Drama and Theater

THE ORIGIN OF DRAMA

     Drama is generally defined as a literary composition meant to be enacted on the stage by actors before an audience. The term ‘drama’ is derived from the Greek word ‘dran’ which means ‘to act’ or ‘to do’. Aristotle’s “Poetics” deals with drama and dramatics. According to Aristotle, the aim of drama is to instruct and delight the spectators by the artistic representation of human emotions and passions. He says that drama is an imitation of human action.

THE ORIGIN OF DRAMA

     Drama originated in ancient Greece where ritualized dancing and singing were essential elements of daily life and culture. During the festivals of Dionysus, the god of nature, fertility and wine, there was much ritualized dancing and singing in groups around the altar of the God. Two types of plays originated from such celebrations. They are tragedy which represented the serious side and comedy which represented the lighter side of human life.

A SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLISH DRAMA

     In England drama originated from the religious performances of the middle Ages. Priests and monks enacted the roles of characters and plays were usually performed inside the church. The dialogue was in Latin. In due course, Latin was replaced by English and Performance began to be carried on outside the church, moving first into the churchyard and then into the streets. Gradually drama became popular. The plays produced by Trade Guilds on religious themes became popular as Miracle plays and Mystery Plays. Miracles plays dealt with the lives of saints and Mysteries have themes from the Bible. Morality plays were plays in which the characters represented abstract qualities. One could see virtue, ignorance, prudence and sloth as character on stage in a morality play. Interludes were the kind of play within the play i.e. a comic script in common topic introduced in the midst of a serious play. John Heywood wrote a play The Four P’s, which is a well-known example of an interlude. In this play a Pardoner, a Peddler, a Palmer, and apothecary are engaged in a comic dialogue.

     The classical revival of learning that took place during the Renaissance encouraged the performance of Greek and Latin plays in England.

Nicholas Udall’s ‘Ralph Roister Doister’ (1550) was the earliest English comedy. The works of Roman philosopher, Seneca were an important model for English tragedies in the 16th century. The first English tragedy, influenced by Seneca’s works, was ‘Gorbaduc ”or Ferrex and Porex(1561) written by Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton. Thomas Kyd wrote his famous melodrama “Spanish Tragedy’ on the theme of revenge, also influenced by Seneca. John Webster’s ‘The Duchess of Malfi’ bears the influence of Seneca. Christopher Marlow’s plays, ‘Tamburlaine’, ‘Doctor Faustus’, ‘the Jew of Malta’ and ‘Edward II’ depicts the Renaissance spirit with all its new aspirations, hopes, and adventure. The Senecan influence can be traced even in Shakespeare’s King Richard III, Hamlet and Macbeth. Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlow were popularly known as ‘the university wits’. They prepared the ground for Shakespeare. Ben Jonson was a famous writer of comedies during the Elizabethan age. Jonson’s comedies are popularly known as ‘comedy of humours’.

     The term ‘humour’ as used by Ben Jonson, is based on an ancient physiological theory of four fluids found in human body.  According to this theory there are four fluids in human body which determine a man’s temperament and mental state.  These four humours are: BLOOD, PHLEGM, CHOLER and MELANCHOLY.

     A normal man has these four humours in a balanced proportion.  But the excess of anyone of these humours makes him eccentric in one way or other.  He becomes abnormal and develops some kind of oddity in his temperament and behavior and thus becomes an object of fun and ridicule. “Volpone” is a fine example.

     The puritan attack on drama led to the closing down of all theatres in England in 1642 and this led to the steady decline of drama during this period. During the Restoration period (restoration of Monarchy in England in 1660) drama revived again.

     The Restoration plays were mainly comedies. They were modeled on the realistic comedies of Ben Jonson. They were known as comedy of manners. They portrayed the manners of the elites. Congreve’s ‘The way of the World’ and William Wycherley’s ‘The Country Wife’ are the best examples.

     The Victorian age saw the rise of a new kind of drama known as the problem plays. They dealt with contemporary social problems. The works of Henrik Ibsen and Emile François Zola belong to this category. Their works were realistic and naturalistic in spirit. Bernard Shaw was the advocate of the problem play in England. Current social political and religious issues found space in his plays. He employed drama as a medium for social betterment. Thus, Mrs. Warren’s Profession deals with the social and economic aspects of prostitution and Candida deal with issues related to women.  In the hands of John Galsworthy, drama became a powerful instrument for social criticism. Deeply sympathizing with the victims of social injustice the poor and down trodden, his plays like The Silver Box deals with the inequality of injustice; Strife portrays the struggle between Capital and Labour; and Justice deals with the cruelty of solitary confinement.

     The early decades of the 20th century witnessed the rise of poetic drama. This form was experimented by Oscar Wilde, W. B. Yeats, J. M. Synge, Sean o’ Casey, T.S. Eliot etc. Eliot’s play ‘Murder in the Cathedral’ showed the spirit of Greek Drama. The Irish Theatre Movement was initiated by the opening of the Abby Theatre in 1904 in which the plays of W. B. Yeats, J. M. Synge and Sean o’ Casey written in verse performed.

