A Brief History of Drama

Major Developments

2 Drama – To be, or not to be, that is the question

Drama – a literary composition involving conflict, action crisis and atmosphere designed to be acted by players
on a stage before an audience. This definition may be applied to motion picture drama as well as to the
traditional stage. Drama had its origin in the country of Greece around 500 B.C. Drama, as a literary genre, is an
art form that is meant to be performed!

The Greek Theatre or Greek

Drama is a theatrical tradition that flourished in ancient Greece between c. 550 and c. 220 B.C. in Athens.
Athens was the centre of ancient Greek theatre. Tragedy (late 6th century B.C.), comedy (~486 B.C.) and satyr
plays were some of the theatrical forms to emerge in the world. Greek theatre and plays have had a lasting
impact on Western drama and culture.
The earliest dramas were designed to worship to gods and goddesses, specifically Bacchus and Dionysus. The
Greek tragedies of Aeschychus, Sophocles and Euripides were performed annually at the spring festival of
Dionysus, god of wine and inspiration.

5 The Greeks In 534 B.C a contest was won by Thespis in Athens.

He is the first recorded winner of this contest. Tragedy (the group word “tragoidia” began with the introduction
of an actor, who played various roles by changing masks, whose actions the chorus commented on in song.
Thespis according to Themistius’s account, was the first “actor” and usually credited with “inventing” drama as
we know it (actors speaking lines) –thus actors are know known as ThespiansThe Greeks

6 Decline of Drama

Drama went into a period of decline around A.D. 400 (Roman Empire)Due to the Power of ChristiansActing
has been deemed at times to be unchristian, idolatrous and depraved or, worse, boring. Actors themselves have
frequently been seen to be one of the humbler classes, and only towards the end of the 19th century did their
status start to improve

7 Revival of Drama A. D Medieval Drama, when it emerged hundreds of years later, was a new creation rather
than a rebirth. The drama of earlier times having almost no influence on it. The reason for this creation came
from a quarter that had traditionally opposed any form of theatre: The Christian church

8 Medieval Drama Purpose: Teach religion Types of acceptable drama:

1.) Miracle plays – lives of saints.

2.) Morality plays – being good/ moral

3.) Mystery plays – life of Christ

9 Middle Ages Theatre During the Middle Ages, most plays were about the lives of saints and/or Bible stories.

10 Renaissance Drama Ruler: Elizabeth I

Renaissance Drama is English drama written before the Reformation and the closure of theatres in It may also
be called early modern English theatre or (misaccurately) Elizabethan theatre. It includes the drama of William
Shakespeare, the most notable playwright during this period.One distinctive feature of the companies that put
on Elizabethan plays was that they included only males.

11 Elizabethan Drama

o Shakespeare
o Christopher Marlowe
o Thomas
o KydJohn
o Lyly

12 Victorian/Modern English drama

Oscar Wilde George Bernard Shaw The Abbey

Theatre: key figures were W.B. Yeats and Lady Augusta Gregory; opened in Dublin in 1903 and helped to
produce new Irish plays (J.M. Synge)

13 Modern Drama Primary characteristic – realism

Some of the major forms of drama are:

1. Tragedy
 2. Comedy
3. Melodrama
 Most importantly, drama, as a literary genre, is an art form that is meant to be performed.

14 Dramatic Terminology Literary Terms

15 Acts and Scenes-Subdivisions in the play when the time or place usually changes Acts – big breaks (in
Shakespeare plays usually 5 Acts)Scenes – smaller breaks within acts (usually one or two per act)Act III Act IV
Act II Act I Act V

16 Aside-A dramatic device in which a private thought is spoken aloud. It is intended for the audience alone –
not other characters in the play Contributes to dramatic irony –(the audience knows something other characters
in the play do not)

17 Comedy-A type of drama in which the characters experience reversals of fortune, usually for the better. In
comedy, things work out happily in the end, usually in marriage. Comedy Mask

18 Tragedy-A type of drama in which the characters experience reversals of fortune, usually for the worse
Tragedy

19 Dialogue-Conversations among characters

20 Drama-One of the three main types of literature; it tells a story through the words and actions of a character
.Additional Information

