CuapTER 2: DRAMA {ntroduction s and Early Forms: Greek tragedy, Greek Origin: , Morality and Miracle plays ang Comedy, and Mystery, the Interludes. Structure of a Play: Act and Scene, Five Act Structure | One-Act plays. The Major Dramatic Genres: Tragedy, Comedy and Tragicomedy. Dramatic Devices: Soliloquy and aside, chorus, irony, Types of Comedy: Romantic Comedy, Comedy of Humours, Comedy of Manners, Sentimental Comedy, Farce, Burlesque, Black Comedy. Types of Tragedy: Revenge tragedy, Domestic tragedy, Heroic drama. Other Forms: Melodrama, Masque, Kitchen-sink drama, \Epic theatre, Theatre of the Absurd. Introduction Any work which is intended to be performed by actors can be termed a drama. This aspect of, performance is the distinguishing characteristic of drama. In fact, the very word “drama” originates from the Greek word “draein” which means “to do” or “to act”. While the common use of the word “drama” refers to performances on stage in front of live audience, it can also be circulated through broadcast media such as the TV radio. Usually the word “play” is used to refer to particular dramatic works while the word “drama” is used to refer 10 te form as a whole. A play can be written in verse (as in the cas? ® Poetic drama) or prose or it can use a mixture of the two the case of Shakespeare’s plays. in- 4 Conerse Companion to Literary Forms 7 33 Plays are usually meant to be performed and not read, and any interpretation of a play should keep in mind the fact that the meaning depends on the performance aspect to a great extent The very fact that ancient Greek dramatists used to instruct the actors on the performance of their play establishes the centrality of this aspect. This does not apply to closet dramas which are gramas — usually in verse — and are meant for reading and not for performance [e.g. Milton’s Samson Agonistes (1671), Browning’s Pippa Passes (1841) etc.]. It should also be remembered that drama as a form includes a wide variety of art forms that fall outside the scope of literary studies such as mime, pantomime or even films. The major genres of drama are tragedy, comedy and tragic-comedy. Origins and Early Forms It is generally believed that drama has three separate points of origin viz. the Greek tragedy, the Greek comedy and the medieval European drama, and that all three relate to religious ceremonies. Both Greek tragedies and Greek comedies are believed to have originated from rituals held in honour of Dionysus, the Greek god. The medieval European drama had its origin in the Christian rituals commemorating the birth and the resurrection of Christ. The earliest known plays were performed in the Athens of 5“ Century BC where tragedians and comedians competed for prizes at festivals held in honour of Dionysus. These festivals were mass entertainments and drew crowds amounting to thousands. It should be noted that while they were held in connection with the religious festivals, the plays themselves were not part of religious rituals. The actors would be accompanied by a chorus and both the actors and the members of the chorus would wear masks. Scholars believe that the Greek tragedy emerged from a non- dramatic source: the choral songs. Choral songs often featured- by 34 a ween the leader of the chorus and the reg of adually the leaders became actors, perf, : | ming | y. According to Ariston } le | a dialogue bet chorus and gr tng the st0r n narra ‘att, a large-scale choral song, was the Precurso, if tragedy. It should be noted that people continued to Perform | dithyrambs even after the emergence of tragedy. It 1S beliey that Arion, a poet who lived in Corinth in the 6 Century composed tragic choral songs but the person Fecognised ag , first tragedian is Thespis whose first production occurred aroun 535-4 BC. He introduced the use of masks by the actors, Th early tragedies relied on the Greek myths for their plots and hence the story would be already familiar to the audience, This enabled the dramatists to exploit dramatic irony. Even less is known about the origin of Greek comedy tha, that of the tragedy. It seems to have been a later developmen, for it was awarded official status at the festival of Dionysus only in 486 BC, long after tragedies had become a regular part of the festival. According to Aristotle, comedy developed from the “phallic songs” performed by volunteers at the festival. He also suggests that the Greek comedy may have evolved from the Doric Comedy (Dorians were one of the major ethnic groups of Ancient Greece) of Epicharmus and others. Greek comedy seems to have been a parody of the Greek tragedy. Its plot was much looser when compared to that of the tragedy and many plays would resort to slapstick