English Drama

ENGLISH DRAMA 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

What is Drama? Types of Drama? Development of Drama Tragedy Comedy

DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMA 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Classical Tragedy Romantic Tragedy Realistic Plays Naturalistic Plays Expressionist Plays Epic Theatre Theatre of the Absurd

CLASSICAL TRAGEDY The term may refer to : • The tragedy of the ancient Geeks and Romans, e.g. Sophocles’ Antigone. • Tragedies based upon Greek or Roman subjects, e.g. Shakespeare’s Coriolanus. • Modern tragedies modeled upon Greek or Roman tragedy or written under the influence of the critical doctrines of classicism, e.g. Ben Jonson’s tragedies Catiline and Sejanus.

CLASSICISM • A body of doctrine thought to be derived from or to reflect the qualities of ancient Greek and Roman Culture, particularly in literature, philosophy, art, or criticism. • Classicism stands for certain definite ideas and attitudes, mainly drawn from the critical utterances of the Greeks and Romans or developed through an imitation of ancient literature. • Characteristics : restraint; restricted scope; dominance of reason; sense of form; unity of design and aim; clarity; simplicity; balance; attention to structure and logical organization; chasteness in style; severity of outline; moderation; self control; intellectualism; decorum; respect for tradition; imitation; conservatism; and “good sense” (Holman, 1972 : 83)

SENECAN TRAGEDY • The nine Latin tragedies attributed to the Stoic philosopher Seneca (1st century). • Modeled largely upon the Greek tragedies of Euripides. • Characteristics: (1) conventional five-act division; (2) the use of chorus (for comment) and stock characters as a ghost, a cruel tyrant, faithful male servant, and female confidant; (3) presentation of the action (esp. horrors) through long narrative reports recited by messengers as a substitute for a stage action; (4) the employment of sensational themes from Greek mythology (blood and lust) and unnatural crimes such as adultery, incest, infanticide, revenge, etc.(5) a highly rhetorical style (hyperbole, detailed descriptions, exaggerated comparison, aphorism, epigrams, and stichomythia; (60 use of introspection and soliloquy. (Holman, 1972 : 407)

ROMANTIC TRAGEDY (RT) • The term is used for such modern tragedy as dose not conform to the traditions or aims of classical tragedy. • RT differs from the CT in its greater emphasis on character (as compared with on plot), its looser structure, its freer employment of imagination, its greater variety of style, and its readiness to admit humorous and even grotesque elements. • Elizabethan tragedy is largely romantic, e.g. Shakespeare’s (Holman, 1972: 392)

ROMANTICISM • A movement of the 18th and 19th cent. which marked the reaction of literature, philosophy, art, religion, an politics from the neoclassicism and formal orthodoxy of the preceding period. • In France reflected Victor Hugo’s phrase ‘liberalism in literature, freeing the artist and writer from restraints and rules of the classicists and suggesting that phase of individualism marked by the encouragement of revolutionary political ideas.

• The poet Heine, in German, called it the revival of medievalism in art, letters, and life. • Walter Pater, a 19th cent English critic, thought the addition of strangeness to beauty (the neoclassicists having insisted upon order in beauty) constituted the romantic temper. • F.H. Hedge, an Am transcendentalist, thought the essence of romanticism was aspiration, having its origin in wonder and mystery.

• An interesting schematic explanation : the predominance of imagination over reason and formal rules (classicism) and over the sense of the fact or the actual (realism). • Hazlitt (1816): the classic beauty of a Greek temple resided chiefly in its actual form and its obvious connotations, while the “romantic” beauty of a Gothic building or ruin arose from associated ideas which the imagination was stimulated to conjure up (to escape from unpleasant realities). Holman, 1072: 392)

CLASSICISM VS ROMANTICISM • Classicism • Restraint; restricted scope • Dominance of reason • Sense of form • Unity of design and aim • Simplicity & balance • Structure & logical organization • Chasteness of style

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Romanticism Liberal (freedom) Revival of medievalism Strangeness to beauty Aspiration (In wonder & mystery) • Predominance of imagination • Sense of the fact or the actual • Escape from realities

THE REALISTIC PLAYS (REALISM) • The Beginnings • Realism began as a method of correcting the outmoded an outdated traditions of society, as well as a technique for staging. • By the mid-19th cent a general dissatisfaction pervaded literary Europe and conditions caused by the Industrial Revolution. • The idealization of men and the escapist dreams no longer seemed close enough to reality for solving man’s problems. • These new directions were nurtured further by Charles Darwin and August Comte – exponents of science and sociology – who preached that heredity and environment were the primary determinants of existence.

