HISTORY OF DRAMALearning Target: To understand the conventions of drama for each era. To understand the definitions and functions

of tragedy and comedy

CLASSICALMEDIEVAL

RENAISSANCENEOCLASSIC/MODERN

CLASSICAL DRAMA• Peak during

5th century• Athens was

home of drama

• City Dionysus

CITY DIONYSUS• Festival honors

Dionysus• March or April• Dramatic

competition• Celebrate civic

pride• Tragedy,

Comedy

CLASSICAL STAGE•ORCHESTRA•THEATRON•SKENE•CHORUS•MASKS

CLASSICAL STAGE

Suggestions

• Lysistrata

• Agamemnon

• Medea

• Antigone

• The Trojan Women

MEDIEVAL DRAMA

• Peak during 14th and 15th century• No permanent theater• Reenactments of Bible stories,

stories of saints, celebrations of holy days

• Productions moved from churches to outside community productions

MEDIEVAL STAGE• Fixed or movable platform

• Mansion – main stage

MEDIEVAL PLAYS

•Cycle plays•Miracle Plays•Morality Plays•The Second Shepherd’s Play•Everyman

RENAISSANCE THEATER

• First permanent theater built in 1576 – The Theater

• The greatest period of drama since Greeks

• Professional troupes of players• Shakespeare greatest

playwright

RENAISSANCE DRAMA• CHANGES in

staging: a building, professional actors, support of monarchy, inventive drama

• Yard, stage, gallery, few props, close contact between audience/actors

RENAISSANCE STAGE

Suggestions

• Dr. Faustus

• Twelfth Night

• A Midsummer Night’s Dream

• As You Like It

• Much Ado About Nothing

• Othello

NEOCLASSIC/MODERN DRAMA

• At beginning, theaters more intimate – 700

• Puritan influence• Development of satire, comedy of

manners, domestic topics• Reflect current culture and comment

on it• Productions more refined, more

elaborate

NEOCLASSIC/MODERN STAGE

Proscenium archPit in front of

stageLighting changesUse of a backstage

areaActors wardrobesActing trendsArchitectural

changes

NEOCLASSIC/MODERN DRAMA

• PURITAN• Satire• Sentimental

Romances• Moral domestic plays• NEOCLASSIC• Social commentary• Comedy of Manners

• REALISM• Stage mimic real life

or aspects of life• REACTION

AGAINST REALISM

• Surrealism• Symbolism• Expressionism• Theater of the Absurd

Suggestions• Death of Salesman

• Wilde – Lady Windemere’s Fan, A Woman of No Importance

• Six Degrees of Separation

• Eugene O’Neill – Anna Christie, The Hairy Ape

• Wendy Wasserstein – The Sisters Rosensweig, The Heidi Chronicles, Isn’t It Romantic

• Neil Simon – Brighton Beach Memoirs, The Goodbye Girl, Lost in Yonkers – and so many more

• Cyrano De Bergerac

• The Real Thing – Stoppard

• Waiting for Godot

• Love Letters

COMEDY• DEFINITION –A comedy is a play

that is initiated through a potentially catastrophic event that creates chaos for the characters in the play, but it ends happily with a healthy, amicable armistice between the protagonist and society.

COMEDY

• PURPOSE – To amuse and to expose human folly.

TYPES OF COMEDY

• POPULAR – slapstick, sight gags, shock value

• PASTORAL – idyllic, idealized version of country life, romance

• NEW COMEDY – focus on ordinary person and ups and downs of life, insight into human nature

CHARACTERISTICS OF COMEDY

MULTIPLE PLOTS

MISUNDER-STANDINGS

SATIRE

LOVE – Often source of conflict, plot, theme

IMAGERY – Significant, especially with Classical and Shakesperean

PURSUIT OF WRONG VALUE; QUEST

POTENTIAL TRAGEDY

MULTIPLE LEVELS OF HUMOR

DECEIVING APPEARANCES

MAN TO ASS REESTABLISH HARMONYat end

MORE CHARACTERS

STUDY OF COMEDY

• Look for characteristics of comedy in the what you study.

• Consider type(s) of comedy for each.• Think about staging the play.• Apply what you know about drama,

tragedies, and comedies to what we read and what you study independently.

TRAGEDY …presents courageous individuals who

confront powerful forces within or outside themselves with a dignity that reveals the breadth and depth of the human spirit in the face of failure,

defeat, and even death. The action of a tragedy is focused on a difficult time in the hero’s life when decisions or actions

cause chaos and only through the protagonist’s fall can the world of the

tragedy be righted again.

ARISTOTLE’S DEFINITION• “An imitation of an action that is

serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artful ornament, the several kinds begin found in separate parts of the play, in the form of action, not of narration; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these and similar emotions.”

TRAGEDY

• The purpose of a tragedy is to engender catharsis in the audience by their experience of emotions for the major character and his/her situation and errors. Thus, by viewing the play, the audience is purged of these negative emotions.

TRAGEDY• Tragic hero

Great person, extraordinary

Fate of state Fall is result of a flaw or

misunderstanding or underestimation

Great but humanEncounter with failure

allows hero to display greatness

Fall results in reversal

TragedySerious actionDramatic -often poetic

languageUse of images,

symbols, stock characters, irony, archetypes

Resolution will include “end” of tragic hero and reestablishing of order

STUDY OF TRAGEDY

• Look for characteristics of tragedy

• Consider elements and the definition of tragedy

• Think about staging the play.

• Apply what you know about drama, tragedies, and comedies

… and so begins our study of drama

First, we will consider poor Oedipus…