DRAMA
Drama
is a word of Greek origin meaning "action" and referring to a
performance on the stage in which actors act out the events and characters of a
story. A dramatic work is usually called a play, but if you want to specify
what type of drama it is, you can call it a comedy, a. tragedy, a farce or
tragicomedy or other names. As wel1 as a play, drama usually involves
- a
playwright or dramatist, that is, the author of the play;
- a
stage, that is, the area in a playhouse or theatre where the play is
performed;
- an
audience, that is, the people who go to the theatre to watch the
performance.
Watching
a live performance, while sitting in a playhouse with a crowd of other
spectators, is the best way of appreciating any play.
Whenever
you read a play, if you have no chance of seeing it performed, you should try
to create a mental image of its performance In order to help you, we shall try
to make you familiar with some basic dramatic conventions, that is, established
ways of writing plays which have been used so often that they have become
typical of the genre.
Today
a play can be performed not on1y in a theatre hut also on the radio or on media
TV The use of these two mass media has made drama easy accessible to the vast
majority. The cinema has also contributed to the popularity of drama by
offering memorable fi1m versions of some of the most important works in the
history of British theatre.
DRAMATIC TEXT
Dramatic
texts usually come in the form of plays of varying length. As in fiction, a
play usually tells a story. But the dramatic techniques used for
organizing a story in a plot are very different from those used in
fiction. Here are some basic structural conventions used in writing drama.
FEATURES OF A PLAY
Plays
are normally divided into major units called Acts, which
are sometimes subdivided into Scenes. A scene usually shows a sequence
of actions which happen in the same setting, that is, in the same
place and in the same period of time. Modern plays may have one or
two or three acts, whereas in the past, in the time of Shakespeare, for
example, they had as many as five acts.
A
play traditionally tells a story which is organised by the
playwright/dramatist in a plot. The plot contains the same events as
the story but it may present them in a different chronological order. The
story is slightly different from the plot because it consists of the main
events arranged in chronological order. It can be quickly summarised.
The
order in which scenes and situations are arranged usually serves the purpose of
creating dramatic tension, suspense and climax in order to
capture the audience’s attention. They are essential ingredients of a thriller.
Before
the actual text begins, you can usually find a list of the characters in the
play headed either with the self-explanatory word Characters or with
Cast. The characters of a play can be main/major characters or
minor characters according to the importance of their role in the story.
They may be well-rounded characters, and show the complexity of human
psychology, or flat characters, based on only one or two aspects of
personality which never change throughout the play, or stock characters,
and represent human types such as the beautiful and virtuous heroine or the
handsome and courageous hero in a traditional love story.
Plays
develop through direct speech, usually in the form of a dialogue between
the characters but occasionally in the form of a soliloquy when a
character is alone on stage and utters his/her thoughts out loud.
Plays
usually include stage directions, where the dramatist intervenes to give
instructions for the play’s production. You can easily recognise stage directions
because they are written in italics to distinguish them from the
characters’ speeches.
The
aim of drama is not to re-create the world of nature but to offer a
different model of our world.
Comedy
is a major form of drama of which the following general definition can be
given: "a play in which the principal characters ordinarily begin in a
state of opposition to one another or to their world – often both. By the end
of the play, their opposition is replaced by harmony" (Scholes and Klaus).
The main purpose of comedy is to amuse people and its main traits are: humour,
comic plot and flat characters.
Comic plot consists in a sequence of difficult, intricate or
improbable situations in which the main characters find themselves in trouble.
But problems are always overcome and the end is always happy. Love and
variations on this theme are the most frequent subject matter of comedies. The
events of a comic plot follow one another at such a fast pace that the audience
has no time to wonder at the improbability of the story. They accept it as a
convention of comedy and enjoy the play.
Humour
is the essence of comedy; it can take many forms on the stage, from the subtly
amusing to the hilarious. This is what makes people laugh. It is often based on
the privileged position of the audience when they know more than the
characters on stage.
Let
us examine these different kinds of humour in detail:
Verbal humour: Puns are also often used in comedy based on verbal humour. A
pun is a play on words which have the same sound but different spellings and
meanings. Alternatively, it can be an amusing use of a word or phrase which has
a double meaning. This form of ambiguity, intrinsic to a pun, lends itself to
comic effect.
Behavioural humour derives from the fact that a character’s behaviour is
unexpected and seems absurd in the given context on the stage.
Situational humour which is based on the audience’s knowledge of an essential
aspect of the situation which is unknown to some characters on the stage – e.
g., a double identity or a mistaken identity, an intrigue or a deception.
In
comedy, characters are not usually developed in depth. They are usually
flat characters because the witty dialogue and the skilful handling of
comic situations are more important than the observation or development of a
character’s personality. Characters can represent human types, such as
the miser or the coquette. They can portray socia1 types, such as the
unspoiled peasant or the snobbish aristocrat. They can be the stock
characters frequently found in comedies, such as the clever servant or the
bossy wife. Whatever they are, they usually remain unchanged throughout the
play.