• From these contributing factors, the realist believed that behavior of man could be explained by the deterministic composition of man’s ancestors and the environment in which he was born. • It was not the individual who should be blamed, but rather the society or civilization for allowing these abhorrent conditions to exist.

• In the face of scientific data and objective observation, society could not be forgiven for the outmoded beliefs about man if fostered. • Since man was not the superior being, then he, too, was subject to the same scientific investigation and analysis as the lower form of life. • If man was indeed an animal, determined by factors outside his control, the application of science and the upsetting of tradition could now serve in the amelioration of his suffering. • This particular concept challenged even the existence of God, although indirectly. Since man’s lot was determined by heredity and environment – conditions beyond the control of individual – God must exit as a dispassionate and unconcerned observer (if, indeed, he existed at all), having as little effect on men as they have on God. • If this were the case, the realist reasoned, then it became the duty of science to improve the plight of men in their present world. This world should be made the better world, thus the physical, psychological, sociological conditions of man demanded change – the change that only rational and corrective thought could give it.

• If romanticism dealt with man as he should be, realism would deal with man as he is. If melodrama portrayed men artificially, realism would picture him accurately. • If classicism asked actors for grand and sweeping gestures, realism would request they mirror life – once removed.

The Realistic Playwrights 1. Alexander Dumas fils : Camile : dealing with a prostitute. 2. Henrik Ibsen of Norway : Ghosts, The Wild Duck. 3. Anton Chekov : The Cherry Orchard – the aristocratic upper class is shown still cling to old-fashioned values. 4. Bernard Shaw : Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Arms and the man.

NATURALISTIC PLAY (NATURALISM) • Naturalism attempts to be the most honest of the dramatic modes. • The plots are not contrived and the characters are not carved. • No suffering is spared and no vices are hidden. • The characters in a naturalistic play do not shine with virtue, ever ready to meet and conquer their foe, for the foe of the naturalistic character is so many times a mechanistic and deterministic society over which he has no control. • The naturalistic subjects man to scientific investigation, and the results are often unpleasant.

• Naturalism began as a revolt against the sentimental and romanticized late 18th and early 19th –century stage, with its artificial trappings and “well made” plays. • The naturalistic believed that the theatre had an obligation to depict real life, using scientific tools for investigating and reporting its findings. • Naturalism would reflect real life in a more radical and stark manner than realism had attempted.

TRAGEDY • 1.

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Some definitions Most loosely a tragedy is a profoundly sad event or situation. In literature the term is conventionally reserved to a type of drama in which the protagonist is defeated, the material of the play being treated seriously and loftily. (J.L. Potter, 1967 : 138-139) In drama, a tragedy is a play, in verse or prose, which recounts an important and casually related series of events in the life of a person of significance, such events culminating in an unhappy catastrophe, the whole treated with great dignity and seriousness. According to Aristotle (in the Poetics), the purpose of a tragedy is to arouse the emotions of pity and fear and thus to produce in the audience a catharsis of these emotions. Given this purpose, Aristotle says that fear and pity may be aroused by spectacle or by the structure and incidents of the play. (C. Hugh Holman, 1980: 446)

ETYMOLOGY • Tragedy (Ancient Greek: tragoidia, “goat-song” is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. • The word’s origin is Greek tragoidia contracted from trag(o)-aodia = ‘goatsong” from tragos = “goat” and aeidein = “to sing”. • This dates back to a time when religion and theatre were more or less intertwined in early ritual events. Goats were traditionally sacrificed, and as a precursor, the Greek Chorus would sing a song of sacrifice – a “Goat Song”. • This may also refer to the horse or goat costumes worn by actors who played the satyrs in early dramatizations of mythological stories, or a goat being presented as a prize at a song contest and in both cases the reference would have been the respect for Dyonysus.

