theatre with mystery plays, and in the fifteenth century morality plays like Everyman set the stage for drama's high point in English Literature.
The high point of English drama was the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries with writers such as Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Jonson. The majority of early dramatic texts were not printed. However, in 1616, Ben Jonson carefully printed his plays in Works and helped to establish the play as a literary text. Seven years later in 1623, Shakespeare's First Folio was published and the printed play became its own literary genre, worthy of textual scholarship.
During the late seventeenth century, French classical theatre flourished with writers such as Corneille, Racine, and Molière. These writers had a direct impact on Restoration theatre, which was mainly devoted to comedies of manner and intrigue.
English comedy began to decline in the eighteenth century, but was briefly revived by dramatists such as Oliver Goldsmith and Richard Sheridan. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries have seen a revitalization of English drama with the works of Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, Noël Coward, Harold Pinter, and Samuel Beckett.
A Word About American Drama...
American drama has only gained popularity and prominence in the twentieth century when dramatists such as Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller began writing about the predicament of modern humanity in a complex, pluralistic society.
Comedy & Tragedy
Comedy is the genre of dramatic literature that deals with the light and amusing or the serious and profound in a light, familiar, or satirical manner. Comedy thrives on human error, mistaken identity, awkward meetings, and verbal humor. Its dialogue is usually prose with an abundance of verbal tricks such as puns and similes.
There are different kinds of comedy. One of the major distinctions is between high comedy and low comedy. High Comedy is recognized as that which evokes "intellectual laughter," usually through combats of wit and humor. Low Comedy is that which evokes "belly laughs." The main devices of low comedy are jokes, gags, slapstick humor, and boisterous, clownish physical activity.
High comedy is distinguished by the attitude of the author toward his/her subjects.
If the author's intent is to ridicule, he/she develops a Satirical Comedy. Subdivisions of the satirical comedy include:
- The Comedy of Character, which ridicules individuals
- The Comedy of Manners, which satirizes social conventions
- The Social Comedy, which ridicules the structure of society
AND
- The Comedy of Ideas, which ridicules conventional thinking
Low comedy is best defined by Farce. Farce is a light dramatic composition that uses highly improbable situations, stereotyped characters, extravagant exaggeration, and violent horseplay. It is generally regarded as intellectually and aesthetically inferior to high comedy because of its crude characterizations and implausible plots.
Examples of Comedy
- As You Like It, Shakespeare ~ Romantic Comedy
- The Alchemist, Jonson ~ Satirical Comedy
- She Stoops to Conquer, O. Goldsmith ~ Comedy of Manners
- The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare ~ Farce
A tragedy is the genre of drama that evokes pity and terror from the audience as it deals with serious themes and dignified characters. It typically describes the development of a conflict between the protagonist and a superior force (i.e., destiny, circumstance, society). With the death of one or more of the principal characters, it reaches a sorrowful, disastrous, or violent conclusion.
The protagonist of a tragedy is a tragic hero(ine). This character should be of high social and moral standing, but not perfect. What makes the hero tragic is that he/she has a tragic flaw, weakness, transgression, or excess of arrogant ambition that leads to his/her downfall.
Traditionally, the tragedy used elevated language written in verse befitting a noble hero. However, as society became increasingly middle class, a new kind of tragedy, the Domestic Tragedy developed. The domestic tragedy features tragic protagonists of the ordinary middle or lower class, with their downfall being a personal affair rather than an affair of state.
Sometimes thought of as low tragedy, is the Melodrama. Melodramas feature stereotypical characters and can be characterized by their improbable plots, sensational incidents, predominance of physical action, and spectacular staging.
Examples of Tragedy
- Hamlet, Shakespeare ~ Traditional Tragedy
- Death of a Salesman, A. Miller ~ Domestic Tragedy
- Under the Gaslight, A. Daly ~ Melodrama
The Oxford Companion to the English Language, ed., by Tom McArthur and
Merriam Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature
© 1998 - 2004 blondelibrarian.net
Last updated January 27, 2005