DEFINE DRAMA
1. A composition in prose or verse presenting in dialogue or pantomime a story involving conflict or contrast of character, especially one intended to be acted on the stage; a play.
2. The branch of literature having such compositions as its subject; dramatic art or representation.
3. The art dealing with the writing and production of plays.
4. Any situation or series of events having vivid, emotional, conflicting, or striking interest or results.
A composition in prose or verse presenting in dialogue or pantomime(a funny musical play based on traditional children's stories, performed especially at Christmas ) a story involving various characters, usually intended to be acted on a stage and to be regarded as a form of entertainment.
Drama is an art of writing which can be personified, leading to the climax through series of events; dialogues are also presented between the characters. Here are some critical comments of some famous critics:
A play ought to be a just and lively image of human nature, representing its passions and humors, and the changes of fortune to which it is subject for the delight and instruction of mankind… John Dryden
The business of plays is to recommend virtue, and discountenance vice; to show the uncertainty of human greatness, the sudden turns of fate, and the unhappy conclusions of violence and injustice, it is to expose the singularities of pride and fancy, to make folly and falsehood contemptible, and to bring everything that is ill under infamy and neglect……. Jeremy Collier
Different Types of Drama
The symbol of drama, the laughing and weeping masks, represent the two main types of drama, comedy and tragedy. Within those categories lie the many forms of drama that entertain people today.
Comedy when we talk about comedy, we usually refer to plays that are light in tone, and that typically have happy endings. The intent of a comedic play is to make the audience laugh. In modern theater, there are many different styles of comedy, ranging from realistic stories, where the humor is derived from real-life situations, to outrageous slapstick humor.
Tragedy Tragedy is one of the oldest forms of drama; however, its meaning has changed since the earliest days of staged plays. In ancient times, a tragedy was often an historical dramas featuring the downfall of a great man. In modern theater, the definition is a bit looser. Tragedy usually involves serious subject matter and the death of one or more main characters. These plays rarely have a happy ending.
Farce Farce is a sub-category of comedy, characterized by greatly exaggerated characters and situations. Characters tend to be one-dimensional and often follow stereotypical behavior. Farces typically involve mistaken identities, lots of physical comedy and outrageous plot twists.
Melodrama Melodrama is another type of exaggerated drama. As in farce, the characters tend to be simplified and one-dimensional. The formulaic storyline of the classic melodrama typically involves a villain a heroine, and a hero who must rescue the heroine from the villain.
Musical In musical theater, the story is told not only through dialogue and acting but through music and dance. Musicals are often comedic, although many do involve serious subject matter. Most involve a large cast and lavish sets and costumes.
Tragedy
Aristotle defined tragedy in a comprehensive way. According to him, “Tragedy is a representative action, which is serious, complete in itself, and of a certain length; it is expressed in speech made beautiful ways in different parts of the play, it is acted, not narrated and by exciting pity and fear, it gives a healthy relief to such emotions.”
He has defined logically firstly what tragedy is and what it represents. Secondly, the form it employs is closely elaborated by him. Thirdly, he mentions the manner in which it is communicated, and lastly the function it fulfills.
“A tragedy is the imitation of an action that is serious and also as having magnitude, complete, in itself; in language with pleasurable accessories; each kind brought in separately in the parts of the work; in a dramatic, not in a narrative form; with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish the catharsis of such emotions.”
Comedy Comedy is a story of various habits and customs of public and private affairs, from which one may learn what is of use in life and what must be avoided. _ Aelius Donatus
Comedy is the mirror of everyday life. … Livius Andronicus
Comedy is an imitation of life, a mirror of customs, an image of truth. ……_ Cicero
Tragi-Comedy The fusion of tragedy and comedy, having significant elements as mixture of sorrows, romances, sufferings, forgiveness and reconciliation is called a tragic-comedy.
Tragic Hero
Aristotle defines the tragic hero in his own words, “There remains, then the intermediate kind of personage, a man not pre-eminently virtuous and just, whose misfortune, however is brought upon him not by vice and depravity but by some error of judgment, of the member of those in the enjoyment of great reputation and prosperity.”