21 Intermission-A break in the performance of the play

22 Monologue-A speech delivered by one person

23 Playwright-The author of a drama

24 Props-Articles or objects that appear on stage during a play

25 Script-The written version of the play

26 Stage directions-Instructions to the performer and the director; usually written in italics or parentheses

27 Staging-The effect the play has on its audience – including the position of actors, the scenic background, the
props and costumes, and the lighting and sound effects

28 Subplot-An additional or minor or parallel plot in a play or story that coexists with the main plot

29 Thespians-Actors and actresses

THE HISTORY OF DRAMA

 The term Drama comes from a Greek word meaning "action" (Classical Greek: δρᾶμα, drama), which is derived
from the verb meaning "to do" or "to act" (Classical Greek: δράω, draō).

 The two famous masks of drama represent the division between comedy and tragedy.
They are symbols of the ancient Greek Muses, Thalia and Melpomene.
 Thalia was the Muse of comedy, while Melpomene was the Muse of tragedy.

 At first, and after Aristotle's Poetics (the earliest work of dramatic theory), drama was considered as a genre of
poetry, and was contrasted with the epic and the lyrics.
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, Ibsen’s A Doll’s
House.

 History of Western Drama

Western drama originates in classical Greece.

 The theatrical culture of the city-state of Athens produced three genres of drama:
1. tragedy,
2. comedy, and
 3. the satyr play.
The origins of drama go back to competitions held as part of festivities celebrating the god Dionysus

 Great Dionysia, also called City Dionysia , ancient dramatic festival in which tragedy, comedy, and satyric
drama originated; it was held in Athens in March in honour of Dionysus, the god of wine.

 Ritual & Drama: Differences

In the ancient world, ritual usually required animal sacrifice; in tragic drama, the hero is sacrificed onstage.
Rituals do not involve us by way of identification with a character, as plays do, and they do not depend on
surprise or suspense.
o It is perhaps because ancient Greek religion strongly emphasized the power of the gods to surprise us, to
intervene in our lives and sometimes overturn them, that drama became a chosen form for the honoring
of the divine.
 Significant Greek Dramatists
Only a small fraction of the work of five dramatists has survived to this day:
the tragedians: Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides,
and the comic writers Aristophanes and, from the late 4th century, Menander

