SCHOOL OF DISTANCE EDUCATION - University of Calicut

1 READING DRAMABA ENGLISHV SEMESTER(2011 ADMISSION)III SEMESTER (2012 ADMISSION)CORE COURSEUNIVERSITY OF CALICUTSCHOOL OF DISTANCE EDUCATIONCALICUT University MALAPPURAM,KERALA, INDIA-673 635162 SCHOOL OF DISTANCE EDUCATIONREADING DRAMAPage2 University OF CALICUTSCHOOL OF DISTANCE EDUCATIONSTUDY MATERIALBAENGLISHV SEMESTER(2011 ADMISSION)III SEMESTER (2012 ADMISSION)CORE COURSEREADING DRAMAPREPAREDBY:Sri. Sreekumar .P.,Lecturer in English,S V College of Advanced Studies,Cheruvannur, :Dr. Sajitha . Professor,Department of English,Farook College, :COMPUTER CELL, SDE(c)ReservedSCHOOL OF DISTANCE EDUCATIONREADING DRAMAPage3 CONTENTSMODULE I: DRAMA AND isDrama?*The Origin ofdrama*A short history of Englishdrama*Drama asaperformingart*Drama andtheatre*Drama of Theatre*Theatre of the absurd*The epic theatre*Street theatre*The theatre of cruelty*The poor theatre*Feminist theatre*Ritualistic theatre* of Drama*Tragedy*Comedy* Tragi-comedy* Farce*Melodrama*Masque*One-Actplay*The Dramatic Drama*setting*plot*Character* Structure* Style*Theme*Audience*DialogueMODULE II: TWO Doll s House to the Sea by John Millington SyngeMODULE III: WILLIAM OF DISTANCE EDUCATIONREADING DRAMAPage4 SCHOOL OF DISTANCE EDUCATIONREADING DRAMAPage5 MODULE I: DRAMA AND ISDRAMA?

2 THE ORIGIN OF DRAMAD rama is a literary composition meant to be staged. The term drama is derivedfrom the Greek word dran which means to act .Aristotle s Poetics deals with dramatics. According to Aristotle, the aim of dramais to instruct and delight the spectators. He says that drama is an imitation of human ORIGIN OF originated in ancient Greece. During the festivals of Dionysus (the god ofnature, fertility and wine), there was much ritualized dancing and singing. Two types ofplays originated from such are tragedy which represented the seriousside and comedy which represented the lighter sideof human SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLISH England drama originated from the religious performances of the Middle roles of characters and Plays were usually performed inside the dialogue was in Latin.

3 In due course, Latinwas replacedby English and Performancebegan to be carried on outside the church. Gradually drama became popular. The playsproduced by Trade Guilds on religious themes became popular as Mystery Plays andMiracleplays. Mysteries have themes from the Bible and the Miracles dealt with the livesof saints. Morality plays were plays in which the characters represented abstract were the kind of play within the play a comic script in common topicintroduced in the midst of a serious Udall s Ralph Roister Doister (1550) wasthe earliest English ofRoman philosopher, Seneca were an important model for English tragedies inthe 16thcentury. The first English tragedywas Gorbaduc or Ferrex and Porex(1561)written by Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton.

4 Thomas Kyd wrote his famousmelodrama SpanishTragedy . It is a revenge tragedy. John Webster s The Duchess ofMalfi bearsthe influence of Seneca. Christopher Marlow s plays, Tamburlaine , DoctorFaustus the Jew of Malta and Edward II depicts the Renaissance spirit. The Senecaninfluence can be traced even in Shakespeare s King Richard III, Hamlet and and Christopher Marlow were popularly known as the University wits . Theyprepared the ground for Jonson was a famous writer of comedies duringthe Elizabethan age. Jonson s comedies are popularly known as comedy of humours .They represented the eccentricities of characters. Volpone is a fine OF DISTANCE EDUCATIONREADING DRAMAPage6 The puritan attack on drama led to the closing down of all theatres in England in1642 and this led to the steady decline of drama during this period.