Tragedy
is the major form of drama besides comedy. It can be defined as a play in which
"the hero and his world begin in a condition of harmony which
disintegrates, leaving him, by the end of the play, in a state of
isolation" (Scholes and Klaus).
Tragic
plots and tragic heroes and heroines have specific features of their own which
are typical of Shakespearean plays but can be extended to cover tragedies by
other playwrights as well.
A
tragic plot is more linear than a comic plot. From the introductory
situation it rises to a climax, which is the highest point in the protagonist’s
fortunes, followed by a reversal of fortune – the point of crisis – which leads
to the final catastrophe.
Tragic heroes and heroines in traditional drama are above ordinary
people because of their social rank and strong personality. As a consequence, their
suffering is also much greater than common people could bear. Their catastrophe
is decreed by fate and is often started by a fatal flaw. For example, In the
case of Romeo and Juliet’s tragic story, the protagonists are an innocent
couple who are doomed from the very beginning by a malignant fate. In the case
of Macbeth, ’ambition’ is the fatal flaw that drives him and his wife towards
their doom. Their final fall brings down other people as well.
Soliloquy, as well as dialogue, is used in tragedy to carry the plot
forward and reveal a character’s complex personality. The language of
tragedy is heightened in order to give appropriate expression to a
content not normally found in everyday life. Shakespearean heroes usually speak
in blank verse, which consists of unrhymed (= blank) lines of iambic
pentameters (= five iambs or iambic feet) and is the closest of all verse
forms to the natural rhythms of English speech.
In
watching a tragedy, the audience experiences strong emotions such as horror,
fear and pity without the overwhelming pain that would be associated with them
in real life. This effect on the audience is called catharsis, a Greek
word which means ’purification’.
TRAGIC PLOT
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Tragic plot
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A tragic plot usually starts with an initial situation in
which the main characters are in harmony with their world; but then a
reversal of fortune always follows. The central action is the fall of the
protagonists from a condition of wealth and honour to unhappiness and death.
The plot develops through the following stages:
- introduction, the presentation of the
hero/ine;
- development, the hero/ine’s rise to power
or happiness;
- climax, the high point of the
hero/ine’s fortunes;
- crisis, the turning point in the
hero/ine’s fortunes;
- decline, deterioration in the
hero/ine’s situation:
- catastrophe, the hero/ine’s fall, often
to a condition of degradation and humiliation, and death.
An essential ingredient of tragic plot is the presence of
a hostile fate. The incidents of the plot are mainly unfortunate
events which drag the protagonists to their fall. For example, it is an
unlucky chance that Romeo gets involved in the street fight in which he kills
Tybalt or that he doesn’t receive Friar Laurence’s message in time. The
protagonist/s is/are doomed from the beginning; this is usually shown by a
series of premonitions of death in the characters’ speeches.
The characters are not flat like the ones you often find
in comedy. Although Romeo and Juliet are possessed by the unique passion of
love, their individual personality shows a complexity which is more of a
round character. They have a distinctive manner of speech, a heightened
language which, like the subject matter, is not that of everyday life.
We, the audience, share the protagonists’ strong emotions
and feel pity for their suffering. We are sensible to the sense of impending
doom particularly when we know something relevant to the development of the
story that is hidden from the characters on the stage. This experience that
the audience goes through during the performance of a tragedy is called
catharsis, a Greek word which means purification.
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Fate
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Character
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Catharsis
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TRAGIC HERO AND HEROlNE
In
dramatic tradition, tragedy mostly revolves round one central character who
presents a complex portrait of a human being and uses a dignified manner of
speech to express human suffering. A. C. Bradley, a Shakespearean scholar, has
identified the following features in the tragic hero or heroine
of Shakespeare’s plays. They can be extended to cover tragedies by other
playwrights as well. The tragic hero or heroine...
- is
usually a person of high rank;
- is a
person of noble character and exceptional
qualities but suffering from a fatal weakness;
- comes
close to achieving fame, happiness and what s/he wishes;
- the
disaster that befalls him/her is inevitable, either decreed by fate or the result of the character’s fatal
weakness;
- despite
the inevitability of the outcome s/he does not accept his/her destruction
without a struggle;
- the
suffering is extreme and in strong contrast to earlier happiness or
well-being;
- the
suffering and calamity usually extend beyond the
protagonist to involve other characters.
The
feelings aroused in the audience by the destiny of a tragic hero or heroine may
be mixed. On the one hand, you may look with horror at the crimes committed;
but, on the other hand, you may also be moved to pity by their downfall
especially if you know that they are not entirely to blame because they also
are victims of fate. Their extreme suffering, therefore, may seem out of
proportion to the crime they have committed.