“The tragic hero will most effectively arouse pity and fear, if he is neither thoroughly good nor thoroughly evil but a man likes any of us, though the tragic effect will be stronger if he rather better than most of us. Such man is exhibited as suffering or change in fortune from happiness to misery because of mistaken act due to his Hamartia___that is his tragic flow or tragic error in judgment.”
Plot of Tragedy
The plot of tragedy has three characteristics according to Aristotle, “It must be of certain size, secondly it must be of a certain structure, finally, the most important thing is that it is the soul of drama.”
It means that it must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. “A beginning is a situation which has definite consequences, though not very obvious causes, a middle is a situation with both causes and consequences; and an end is the result of the middle but creates no further situation in its turn.”
The Opening Scenes contain the exposition of the subject. In other words, we are introduced to the principal characters, their stations in life, their viewpoints and interests. We are put in touch with their affairs at the time when the play opens and enough of the story is conveyed to us to stir up our curiosity and to enable us to understand the later parts of the play.
The Middle Part, the next step is called the growth or development of the plot towards the climax. The part of the action of this phase is the “Tying of Knot”. The different motives and interests of the leading characters become involved. Then the complicated situation arises. As the story develops, the suspense and interest of the audience are aroused more and more until we reach a turning point which is called as the climax or crisis. Till this point, the actionmovement has been an ascending one. It now begins to descend. After the turning point has been reached there begins what is known as denouement i.e. the “Untying of Knot”. The Denouement (deɪˈnuː.mɒ ) or resolution must proceed rapidly in order to keep alive the interest of the spectators and not to wear their patience. What is more important, it should proceed naturally from antecedent actions.
The final phase of the structure of tragedy is called Catastrophe that is in the case of tragedy, there is the unhappy ending and in the case of the comedy, there is the union of hero and heroine. It is very essential that the Catastrophe must be very simple. It must depend on few events and few passions. It must be brought about by probable and natural means. Thus in the development of the structure of a tragedy, there are five parts namely, the exposition, the complication, the climax, the denouement and the catastrophe.
Catharsis
The catharsis implies not only an emotional relief but a refining or clarifying of emotion. “Apply this to tragedy; we observe that the feelings of hate and fear in real life contain morbid and disturbing elements. In the process of tragic excitation, they find relief, and the morbid element is thrown off. As the tragic action progresses when the tumult of the mind, first roused, has afterwards subsided, the lower forms of the emotions are found to have been transmuted into higher and more refined forms. The painful elements in the pity and fear of reality are purged away; the emotions themselves are purged. The curative and tranquilizing influence that tragedy exercises follows as an immediate accompaniment of the transformation of the feelings. Tragedy then does more than homeopathetic cure of certain passions. Its function on this view is not merely to provide an outlet for pity and fear but to provide for them a distinctively aesthetic satisfaction, to purify and clarify them by passing them through the medium of art.”
Chorus
The chorus is a noteworthy element in Greek Tragedy. It consists of a group of actions whose aim is to report what happened off the stage and to make such moral comments from time to time, as would be desired effects. It is sometimes an integral part of the plot.
Elements of Drama
Character:- Most simply a character is one of the persons who appear in the play, one of the dramatic personae (literally, the persons of the play). In another sense of the term, the treatment of the character is the basic part of the playwright's work.
Plot:- The interest generated by the plot varies for different kinds of plays. (See fiction elements on plot for more information regarding plot.) The plot is usually structured with acts and scenes. Open conflict plays: rely on the suspense of a struggle in which the hero, through perhaps fight against all odds, is not doomed. Dramatic thesis: foreshadowing, in the form of ominous hints or symbolic incidents, conditions the audience to expect certain logical developments. Coincidence: sudden reversal of fortune plays depict climatic ironies or misunderstandings. Dramatic irony: the fulfillment of a plan, action, or expectation in a surprising way, often opposite of what was intended.
Theme :-The plot has been called the body of a play and the theme has been called its soul. Most plays have a conflict of some kind between individuals, between man and society, man and some superior force or man and himself. The events that this conflict provokes make up the plot. One of the first items of interest is the playwright\quote s treatment of the plot and what them he would draw from it. The same plots have been and will be used many times; it is the treatment that supplies each effort with originality or artistic worth. Shakespeare is said to have borrowed all but one of his stories, but he presented them so much better than any of the previous authors that he is not seriously criticized for the borrowing. Th e treatment of theme is equally varied.