 Chorus
Among the ancient Greeks the chorus was a group of people, wearing masks, who sang or chanted verses
while performing dancelike movements at religious festivals.
A similar chorus played a part in Greek tragedies, where (in the plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles) they served
mainly as commentators on the dramatic actions and events who expressed traditional moral, religious, and social
attitudes; beginning with Euripides, however, the chorus assumed primarily a lyrical function.
 Satyr play
Satyr plays were an ancient Greek form of tragicomedy, similar in spirit to the burlesque. They featured
choruses of satyrs, were based on Greek mythology, and were rife with mock drunkenness, brazen sexuality, and
general merriment
 Roman drama
Following the expansion of the Roman Republic (509–27 BCE) into several Greek territories between 270–
240 BCE, Rome encountered Greek drama.
 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 ofTerence).
 Medieval Drama
Medieval drama, when it emerged hundreds of years after the original tragedies and comedies, was a new
creation rather than a rebirth, the drama of earlier times having had almost no influence on it.
 Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a period of European history that lasted from the 5th until the 15th centuries. It began with
the collapse of theWestern Roman Empire, and was followed by the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery.
o The Middle Ages is the middle period of the traditional division ofWestern history into Classical,
Medieval, and Modern periods. The period is subdivided into the Early Middle Ages, the High Middle
Ages, and the Late Middle Ages.
 Medieval Drama
The Christian church had traditionally opposed any form of theater. But little by little, in the Easter service, and
later in the Christmas service, bits of chanted dialogue, called tropes, were interpolated into the liturgy. Priests,
impersonating biblical figures, acted out minuscule scenes from the holiday stories.
Eventually, these plays grew more elaborate and moved out of the church. Secular elements crept in as the
artisan guilds took responsibility for these performances; although the glorification of God and the redemption of
humanity remained prime concerns, the celebration of local industry was not neglected.
 Renaissance (Elizabethan) Drama
The Renaissance saw a huge resurgence in all types of art, including theater. It was during this time that
Commedia Dell'arte flourished and the first Elizabethan playhouse opened.
o William Shakespeare, one of the world's most renowned playwrights, wrote and produced many plays
that are still performed regularly even today.
o Shakespeare was one of the first to weave comic elements into tragedies. He also developed a structure
and several types of characters that are still common in modern drama.
 The 18th Century Drama
The 18th century was a time when more plays were being written for and about the middle class. At first the
theatres relied on the pre-Civil War repertoire; before long, however, they felt called upon to bring these plays
into line with their more "refined," French-influenced sensibilities.
The themes, language, and dramaturgy of Shakespeare's plays were now considered out of date, so that during
the next two centuries the works of England's greatest dramatist were never produced intact. Owing much to
Moliere, the English comedy of manners was typically a witty, brittle satire of current mores, especially of
relations between the sexes.
 19th Century Drama and Romanticism
Toward the end of the century, the Romantic period began in Western Europe, which heavily influenced the
theater of that era. Romanticism focused on emotion rather than intellect. This movement continued through the
 beginning of the 19th century. In its purest form, Romanticism concentrated on the spiritual, which would allow
humankind to transcend the limitations of the physical world and body and find an ideal truth.
Subject matter was drawn from nature and "natural man" (such as the supposedly untouched Native American).
Perhaps one of the best examples of Romantic drama is Faust (Part I, 1808; Part II, 1832) by the German
playwright Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
 Romanticism first appeared in Germany, a country with little native theatre other than rustic farces before the
18th century. By the 1820s Romanticism dominated the theatre of most of Europe.
These plays had no single style but were generally strongly emotional, and, in their experimentation with form,
laid the groundwork for the rejection of Neo-Classicism.
 Modern Drama
Romanticism gave way to Realism during the 19th century, paving the way for the era of contemporary drama
in the 20th century. Contemporary drama shows the influence of all that has come before.
Modern drama involved much experimentation with new forms and ideas. In the early part of the 20th century,
musical drama came to dominate stages in New York and England, although each theater season saw the release
of straight dramatic plays as well.
Many movements generally lumped together as the avant-garde, attempted to suggest alternatives to the
realistic drama and production. The various theoreticians felt that Naturalism presented only superficial and thus
limited or surface reality-that a greater truth or reality could be found in the spiritual or the unconscious.
 Others felt that theatre had lost touch with its origins and had no meaning for modern society other than as a form
of entertainment. Paralleling modern art movements, they turned to symbol, abstraction, and ritual in an attempt
to revitalize the theatre. Although realism continues to be dominant in contemporary theatre, television and film
now better serve its earlier functions.
 Symbolist drama
The Symbolist movement in France in the 1880s affected the theater. The movement called for "de-
theatricalizing" the theatre, meaning stripping away all the technological and scenic encumbrances of the 19th
century and replacing them with a spirituality that was to come from the text and the acting.
The texts were laden with symbolic imagery not easily construed-rather they were suggestive. The general
mood of the plays was slow and dream- like. The intention was to evoke an unconscious response rather than an
intellectual one and to depict the non-rational aspects of characters and events.
- Strong Symbolist elements can be found in the plays of Chekhov and the late works of Ibsen and Strindberg.
-Symbolist influences are also evident in the works of such later playwrights as the Americans Eugene O'Neill
and Tennessee Williams and the Englishman Harold Pinter, pro pounder of "theatre of silence".
 Expressionist drama
- The Expressionist movement was popular in the 1910s and 1920s, largely in Germany. It explored the more
violent, grotesque aspects of the human psyche, creating a nightmare world onstage. Distortion and exaggeration
and a suggestive use of light and shadow typify Expressionism.
-Stock types replaced individualized characters or allegorical figures, much as in the morality plays, and plots
often revolved around the salvation of humankind.
 Contemporary drama
Many playwrights of the 1960s and 1970s-Sam Shepard in the United States, Tom Stoppard in England-built
plays around language: language as a game, language as sound, language as a barrier, language as a reflection of
society. In their plays, dialogue frequently cannot be read simply as a rational exchange of information. Many
playwrights also mirrored society's frustration with a seemingly uncontrollable, self-destructive world.
 In Europe in the 1970s, new playwriting was largely overshadowed by theatricalist productions, which
generally took classical plays and reinterpreted them, often in bold new scenographic spectacles,
expressing ideas more through action and the use of space than through language.