Literary Criticism: Drama

Drama is the form of composition designed for performance. Play is its common alternative name. If the dialogue in a drama is written in verse, it is called poetic drama. If it is in prose, then it is called closet drama. There are different types of dramas. Some of them follow.
1. The theatre of the absurd: The term absurd literature is applied to a number of works in drama and prose fiction. According to the literature of absurd, human condition is essentially and ineradicably absurd. This condition can only be presented through a literature that are themselves absurd. The literature has its roots also in the movements of expressionism and surrealism. It emerged in France as a rebellion against essential beliefs and values, both of traditional culture and traditional literature. The movement is also influenced by the existential philosophy brought forward by Sartre, Camus etc. Samuel Beckett is one of the most eminent and influential writers in this mode. His plays projected the irrationalism, helplessness, and absurdity of life. Their dramatic form rejects realistic settings, logical reasoning and even a plot. For example, in his play, “Waiting for Godot”, two tramps wait for an unidentified person, Godot (who may or may not exist), fruitlessly and aimlessly. The whole play is an echo of the remarks of one of these tramps, “nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it’s awful”. The plays is absurd, as most of his works.
2. Chronicle plays: were dramatic works based on the historical materials in the English “Chronicles” by Raphael Holinshed and others. The early chronicle plays presented a loosely knit series of events. Christopher Marlowe’s “Edward II” is however a well composed, unified drama of character.
3. Comedy: is the term customarily applied only to plays for the stage or to motion pictures. Within the very broad spectrum of dramatic comedy, the following are frequently distinguished:
a. Romantic comedy: represents a love affair that involves a beautiful and engaging heroine. The course of this love does not run smooth, yet overcomes all difficulties to end in a happy union. E.g. Shakespeare’s “As You Like It”.
b. Satiric Comedy: ridicules political policies or philosophical doctrines. It may also contain an attack against the violators of social orders. An example for satiric or corrective comedy is Ben Jonson’s “Volpone” and “The Alchemist”.
c. The comedy of manners: was originated in the New Comedy of the Greek Menander and was developed by the Roman dramatists in the III and II centuries B.C. It is distinguished from the Old Comedy represented by Aristophanes. The English comedy of manners was early exemplified by Shakespeare’s “Love’s Labour’s Lost”.
d. Farce: is a type of comedy designed to provoke audience to simple, hearty, laughter. It employs highly exaggerated, caricatured types characters. Farce is component in the comic episodes in medieval miracle plays and constituted the matter of the Italian commedia dell’arte in the Renaissance.
e. High comedy: evokes intellectual (thoughtful) laughter, where as Low comedy has little or no intellectual appeal.
4. Comedy of Humours: was developed by Ben Jonson, the Elizabethan playwright. It was based on the ancient theory of four humours. The “humours” were held to be the four primary fluids – blood, phlegm, choler (or yellow bile), and melancholy (or black bile). An imbalance of one or another humour in a temperament was said to produce four kinds of dispositions – sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric, and melancholic.
5. Commedia dell’arte: a form of comic drama developed about the mid sixteenth century by a set of professional Italian actors.
6. Drama of sensibility: or sentimental comedy belongs to a type of literature that was developed as a reaction against seventeenth-century Stoicism, and against Thomas Hobbes’ claims in “Leviathan” that human being is innately selfish. Example is Richard Steele’s “The Conscious Lovers”.
7. Epic Theatre: is the term used by Bertolt Brecht to classify his plays. By this term Brecht signified (1) his attempt to emulate on the stage the objectivity of epic narrative; (2) his aim to prevent the spectator’s involvement with the characters and their actions; (3) to encourage the spectators to criticize the social conditions that the play represents.
8. Expressionism:
9. Folk drama: originated in primitive rites of songs and dance, especially in connection with agricultural activities. It is maintained the Greek tragedy was developed from such rites. Folk dramas survive in England in such forms as the St. George play and the “mummers’ play” (a mummer is a masked actor)
10. Masque: was an elaborate form of court entertainment that combined poetic drama, music, song, dance, splendid costuming and stage spectacle. A plot served to hold together these diverse elements. The speaking characters, who wore masks, were often played by amateurs who belonged to courtly society. Its origin was in renaissance Italy. It became well popular in England in the early 17th century.
11. Melodrama: is a term derived from the Greek word “Melos” which means song. The term was originally applied to all musical plays, including opera. Now, the term “melodrama” is often applied to some of the typical plays that were written to be produced to musical accompaniment. The Victorian melodrama has a relation to tragedy similar to the relation of farce to comedy. Typically, the protagonists will be flat types: the hero great-hearted, the heroine as pure as the driven snow, and the villain a monster of malignity. In an extended sense, the term “melodrama” is also applied to any literary work or episode that relies on implausible events and sensational action.
12. Miracle plays: deals with a subject which consists of a story from the Bible, or the life and martyrdom of a saint. However, some historians records miracle plays as dramas based on saint’s lives. They use the term “mystery plays” to dramas based on the Old and New Testaments.
13. Morality plays: were dramatized allegories of the representative Christian life in the plot form of a quest for salvation. The crucial events such as temptations, sinning, and the climactic confrontation with death were dealt as their theme. The usual protagonist represents Mankind, or Everyman. Among the other characters are personifications of virtues, vices, Death, etc.
14. Interlude: is a term applied to a variety of short stage entertainments. The term is derived from Latin, which means “between the play”. In the late 15th and early 16th centuries, these little dramas were performed by bands of professional actors.
The following are the feature of drama.
1. Act: is a major division in the action of a play. Such a division was introduced into England by Elizabethan dramatists, who imitated ancient Roman plays. Acts are often subdivided into scenes. In modern plays, a scene consists of units of action. In the conventional theater with a proscenium arch that frames the front of the stage, the end of a scene is usually indicated by a dropped curtain. (In a theatre in the round, there will be no walls) The end of an act is indicated by a dropped curtain and an intermission.
2. Atmosphere: is the emotionality pervading a literary work. It fosters the reader expectations as to the course of events, whether happy of terrifying or disastrous.
3. Character and characterization: Characters are the persons presented in a dramatic work. The reader interprets them from their dialogues, or action. A character may remain essentially “stable”, or changed in outlook and disposition, from beginning to end of a work.
4. Deus ex Machina: is any forced and improbable device by which the plot is resolved. E.g. a birth mark, an unexpected inheritance, the discovery of a lost will or letter etc. The term is derived from Latin which means “a god from a machine”. In the end of some of the Greek plays, a god was lowered to the stage by a mechanical apparatus, and by his judgement and commands, solved the problems of the human character.
5. Plot: in a drama includes a set of events and actions in order to achieve particular emotional and artistic effects. The actions are performed by the characters, through which the reveal their moral and dispositional qualities. Thus, plot and character are interdependent critical concepts. The chief character in a work is called the protagonist. If he/she is pitted against an important opponent, the character is called the antagonist. There are a great variety of plot forms. For example, some plots are designed to achieve tragic effects, and others to achieve the effects of comedy, romance, satire, or of some other genre.
6. Proscenium arch:
7. Setting: The overall setting of a dramatic work is the general locale, historical time and social circumstances in which its action occurs. The setting of a single episode or scene within a work is the particular physical location in which it takes place. E.g. The general setting of Macbeth is medieval Scotland, and the setting for the particular scene in which Macbeth comes upon the witches is a blasted heath.
8. Theatre in the round:
9. Three unities: The unity of action, the unity of place and the unity of time are the three unities. It was the critics of the drama in Italy and France who co-ordinated the three unities combining Aristotle’s “unity of action” with the other two.