Drama
Drama is the specific
mode of
fiction represented in
performance.
[1] The term comes from a
Greek word meaning "
action" (
Classical Greek:
δρᾶμα,
drama), which is derived from "to do" (
Classical Greek:
δράω,
drao). The enactment of drama in
theatre, performed by
actors on a
stage before an
audience, presupposes
collaborative modes of production and a
collective form of reception. The
structure of dramatic texts, unlike other forms of
literature, is directly influenced by this collaborative production and collective reception.
[2] The
early modern tragedy Hamlet (
1601) by
Shakespeare and the
classical Athenian tragedy
Oedipus the King (c. 429 BC) by
Sophocles are among the supreme masterpieces of the art of drama.
[3]
The two masks associated with drama represent the traditional
generic division between
comedy and
tragedy. They are symbols of the
ancient Greek Muses,
Thalia and
Melpomene. Thalia was the Muse of comedy (the laughing face), while Melpomene was the Muse of tragedy (the weeping face). Considered as a genre of
poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been contrasted with the
epic and the
lyrical modes ever since
Aristotle's
Poetics (c. 335 BC)—the earliest work of
dramatic theory.
[4]
The use of "drama" in the narrow sense to designate a specific
type of
play dates from the
19th century. Drama in this sense refers to a play that is
neither a comedy nor a tragedy—for example,
Zola's Thérèse Raquin (
1873) or
Chekhov's Ivanov (
1887). It is this narrow sense that the
film and
television industry and
film studies adopted to describe "
drama" as a
genre within their respective media.
[5] "
Radio drama" has been used in both senses—originally transmitted in a live performance, it has also been used to describe the more high-brow and serious end of the dramatic output of
radio.
[6]
Drama is often combined with
music and
dance: the drama in
opera is sung throughout;
musicals include spoken
dialogue and
songs; and some forms of drama have regular musical accompaniment (
melodrama and Japanese
Nō, for example).
[7] In certain periods of history (the ancient
Roman and modern
Romantic) dramas have been written to be
read rather than performed.
[8] In
improvisation, the drama does not pre-exist the moment of performance; performers devise a dramatic script spontaneously before an audience.
[9]
History of Western drama
Classical Athenian drama
Western drama originates in
classical Greece.
[10] The
theatrical culture of the
city-state of
Athens produced three
genres of drama:
tragedy,
comedy, and the
satyr play. Their origins remain obscure, though by the 5th century BC they were
institutionalised in
competitions held as part of
festivities celebrating the god
Dionysus.
[11] Historians know the names of many ancient Greek dramatists, not least
Thespis, who is credited with the innovation of an actor ("
hypokrites") who speaks (rather than sings) and impersonates a
character (rather than speaking in his own person), while interacting with the
chorus and its leader ("
coryphaeus"), who were a traditional part of the performance of non-dramatic poetry (
dithyrambic,
lyric and
epic).
[12] Only a small fraction of the work of five dramatists, however, has survived to this day: we have a small number of complete texts by the tragedians
Aeschylus,
Sophocles and
Euripides, and the comic writers
Aristophanes and, from the late 4th century,
Menander.
[13] Aeschylus' historical tragedy
The Persians is the oldest surviving drama, although when it won first prize at the
City Dionysia competition in 472 BC, he had been writing plays for more than 25 years.
[14] The competition ("
agon") for tragedies may have begun as early as 534 BC; official records ("
didaskaliai") begin from 501 BC, when the
satyr play was introduced.
[15] Tragic dramatists were required to present a
tetralogy of plays (though the individual works were not necessarily connected by story or theme), which usually consisted of three tragedies and one satyr play (though exceptions were made, as with Euripides'
Alcestis in 438 BC). Comedy was officially recognised with a prize in the competition from 487 to 486 BC. Five comic dramatists competed at the City Dionysia (though during the
Peloponnesian War this may have been reduced to three), each offering a single comedy.
[16] Ancient Greek comedy is traditionally divided between "old comedy" (5th century BC), "middle comedy" (4th century BC) and "new comedy" (late 4th century to 2nd BC).
[17]
Roman drama
Following the expansion of the
Roman Republic (509–27 BC) into several Greek territories between 270–240 BC, Rome encountered
Greek drama.
[18] From the later years of the republic and by means of the
Roman Empire (27 BC-476 AD), theatre spread west across Europe, around the Mediterranean and reached England;
Roman theatre was more varied, extensive and sophisticated than that of any culture before it.