Dialogue:- Dialogue provides the substance of a play. Each word uttered by the character furthers the business of the play, contributes to its effect as a whole. Therefore, a sense of DECORUM must be established by the characters, ie., what is said is appropriate to the role and situation of a character. Also the exposition of the play often falls on the dialogue of the characters. Remember exposition establishes the relationships, tensions or conflicts from which later plot developments derive.
Convention:- The means the playwright employs are determined at least in part by dramatic convention. Greek: Playwrights of this era often worked with familiar story material, legend about gods and famous families that the audience was familiar with. Since the audience was familiar with certain aspects of these, the playwrights used allusion rather than explicit exposition. In representing action, they often relied on messengers to report off-stage action. For interpretation the Greeks relied on the CHORUS, a body of onlookers, usually citizens or elders, whose comments on the play reflected reactions common to the community. These plays were written in metered verse arranged in elaborate stanzas. This required intense attention from the audience.
Genre:- Genre is a term that describes works of literature according to their shared thematic or structural characteristics. The attempt to classify literature in this way was initiated by Aristotle in the Poetics, where he distinguishes tragedy, epic, and comedy and recognizes even more fundamental distinctions between drama, epic, and lyric poetry.
Audience :- It is the act or chance of hearing; a reception by a great person; the person to hear. Playhouse, script, actors, audience are inseparable parts of the theatre. The concept of drama put forward in this book insists that the audience have an indispensable role to play. While Stanislavsky is right in saying that 'spectator come to the theatre to hear the subtext. They can read the text at home; he is speaking as a man of the nineteenth century. We do not go to the play merely to have the text interpreted and explained by the skills of the director and his actor. We do not go as in a learning situation, but to share in a partnership without which the players cannot work.
Analysis of Major Characters
Romeo
The name Romeo, in popular culture, has become nearly synonymous with “lover.” Romeo, in Romeo and Juliet, does indeed experience a love of such purity and passion that he kills himself when he believes that the object of his love, Juliet, has died. The power of Romeo’s love, however, often obscures a clear vision of Romeo’s character, which is far more complex.
Even Romeo’s relation to love is not so simple. At the beginning of the play, Romeo pines for Rosaline, proclaiming her the paragon of women and despairing at her indifference toward him. Taken together, Romeo’s Rosaline-induced histrionics seem rather juvenile. Romeo is a great reader of love poetry, and the portrayal of his love for Rosaline suggests he is trying to re-create the feelings that he has read about. After first kissing Juliet, she tells him “you kiss by th’ book,” meaning that he kisses according to the rules, and implying that while proficient, his kissing lacks originality (1.5.107). In reference to Rosaline, it seems, Romeo loves by the book. Rosaline, of course, slips from Romeo’s mind at first sight of Juliet. But Juliet is no mere replacement. The love she shares with Romeo is far deeper, more authentic and unique than the clichéd puppy love Romeo felt for Rosaline. Romeo’s love matures over the course of the play from the shallow desire to be in love to a profound and intense passion. One must ascribe Romeo’s development at least in part to Juliet. Her level-headed observations, such as the one about Romeo’s kissing, seem just the thing to snap Romeo from his superficial idea of love and to inspire him to begin to speak some of the most beautiful and intense love poetry ever written.
Yet Romeo’s deep capacity for love is merely a part of his larger capacity for intense feeling of all kinds. Put another way, it is possible to describe Romeo as lacking the capacity for moderation. Love compels him to sneak into the garden of his enemy’s daughter, risking death simply to catch a glimpse of her. Anger compels him to kill his wife’s cousin in a reckless duel to avenge the death of his friend. Despair compels him to suicide upon hearing of Juliet’s death. Such extreme behavior dominates Romeo’s character throughout the play and contributes to the ultimate tragedy that befalls the lovers. Had Romeo restrained himself from killing Tybalt, or waited even one day before killing himself after hearing the news of Juliet’s death, matters might have ended happily. Of course, though, had Romeo not had such depths of feeling, the love he shared with Juliet would never have existed in the first place.