humour (comedy involving physical action such as clowning, people falling over each other etc.). These plays were notorious for their irreverent humour, for their merciless attack of contemporary politicians and for the abundance of sexual and excremental humour. e The medieval European drama evolved from the liturgical services in the church. It is believed that the liturgical services gradually evolved into liturgical drama performed within the Church during Easter. The liturgical drama was indistinguishable from ,the liturgical services, They would be usually performed a- A Concise Companion to Literary Forms 35 py the priests and would be sung rather than spoken. While these eal forms of drama were in Latin and were performed within the church premises, gradually they began to be staged outside the church in local languages. The early forms of English drama include Mystery plays, Miracle plays, Morality plays and Interludes. Mystery plays, plays depicting incidents from the Bible, are believed to have evolved from the liturgical drama. These plays were performed in groups of plays or “cycles” and together they usually depict the whole history of mankind from the Creation to the Last Judgement. They were performed in wagons which moved from place to place and were produced by various trade guilds. Two origins have been suggested for the name of the form, each suggesting two integral aspects of the form: the word “mystery” can be said to have originated from a Latin word which signifies “guilds” or a Greek word which signifies “secret rites”. Mystery plays are also known as Corpus Christi plays as they were performed on the day of the Corpus Christi feast. The four known cycles of mystery plays are the York Cycle (consisting of 48 episodes), Coventry Cycle (42 episodes), Chester Cycle (25 episodes) and the Wakefield or Towneley Cycle (32 episodes). Of these, the Towneley Cycle is the most well-known primarily due to the contributions of an anonymous playwright who is known as the “Wakefield Master”. His most famous work is the Second Shepherd’s Play. Some of these cycles also featured passion plays (medieval plays depicting the trials, crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus Christ). Mystery plays were often colloquial and humorous as evidenced by the scenes involving Noah’s bickering wife. The term miracle play has been used synonymously with the mystery plays and this has caused a lot of confusion. Strictly Speaking, miracle plays are non-scriptural plays (as opposed to the mystery plays which depict biblical incidents) which depict miracles performed by the saints or Virgin Mary.Dray 36 plays are @ cycle of 42 late four, rhe Famous miracles : . ee The most Sa med Miracles de Notre Day," s na sentry French plays : ati oe English miracle plays are believed to have ,." OO! . performed he fifteenth centur, Play 0: 4 Dee. f the Sacraent, C, eh of 7 a d suit far fa a f Co Vers On, St. Paul, an Saint M. ry Mag A later stage of development in medieval drama is Marked p of morality plays in the late fourteenth cent, the appearance lays I : an plays are a kind of didactic poetic drama which Preseny, nd evil as fighting over the human soul. The inten, good a . tio, was i the fear of damnation in the minds of the Aine and to point out the path to salvation. The protagonist Would be the representative of all humankind, usually ‘dubbed. “ Everyman or “Mankind”, All characters would be personifications ‘of abstract qualities such as Knowledge, Beauty, Strength, Death, Fellowship, Good Deeds, the World, the Flesh and the Seven Deadly Sins. The most well-known morality play is Everyman (c.1510) in.which Everyman is summoned by Death. He tries to get various figures such as Fellowship, Beauty, Five Wits, ang Knowledge to accompany him but in the end only Good Deeds stand by him as he awaits God’s judgement. The lines uttered by Knowledge have become extremely famous: Everyman, I will go with thee and be thy guide. In thy most need to go by thy side. Some morality plays times deal with a single problem and in addition to moral issues, political issues are also dealt with. The example for both would be John Skelton’s Magnytycence (c.1515) which warns King Henry VII against the dangers of uncontrolled spending, One of the most noted characters usually found in morality Plays is Vice, a servant to the Devil, who is a half-comical, halt Sinister tempter. Vice is considered to be a forerunner of both Th vilains and the comic characters of the Elizabethan lus both Iago and Falstaff have elements of Vice in them. -wa 4 Conense Companion to Literary Forms 37 The term interlude, which literally means “between the lay”. is used to refer to a wide variety