5 During the Restorationperiod (restoration of Monarchy in England in 1660) drama revived again. The Restorationplayswere mainly comedies. They were modeled on the realistic comedies of Ben were known as comedy of manners. They portrayed the manners of the s The way of the World and William Wycherley s The Country Wife are thebest Victorian age saw the rise of problem plays. They dealt with contemporarysocial problems. The works of HenrikIbsen and Emile Fran ois Zola belong to thiscategory. Their works were realistic and naturalistic in spirit. Bernard Shaw was theadvocate of the problem play inEngland. He employed drama as a medium for socialbetterment. In the hands of John Galsworthy, dramabecame a powerful instrument forsocial early decades of the 20thcentury witnessed the rise of poetic drama.

6 This formwas experimented by Oscar Wilde, W. B. Yeats, J. M. Synge, Sean o Casey, Eliot s play Murder in the Cathedral showed the spirit of Greek Drama. The 1950s sawthe rise of working class drama. They portrayedfrustration and anger of the post-warperiod. John Osborne s Look Back in Anger portrays the angry young man. Theexistential world view shared by Nietzsche, Sartre and Albert Camus also revolutionizedthe concept of modern drama. The Theatre of the Absurd is a significant development inthe English absurd play seeks to explore the spiritual loneliness, complete isolation andanxiety of the down and outs of English drama continues to change, flourish and grow, and this despite thecompetitionfrom the cinema and television, the work has been revolutionary and AS A PERFORMINGARTP erformance is the essence of all dramatic literature.

7 A dramatic text attainsperfection through performance. In performance, a text progresses from situation tosituation. However everything in a drama is bound by structural elements like acts andscenes. The various signs of drama are the language, the setting, the gestures, costumes,make-up, and voice inflations of the actors. A judicious combination of these elementscontributes to the creation of meaning of a performance. Drama also incorporates otherelements like painting, sculpture, architecture, and AND THEATREThe word theatre has been derived from the Greek word, theatronswhich means aplace for viewing. It refers to the space used for a dramatic performance. Theatre is a formof self-expression and self-realization. It is a communal art involving the actors and thespectators alike.

8 Theatre is a medium to entertain people. It portrays the conflicts andstruggles of the times. It is also used as a means for OF DISTANCE EDUCATIONREADING DRAMAPage7 Theatres can be of different types. It can be a house or an open space. Thespis wasthe first actor playwright in Greece. He is supposed to have initiated the one-actor traditionin theatre Greek performances were staged in huge amphitheaterssituated in open areas. The audience sat on tires about 60 to 70 feet across around the theatre was rich in music, rituals and dance. Since therewere no barriersbetween theactors and the audience, the actor-audience participation was high. There were only a fewactors. The tragic actorswore masks, padded costumesand thick, highheeledshoes. Thecomic actors wore light-weight, low shoes.

9 The masks prevented the actors from changingexpressions and hence the actor s facial expression remained unchanged England, there was a time when plays were performed in the royal courts and thehouseholds of theelites. Due to the lack of permanent theatres, the players wandered fromplace to place performing in public places. Thus the theatres of Elizabethan England had asimple open the Elizabethan theatre, there was no front curtain and scenes followed without abreak. There was no theatrical scenery and cards hung on pillars of the upper stage showedthe scene of action. There were no footlights and performances took place during were no women actors and the role of women was played by young theatre began to develop around the mid-nineteenth century England andculminated in the late nineteenth century European plays of Ibsen andChekhovand also therealist 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 existentialpredicament of modern AND SOCIETY:DRAMA: A POWERFUL MEDIUM FOR SOCIAL is an objective and impersonal representation of chorus of theancient Greek tragedies often functioned as the author s mouth piece.

10 The main function ofthe chorus was tonarratethe events that took place off the stage and to make somecomments on the morality of the actions presented on the stage. In modern plays, the placeof the chorus is taken by one of the characters in the play, who functions as the mouth pieceof the modern problem plays, we often come across acharacter whoseprincipal function in the play is merely to move through it as a philosophic inShakespeare s Antony and Cleopatra and Bluntschli inBernardShaw s Arms and the Man function as a kind of Chorus. With the critical comments of suchcharacters, the playwright tries to bring out a social criticism of Shaw regards social criticism as the most important function of all Brecht insists that drama is not just an imitation of an action but a powerful tool forthe determination of social conditions.