Among his friends, especially while bantering with Mercutio, Romeo shows glimpses of his social persona. He is intelligent, quick-witted, fond of verbal jousting (particularly about sex), loyal, and unafraid of danger.
Juliet
Having not reached her fourteenth birthday, Juliet is of an age that stands on the border between immaturity and maturity. At the play’s beginning however she seems merely an obedient, sheltered, naïve child. Though many girls her age—including her mother—get married, Juliet has not given the subject any thought. When Lady Capulet mentions Paris’s interest in marrying Juliet, Juliet dutifully responds that she will try to see if she can love him, a response that seems childish in its obedience and in its immature conception of love. Juliet seems to have no friends her own age, and she is not comfortable talking about sex (as seen in her discomfort when the Nurse goes on and on about a sexual joke at Juliet’s expense in Act 1, scene 3).
Juliet gives glimpses of her determination, strength, and sober-mindedness, in her earliest scenes, and offers a preview of the woman she will become during the four-day span of Romeo and Juliet. While Lady Capulet proves unable to quiet the Nurse, Juliet succeeds with one word (also in Act 1, scene 3). In addition, even in Juliet’s dutiful acquiescence to try to love Paris, there is some seed of steely determination. Juliet promises to consider Paris as a possible husband to the precise degree her mother desires. While an outward show of obedience, such a statement can also be read as a refusal through passivity. Juliet will accede to her mother’s wishes, but she will not go out of her way to fall in love with Paris.
Juliet’s first meeting with Romeo propels her full-force toward adulthood. Though profoundly in love with him, Juliet is able to see and criticize Romeo’s rash decisions and his tendency to romanticize things. After Romeo kills Tybalt and is banished, Juliet does not follow him blindly. She makes a logical and heartfelt decision that her loyalty and love for Romeo must be her guiding priorities. Essentially, Juliet cuts herself loose from her prior social moorings—her nurse, her parents, and her social position in Verona—in order to try to reunite with Romeo. When she wakes in the tomb to find Romeo dead, she does not kill herself out of feminine weakness, but rather out of an intensity of love, just as Romeo did. Juliet’s suicide actually requires more nerve than Romeo’s: while he swallows poison, she stabs herself through the heart with a dagger.
Juliet’s development from a wide-eyed girl into a self-assured, loyal, and capable woman is one of Shakespeare’s early triumphs of characterization. It also marks one of his most confident and rounded treatments of a female character.
Friar Lawrence
Friar Lawrence occupies a strange position in Romeo and Juliet. He is a kindhearted cleric who helps Romeo and Juliet throughout the play. He performs their marriage and gives generally good advice, especially in regard to the need for moderation. He is the sole figure of religion in the play. But Friar Lawrence is also the most scheming and political of characters in the play: he marries Romeo and Juliet as part of a plan to end the civil strife in Verona; he spirits Romeo into Juliet’s room and then out of Verona; he devises the plan to reunite Romeo and Juliet through the deceptive ruse of a sleeping potion that seems to arise from almost mystic knowledge. This mystical knowledge seems out of place for a Catholic friar; why does he have such knowledge, and what could such knowledge mean? The answers are not clear. In addition, though Friar Lawrence’s plans all seem well conceived and well intentioned, they serve as the main mechanisms through which the fated tragedy of the play occurs. Readers should recognize that the Friar is not only subject to the fate that dominates the play—in many ways he brings that fate about.
Mercutio
With a lightning-quick wit and a clever mind, Mercutio is a scene stealer and one of the most memorable characters in all of Shakespeare’s works. Though he constantly puns, jokes, and teases—sometimes in fun, sometimes with bitterness—Mercutio is not a mere jester or prankster. With his wild words, Mercutio punctures the romantic sentiments and blind self-love that exist within the play. He mocks Romeos self-indulgence just as he ridicules Tybalt’s hauteur and adherence to fashion. The critic Stephen Greenblatt describes Mercutio as a force within the play that functions to deflate the possibility of romantic love and the power of tragic fate. Unlike the other characters who blame their deaths on fate, Mercutio dies cursing all Montagues and Capulets. Mercutio believes that specific people are responsible for his death rather than some external impersonal force.
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