of short stage entertainments which were performed between the courses of a feast or between the acts of a longer play. The form was popular during the late fifteenth century and early sixteenth century. While come interludes were farcical and full of satirical elements, some others approximated the morality plays in their didacticism. The most prominent writer of interludes was John Heywood and his major works are The Four P’s (1521) which was based on a medieval French farce and Johan Johan the Husband, Tyb His Wife and Sir John the Priest (1533) which is comedy that deals with cuckoldry. At the same time his The Play of the Weather (1533) is more serious in subject matter: Jupiter seeks the opinion of English citizens regarding their preferred weather. The interlude is considered to represent a transitional stage of development between the morality plays and the more realistic Elizabethan comedy. Structure of a Play A play is usually divided into acts which are further divided into scenes. The act division usually indicates some development in the plot of the drama. In the gap between the two acts, of a play, the plot may have moved ahead in time, the setting might have changed or a different set of characters might have entered the stage. The Elizabethan dramatists followed the ancient Roman dramatists such as Seneca in using a five act structure. In a five act play, the five acts usually contain the following elements: Exposition, Complication, Climax, Falling Action and Catastrophe. Exposition is the part that introduces the setting, the characters and the context for the subsequent action. Complication or the Rising Action is the part where a conflict occurs. Climax denotes the part where things take a turn for the better or for worse, depending on whether it a comedy or aDrang 38 tragedy. Falling Action or Denouement denotes (he part where the complications are resolved. Catastrophe denotes the conclusion of the play. Dramatists such as Chekhov and Ibsen reduced the number of acts to four. Many twentieth century playwrights used a three act structure. In modern drama, it is also common to divide the PEHEs into scenes dispensing with acts all together. It js worthwhile mentioning the emergence of the one-act play in the late nineteenth century. As the name implies, one-act plays are short plays consisting of only act. At first, one-act plays were often used as curtain-raisers to a longer play. Gradually, they began to be staged independently. A lot of major dramatists since the nineteenth century such as Chekhov, Strindberg, Shaw, Synge, O'Neill, Beckett and Pinter have enriched this form. Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter (1960) and Albee’s The Zoo Story (1959) are two major one-act plays. The Major Dramatic Genres Tragedy The origin of tragedy has already been explained. Tragedy literally means “goat-song” and several explanations have been offered to explain this, the most common one being that in the dramatic festivals of Ancient Greece, a goat was awarded to the tragedian who won the Competition. Any play which deals with Serious subject matter and which features the downfall of the protagonist can be termed a tragedy. The most distinguishing character of a tragedy of the subject matter and the presence of dis: for tragedies can have a Eumenides (458 BC), is the seriousness ‘astrous incidents, happy ending as in the case of Aeschylus’ Any discussion of traged of the form in his Poets works of literary critic y should begin with Aristotle’s study ics. Poetics is one of the most influential Ism ever written and in it he argues that- 4 Comerse Companion to Literary Forms . 394 4 tragedy is the most important form of literature. He defines th : raged thus: A tragedy, then, is the imitation of an action that is serio and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself; in Jani sae with pleasurable accessories, each kind brought in sepatatly in the parts of the work; in a dramatic, not in a narrative with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to plish its catharsis of such emotions. stotle, tragedy should deal with a single action which th serious and of certain length. It should be in the d not in the narrative form. That is, it should pposed to the epic which ‘tells’ the story. controversial part of the definition has been Aristotle’s concept of catharsis which explains the effect | that tragedy has on the audience. Catharsis means “purgation™ or purification” and it has been explained in two different ways by the critics: One explanation is that this idea is Aristotle's response to Plato’s criticism that poetry evokes emotions in an unhealthy manner. The idea is that the tragic events in the play