[19] While Greek drama continued to be performed throughout the Roman period, the year 240 BC marks the beginning of regular
Roman drama.
[20] From the beginning of the empire, however, interest in full-length drama declined in favour of a broader variety of theatrical entertainments.
[21] The first important works of
Roman literature were the
tragedies and
comedies that
Livius Andronicus wrote from 240 BC.
[22] Five years later,
Gnaeus Naevius also began to write drama.
[22] No plays from either writer have survived. While both dramatists composed in both
genres, Andronicus was most appreciated for his tragedies and Naevius for his comedies; their successors tended to specialise in one or the other, which led to a separation of the subsequent development of each type of drama.
[22] By the beginning of the 2nd century BC, drama was firmly established in Rome and a
guild of writers (
collegium poetarum) had been formed.
[23] The Roman comedies that have survived are all
fabula palliata (comedies based on Greek subjects) and come from two dramatists:
Titus Maccius Plautus (Plautus) and
Publius Terentius Afer (Terence).
[24] In re-working the Greek originals, the Roman comic dramatists abolished the role of the
chorus in dividing the drama into
episodes and introduced musical accompaniment to its
dialogue (between one-third of the dialogue in the comedies of Plautus and two-thirds in those of Terence).
[25] The action of all scenes is set in the exterior location of a street and its complications often follow from
eavesdropping.
[25] Plautus, the more popular of the two, wrote between 205 and 184 BC and twenty of his comedies survive, of which his
farces are best known; he was admired for the
wit of his dialogue and his use of a variety of
poetic meters.
[26] All of the six comedies that Terence wrote between 166 and 160 BC have survived; the complexity of his plots, in which he often combined several Greek originals, was sometimes denounced, but his double-plots enabled a sophisticated presentation of contrasting human behaviour.
[26] No early Roman tragedy survives, though it was highly regarded in its day; historians know of three early tragedians—
Quintus Ennius,
Marcus Pacuvius and
Lucius Accius.
[25] From the time of the empire, the work of two tragedians survives—one is an unknown author, while the other is the
Stoic philosopher Seneca.
[27] Nine of Seneca's tragedies survive, all of which are
fabula crepidata (tragedies adapted from Greek originals); his
Phaedra, for example, was based on
Euripides'
Hippolytus.
[28] Historians do not know who wrote the only
extant example of the
fabula praetexta (tragedies based on Roman subjects),
Octavia, but in former times it was mistakenly attributed to Seneca due to his appearance as a
character in the tragedy.
[27]
Medieval
In the Middle Ages, drama in the vernacular languages of Europe may have emerged from religious enactments of the
liturgy.
Mystery plays were presented on the porch of the cathedrals or by strolling players on
feast days.
Miracle and mystery plays, along with
moralities and interludes, later evolved into more elaborate forms of drama, such as was seen on the Elizabethan stages.
[edit] Elizabethan and Jacobean
One of the great flowerings of drama in England occurred in the 16th and 17th centuries. Many of these plays were written in verse, particularly
iambic pentameter. In addition to Shakespeare, such authors as
Christopher Marlowe,
Thomas Middleton, and
Ben Jonson were prominent playwrights during this period. As in the
medieval period, historical plays celebrated the lives of past kings, enhancing the image of the
Tudor monarchy. Authors of this period drew some of their storylines from
Greek mythology and
Roman mythology or from the plays of eminent Roman playwrights such as
Plautus and
Terence.
Modern and postmodern
The pivotal and innovative contributions of the
19th-century Norwegian dramatist
Henrik Ibsen and the
20th-century German
theatre practitioner Bertolt Brecht dominate modern drama; each inspired a tradition of imitators, which include many of the greatest playwrights of the modern era.
[29] The works of both playwrights are, in their different ways, both
modernist and
realist, incorporating formal
experimentation,
meta-theatricality, and
social critique.
[30] In terms of the traditional theoretical discourse of genre, Ibsen's work has been described as the culmination of "
liberal tragedy", while Brecht's has been aligned with an
historicised comedy.
[31]
Other important playwrights of the modern era include
August Strindberg,
Anton Chekhov,
Frank Wedekind,
Maurice Maeterlinck,
Federico García Lorca,
Eugene O'Neill,
Luigi Pirandello,
George Bernard Shaw,
Ernst Toller,
Vladimir Mayakovsky,
Arthur Miller,
Tennessee Williams,
Jean Genet,
Eugène Ionesco,
Samuel Beckett,
Harold Pinter,
Friedrich Dürrenmatt,
Dario Fo,
Heiner Müller, and
Caryl Churchill.