Aristotle (Poetics) • Tragedy is characterized by seriousness and dignity and involving a great person who experiences a reversal of fortune (Peripeteia). • Aristotle’s definition can include a change of fortune from bad to good as in the Eumenides, but he says that the change from good to bad as in Oedipus Rex is preferable because this effects pity and fear within the spectators. • Tragedy results in a catharsis (emotional cleansing) or healing for the audience through their experience of these emotions in response to the suffering of the characters in the drama.

• The structure of the best tragedy should be not simple but complex and one that represents incidents arousing fear and pity – for that is peculiar to this form of art. • This reversal of fortune must be caused by the tragic hero’s hamartia, which is often mistranslated as a character flaw, but is more correctly translated as a mistake (since the original Greek etymology traces back to hamartanein, a sporting term that refers to an archer or spear-thrower missing his target).

• The change to bad fortune which he undergoes is not due to any moral defect or flaw, but a mistake of some kind. • The reversal is the inevitable but unforeseen result of some action taken by the hero. • It is also a misconception that this reversal can be brought about by a higher power (e.g. the law, the gods, fate, or society), but it a character’s downfall is brought about by an external cause, Aristotle describes this as a misadventure and not a tragedy.

• In addition, the tragic hero may achieve some revelation or recognition (anagnorisis—”knowing again” or “knowing back” or “knowing throughout”) about human fate, destiny, and the will of the gods. Aristotle terms this sort of recognition “ a change from ignorance to awareness of a bond of love or hate.” • Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is admirable, complete (composed of a n introduction, a middle part and an ending), and possesses magnitude; in language made pleasurable, each of its species separated in different parts; performed by actors, not through narration; effecting through pity and fear the purification of such emotions.

Characteristics of Tragedy 1. Tragic Hero : almost always fundamentally good, a capable person, somehow humanly significant. First, he is almost never so evil in his principles or his behavior. Second, he is capable, powerful, clever enough, or determined enough. Third, he is significant – representing man kind in some way.

2. Tragic action (plot) : a causal series of events. The plot of tragedy, however, is clearly emphatically causal. The events move in a progression governed fundamentally and obviously by causation: the sequence of events is necessary, even inevitable, in the long run. This necessity is determined by a number of different kinds of things: by the character of the hero, circumstances, or forces peculiar to the particular hero.

3. Tragic Irony: • The overt expression of a contrast between appearances and reality; the opposite of what we mean in order to intensify our meaning, by inversion. • Blessings disguised as misfortune, apparent strokes of luck that turn out to be curses. • The story of a fundamentally admirable and competent who comes to grief; he seems destined to success but it is actually doomed to failure. • The hero inevitably acts rightly, does what he has to do, or feels that he is doing so, yet to no avail.

4. Tragic Flaw : • Flaw, error, or defect in the tragic hero which leads to the hero’s downfall. • Harmatia : error, frailty, mistaken judgment, or misstep through which the fortune of the hero of a tragedy are reversed. • Hubris or hybris : overweening pride which results in the misfortune of the protagonist. • Macbeth (excessive ambition); Hamlet( fatal indecision); King Lear (hubris)

5. Tragic Rhythm of Action : Purpose – Passion – perception • The spiritual content of the play is tragic action; it is in its essence zweideutig (ambivalent): triumph and destruction; darkness and enlightenment; mourning and rejoicing. • This movement constitutes the shape of the play as a whole; it is also the shape of each episode, each discussion between principals with the chorus following. • Poiema (purpose)- Pathema (suffering) – Mathema (perception)

Varying Conceptions of Tragedy • Classical Tragedy Hero : noble or royal blood (aristocracy) • Structure : fall from eminence to baseness; • Unities of action, time, and place • Cause of hero’s defeat : fate

• English Renaissance – Modern • Hero : a commoner (modern); • Miracle plays : the whole history of the world from creation to Doomsday. • Shakespeare’s play (A & C) : covers several years and switches from Rome to Egypt and back several times.

COMEDY