have a therapeutic effect: they would arouse the emotions of pity and fear in the minds of the audience and the tension caused by these emotions is relieved by the end of the play. This viewpoint is often used to explain the feeling of calmness and elation that the audience feel after having watched a tragedy. The second explanation is that it is the protagonist of the tragedy who undergoes catharsis with his remorse at his mistakes purging him of his guilt. form: accom Thus for Ari should be bo dramatic form ani ‘show’ the action as 0 The most influential and ¢ hero should be a man who who is neither “peripeteia” or is he tragi According to Aristotle, ¢ ple and somebody is better than ordinary peo thoroughly good nor bad. This hero suffers a “reversal” due to a “hamartia” - Hamartia or an imperfection in the tragic hero’s character W! “tragic flaw” hich brings about40 Drama his downfall. “Hubris” or “pride” is one of the most common tragic flaws found in tragedies, the character of Lear in Shakespeare's King Lear (1605) being a case in point. The earliest known tragedies were performed in the dramatic festivals in Athens in the 5" Century BC and the major tragedians were Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. In the 5" C BC, many tragedians would compose four plays for the festivals: a trilogy of tragedies and a satyr play. The satyr plays are humorous plays which are burlesques of the serious tragedies. The play would feature a chorus consisting of satyrs (men with horses’ tails and ears). The satyr play is believed to have been introduced at Athens by Aeschylus’ contemporary Pratinas. The only surviving example of a satyr play is Euripides’ Cyclops. By the 4" C BC, satyr plays began to be used as political satires and they began to be staged independently. The most notable tragedian in ancient Rome was Seneca. He was responsible for introducing the five act structure. Elizabethan tragedy was heavily indebted to’’Seneca both for the five act structure and for inspiring the form of revenge tragedy.The Elizabethan period witnessed the staging of Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville’s Gorboduc or Ferrex and Porrex (1561) which is considered to be the first English tragedy. The major tragedians of the Elizabethan age include Thomas Kyd, John Webster and of course, William Shakespeare.Of Shakespeare’s many tragedies, Hamlet (1600), Othello (1604), King Lear (1605), and Macbeth (1611) are the most acclaimed ones. Dryden’s All for Love (1671) is a classical tragedy which adhered to Aristotle’s notions of what constitutes a perfect tragedy. Tragedy has continued to steadily evolve and develop. Some of the names that are worth mentioning are the Scandinavians Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, the Americans Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller and the Absurdists Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter,acise Companion to Literary Forms 4Cor 41 comedy Comedy literally means “revel-song” (“to revel” means “to celebrate”). As opposed to the tragedy which is serious drama, comedy is a lighter form of drama which has a happy ending. George Meredith, in his The Idea of Comedy (1877), distinguishes between “high comedy” and “low comedy”. High comedy is serious comedy, featuring intellectual humour derived by pointing out the follies of individuals or inconsistencies in human nature in general. One example of high comedy would be the comedy of manners in which we find battles of wit between lovers. Low comedy, on the other hand, lacks seriousness and contains episodes of drunkenness, buffoonery, wordplay and fighting. For instance, in medieval religious dramas Noah’s stubborn wife would refuse to enter the ark and she would have to be taken there by force. Elements of low comedy can be found in the morality plays in the forms of the antics of Vice. Shakespeare has included this type of comedy in many of plays one notable instance being the incident involving Caliban, Stephano and Trinculo in The Tempest. Like tragedy, comedy too originated in Ancient Greece. Scholars have identified three phases in the development of comedy: Old Comedy, Middle Comedy and New Comedy. Old Comedy, prevalent in the 5" C BC featured fantastic plot lines and it would contain buffoonery and farcical elements. It would contain stock characters such as the buffoon, Alazon (a character who is a braggart or an impostor) and Eiron (a character who is a sly dissembler who pretends to be ignorant in order to trick others). One of its major features was the element of satire, The works would often poke fun at particular Individuals and at the political and religious institutions of the day. In his Frogs