     The 1950s saw the rise of working class drama. They portrayed frustration and anger of the post-war period. John Osborne’s “Look Back in Anger’ portrays the angry young man.

     The existential world view shared by Nietzsche, Sartre and Albert Camus also revolutionized the concept of modern drama. The Theatre of the Absurd is a significant development in the English theatre.

The absurd play seeks to explore the spiritual loneliness, complete isolation and anxiety of the down and outs of society. Thus English drama continues to change, flourish and grow, and this despite the competition from the cinema and television, the work has been revolutionary and far reaching.

DRAMA AS A PERFORMING ART

      To perform means to act. Performance is the essence of all dramatic literature that distinguishes it from other literary forms. A dramatic text attains perfection through performance. In performance, a text progresses from situation to situation. However everything in a drama is bound by structural elements like acts and scenes. The various signs of drama are the language, the setting, the gestures, costumes, make-up, and voice inflation of the actors. A judicious combination of these elements contributes to the creation of meaning of a performance. Drama also incorporates other elements like painting, sculpture, architecture, and music.

DRAMA AND THEATER

     The word theatre has been derived from the Greek word, theatrons which means a place for viewing. It refers to the space used for a dramatic performance. It is a communal art involving the actors and the spectators alike. Theatre is a medium to entertain people. It portrays the conflicts and struggles of the times. It is also used as a means for propaganda.

     Theatres can be of different types. It can be a house or an open space. The earliest record of Greek theatre and drama dates from 500-400 BC. Thespis was the first actor playwright in Greece. He is supposed to have initiated the one-actor tradition in theatre performance. Early Greek performances were staged in huge amphitheaters situated in open areas. The audience sat on tires about 60 to 70 feet across around the stage. The theatre was rich in music, rituals and dance. Since there were no barriers between the actors and the audience, the actor-audience participation was high. There were only a few actors. The tragic actors wore masks, padded costumes and thick-soled high-heeled, laced shoes called buskins or cothurnus. The comic actors wore light-weight, low shoes, called socks. The masks prevented the actors from changing expressions and hence the actor’s facial expression remained unchanged throughout performance. The language was rhetorical and not conversational.

     In England, there was a time when plays were performed in the royal courts and the households of the elites. Due to the lack of permanent theatres, the players wandered from place to place performing in public places like markets or inn yards. Thus the theatres of Elizabethan England had a simple open structure.

     In the Elizabethan theatre, there was no front curtain and scenes followed without a break. There was no theatrical scenery and cards hung on pillars of the upper stage showed the scene of action. There were no footlights and performances took place during daylight. There were no women actors and the role of women was played by young boys.

     Modern theatre began to develop around the mid-nineteenth century England and culminated in the late nineteenth century European plays of Ibsen and Chekhov and also the realist plays that sprang after the World War II Emile Zola introduced realism in theatre, Brecht, the epic theatre and Beckett an anti-realistic theatre, expressing the existential predicament of modern man.

DRAMA AND SOCIETY

     Bernard Shaw regards social criticism as the most important function of all art. Bertolt Brecht insists that drama is not just an imitation of an action but a powerful tool for the determination of social conditions. Apart from providing entertainment, it can become a powerful instrument for effecting social change. A socially committed playwright can use drama as a power medium to explore social issues of his times and express them through personal or domestic conflict in his plays. The ancient Greek plays criticized the social and political issues taking themes of mythology. In the medieval age, drama was used to enact biblical stories and lives of the saints to teach morality.

     In the modern period, playwrights like Henric Ibsen and Strindberg discussed in their plays complex social issues. Ibsen’s ‘A Doll’s House’ reveals the playwright’s social concern, especially the status of women in a patriarchal society. Bernard Shaw was the advocate of the problem play in England. He employed drama as a medium for social betterment. In the hands of John Galsworthy, drama became a powerful instrument for social criticism.

     The early decades of the 20th century witnessed the rise of poetic drama. This form was experimented by Oscar Wilde, W. B. Yeats, J. M. Synge, Sean o’ Casey, T.S. Eliot etc. Eliot’s play ‘Murder in the Cathedral’ showed the spirit of Greek Drama. The 1950s saw the rise of working class drama. They portrayed frustration and anger of the post-war period. John Osborne’s “Look Back in Anger’ portrays the angry young man. The existential world view shared by Nietzsche, Sartre and Albert Camus also revolutionized the concept of modern drama. The Theatre of the Absurd is a significant development in the English theatre.

     The absurd play seeks to explore the spiritual loneliness, complete isolation and anxiety of the down and outs of society. In the postmodern period, drama becomes a powerful medium to expose and criticize the demoralized and disintegrated modern society. These plays project a sense of alienation frustration and hopelessness of modern man drifting from nothingness to nothingness.

(This note completely prepared based on Calicut University text book and study materials)