Asian drama
Indian
Indian drama (nautanki) is traced back to certain dramatic episodes described in the
Rigveda, which dates back to the 2nd millennium BC. Early examples include the
Yama-Yami episode and other
Rigvedic dialogue hymns. The dramas dealt with human concerns as well as the gods. The nature of the plays ranged from tragedy to light comedy.
Dramatists often worked on pre-existing mythological or historical themes that were familiar to the audience of the age. For instance, many plays drew their plot lines from the
Ramayana and the
Mahabharata, the
great epics of India. Their stories have often been used for plots in Indian drama and this practice continues today.
The earliest theoretical account of Indian drama is
Bharata Muni's
Natya Shastra (literally "Scripture of Dance", though it sometimes translated as "Science of Theatre'") that may be as old as the 3rd century BC. The text specifically describes the proper way one should go about staging a Sanskrit drama. It addresses a wide variety of topics including the proper occasions for staging a drama, the proper designs for theatres, the types of people who are allowed to be drama critics and, most especially, specific instructions and advice for actors, playwrights and (after a fashion) producers. The theory of
rasa described in the text has been a major influence on modern
Indian cinema, particularly
Bollywood,
[32] in addition to
Bengali films such as
The Apu Trilogy, which itself has had a major influence on
world cinema.
[33]
Drama was patronized by the kings as well as village assemblies. Famous early playwrights include
Bhasa,
Kalidasa (famous for
Vikrama and Urvashi,
Malavika and Agnimitra, and
The Recognition of Shakuntala),
Śudraka (famous for
The Little Clay Cart),
Asvaghosa,
Daṇḍin, and
Emperor Harsha (famous for
Nagananda,
Ratnavali and
Priyadarsika).
Chinese
Main article:
Chinese operaChinese theatre has a long and complex history. Today it is often called
Chinese opera although this normally refers specifically to the popular form known as
Beijing Opera and
Kunqu; there have been many other forms of theatre in China.
[edit] Japanese
Japanese
Nō drama is a serious dramatic form that combines drama, music, and dance into a complete aesthetic performance experience. It developed in the 14th and 15th centuries and has its own musical instruments and performance techniques, which were often handed down from father to son. The performers were generally male (for both male and female roles), although female amateurs also perform Nō dramas. Nō drama was supported by the government, and particularly the military, with many military commanders having their own troupes and sometimes performing themselves. It is still performed in Japan today.
[34]
Kyōgen is the comic counterpart to Nō drama. It concentrates more on dialogue and less on music, although Nō instrumentalists sometimes appear also in Kyōgen.
Kabuki drama, developed from the 17th century, is another comic form, which includes dance.
Forms of drama
Opera
Western opera is a dramatic art form, which arose during the
Renaissance in an attempt to revive the classical Greek drama tradition in which both music and theatre were combined. Being strongly intertwined with
western classical music, the opera has undergone enormous changes in the past four centuries and it is an important form of theatre until this day. Noteworthy is the huge influence of the German 19th century composer
Richard Wagner on the opera tradition. In his view, there was no proper balance between music and theatre in the operas of his time, because the music seemed to be more important than the dramatic aspects in these works. To restore the connection with the traditional
Greek drama, he entirely renewed the operatic format, and to emphasize the equal importance of music and drama in these new works, he called them "
music dramas".
Chinese opera has seen a more conservative development over a somewhat longer period of time.
Pantomime
These stories follow in the tradition of
fables and
folk tales, usually there is a lesson learned, and with some help from the audience the hero/heroine saves the day. This kind of play uses
stock characters seen in masque and again
commedia dell'arte, these characters include the villain (doctore), the clown/servant (Arlechino/Harlequin/buttons), the lovers etc. These plays usually have an emphasis on
moral dilemmas, and good always triumphs over evil, this kind of play is also very entertaining making it a very effective way of reaching many people.
Creative drama
Creative drama includes dramatic activities and games used primarily in educational settings with children. Its roots in the United States began in the early 1900s.
Winifred Ward is considered to be the founder of creative drama in education, establishing the first academic use of drama in Evanston, Illinois
[citation needed].
Collaborative play writing
Collaborative playwriting for the theatre is available at Wikiversity (see below).
Legal status
UK
The
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 does not define a dramatic work except to state that it includes a work of dance or mime. However, it is clear that dramatic work includes the scenario or script for films, plays (written for theatre, cinema, television or radio).
[35] and choreographic works.
[36]
See also