Aristophanes mocked Socrates, suggesting that he is a fraud and an atheist. Other regular elements include lyrical verse and a chorus. A chotus was a regular element of these Plays, Aristophanes was the major writer of this form and his a> 42 Drama works include Clouds, Knights, and Frogs. Relatively little i known about Middle Comedy which was prevalent in the 4» c BC. It is believed that while the elements of parody and burlesque continued to exist, the element of satire began to dwindle. The role of the chorus too began to diminish. The major writers of middle comedy were Antiphanes and Elixis, The element of Satire almost disappears from the New Comedy (4" and 3 C BC) which can be best described as a comedy of manners, featuring love affairs and intrigues with a happy ending. The major writers of this form are Menander (whose famous work is Dyskolos), Philemon and Diphilus. The New Comedy influenced the Romans Plautus and Terence whose works ‘were imitations of Menander’s comedies. The works of these works, in turn, influenced the Renaissance dramatists: For instance, Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors (c.1592-3) is modelled upon Plautus’ Menaechmi. Nicholar Udall’s Ralph Roister Doister (1552) is considered to be the first English comedy. Tragicomedy Tragicomedy is a broad term which refers to any play which mixes the elements of a tragedy and a comedy. This intermingling can take place in several ways: plays featuring tragic incidents may have happy incidents or vice versa, tragic plays can have comic subplots etc. One influential definition of tragicomedies can be found in the note titled “To the Reader”, prefixed by John Fletcher, to his play The Faithful Shepherdess (c.1610): “A tragicomedy is not so called in Tespect of mirth and killing, but in respect it wants deaths, which is enough to make it no tragedy, yet brings some near it, which is enough to make it no comedy... .” Thus for Fletcher, a tragicomedy is too serious to be termed a comedy but not serious enough to be termed a tragedy, The word “tragicomedy” was coined by Plautus in the y Prologue to his play Amphitryon, But the form has been discussedy-~ come Companion to Literary Forms a i before that as evidenced by Aristotle's observation that tragedies of Euripides have happy endings. Tragedy and edy was freely mixed during the middle ages but it was the ian playwrights of the Renaissance period who established it eparate genre. Two Italian dramatists who deserve mention regard are Giraldi Cinzio who preferred the term “mixed eragedy” for his tragedies with happy endings and Giovan Guarini who preferred the use of the term “tragicomedy”. Guarini’s pastoral tragicomedy I! Pastor Fido (1590) and his critical treatise Compendio della Poesia Tragicomica (1601) are crucial contributions to the genre. I! Pastor Fido was extremely popular in England and it influenced John Fletcher. Along with Francis Beaumont, Fletcher developed a form of tragicomedy which features a romantic plot in which the events seems to be headed for a tragic climax and, there is a sudden reversal of fortune. The most famous work that is the result of their collaboration is Philaster (1609). Shakespeare wrote several tragicomedies including Merchant of Venice (1600), Cymbeline and The Winter’s Tale (both c.1611). While classical theorists, claiming to follow Aristotle, have attacked the mixing of tragedy and comedy English dramatists have generally not heeded that particular rule. Samuel Johnson defended the practice in his famous “Preface to Shakespeare” (1765). Although the form is primarily associated with the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage, the mixing of tragedy and comedy have always been a feature of English drama. Anton masterpiece Chekhov’s comedies often have tragic endings, his being The Cherry Orchard (1904). Ta asa in this Dramatic Devices Soliloquy and Aside atic devices most Soliloquies and asides are dram word Commonly found in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. Thea 44 Dram, soliloquy means “to speak alone” in Latin and it is 4 Speech delivered by a character when he or she is alone on Stage Through the soliloquy, the innermost thoughts of the Character are revealed to the audience, Soliloquies often reveal information unknown to the other characters of the play, thereby bringing about dramatic irony. Shakespeare’s plays are wel] known for their soliloquies, the most famous ones being found in Hamlet and Macbeth. Dramatists continued to use Soliloquies during the Restoration period and in the eighteenth and nineteenth Centuries but the convention fell into disuse with the emergence of naturalistic drama which strove to represent reality with absolute fidelity. The most famous soliloquy in English literature is the “To be or not to be” Speech by Hamlet. A related dramatic convention is that of aside in which a character utters a short Speech addressed to the audience or more Tarely, to another character, and it is assumed that it is inaudible to the other characters on the stage. Renaissance Plays used this convention to reveal the intimate thoughts of the characters while Interlude (1928). Chorus Ancient Greek drama featured a chorus, a group of masked actors who would witness, and comment upon, the action of the play. Usually the chorus Presents the viewpoint of the ordinary man. The performance of the chorus was divided into three phases based on the movement of the chorus on the stage: strophe, antistrophe and epode (turn, counterturn and stand). The word chorus means “group of dancers” in Greek, and choral songs were performed in the religious festivals in ancient Greece, It is believed that the Greek tragedy evolved out of thesey- A Concise mances. Some Elizabethan plays (such as Gorboduc and ent V) featured choruses who presented the Epilogue and the prologues and provided commentary between the acts of the ay. In some of these plays the chorus would be accompanied y a dumb show. Many plays (and other forms of literature) which do not have a chorus would feature a “choral character”, g character who participates in the action of the play only to a minor degree and who presents ironic commentary on the events in the play. One example is the Fool in King Lear. Choruses have almost disappeared from modern drama. One notable instance of the use of chorus in the twentieth century drama is TS. Eliot’s verse play Murder in the Cathedral (1935). Companion to Literary Forms 45 perfor Irony Irony refers to a range of literary devices which is-based on a discrepancy between appearance and reality. The word “irony” has its roots in a Greek word which means “dissembling”. Greek comedy featured a stock character named “eiron” who pretended to be stupid and spoke in understatement and he usually triumphed over “alazon” (another stock character who was a braggart). There are many varieties of irony, the most major ones being verbal irony, structural irony, and dramatic irony. Verbal irony is the simplest form of irony in which a speaker says the exact opposite of what s/he means. Thus when Mark Antony keeps repeating that “Brutus is an honorable man” in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (1599) he means to convey the exact opposite meaning. Another famous example is the opening lines of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813): “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a young man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife”. What the narrator means ‘0 convey is the idea that rich young men are sought after by young unmarried women and their families. Verbal irony is Similar to sarcasm but it is different from sarcasm in that the ‘mention is not,to insult.Drama 46 When the discrepancy in meaning derives from a structural feature such as an unreliable narrator, the irony is known as structural irony. Unreliable narrators are narrators who do not grasp the full significance of the events that they recount [For example, Huck in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), The readers are expected to understand the actual meaning of the events and the fact that the narrator is unreliable. All forms of irony rely on the intelligence of the reader/audience for its effect. Dramatic irony arises when the audience have knowledge about the characters’ situation that the characters themselves lack. A classic example can be found in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (1597) in which Romeo finds Juliet apparently dead and he commits suicide by drinking poison. But the audience are aware that Juliet is merely asleep, having drunk a poison which will make her look lifeless for forty-two hours. While all the forms of irony discussed above and many more besides them are frequently found in dramatic works, irony as a device is not unique to drama and it is found in all forms of literature. Types of Comedy Romantic Comedy _ Romantic Comedy is a form of drama that was developed in the Elizabethan age, which has love as its central theme. Romantic comedies usually depict the love affair between an idealized couple. The relationship encounters certain difficulties before resulting in a happy ending. In many romantic comedies, ae rine is forced to Masquerade as a man for a short while. Speare's As You Like It (1600) is the perfect example of a romanti i zeit comedy, The romantic comedy developed from the izabethan prose romances,