username@email.com
username@email.com
In this section we’ll trace the historical development of the dramatic form from the the fifth century BCE, when ancient Greeks developed the form, to contemporary plays and dramas.
Drama and theater developed in ancient Greece between the late sixth and early fourth centuries BCE. Its influence was so profound that theater is widely enjoyed to this day. Some of the earliest tragedies and comedies were written by the gifted intellectuals, artists, and politicians living in the great city of Athens.
The origins of Greek comedy and tragedy can be traced to the elaborate Greek worship rituals that were enacted in the name of Dionysus, god of fertility and wine. Over time, these dramatic ceremonies began to include other gods and human heroes.
Fifth-century master playwrights Sophocles, Euripides, and Aeschylus produced tragedies that focused on humanity’s struggle with good and evil. In contrast, Aristophanes, also from the fifth century, wrote comedies full of satire and absurdity.
The medieval period began in 1066 when the Normans, led by William the Conqueror, defeated the Anglo-Saxons. The Middle Ages were a time of feudalism, the Magna Carta, chivalry, knights, and the Crusades. In England, medieval drama served as public entertainment.
The following table provides an overview of the different types of plays performed during the Middle Ages in England.
|
Types of Plays Performed in the Middle Ages
|
|
|
Type of Play |
Description |
| Miracle Play | A play based on the life of a saint or a martyr. Later versions would include Bible stories. Also known as a mystery play, this type of drama was developed by the Roman Catholic Church to teach the illiterate about Christianity. |
| Passion Play | A play depicting Christ’s crucifixion. Such plays were performed from the thirteenth century onward but dwindled in popularity in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. |
| Morality Play | Theaters offered these plays during the latter part of the Middle Ages. The morality play was a dramatized allegory in which the actors played the roles of virtues and vices, such as Mercy, Conscience, Shame, Patience, and Greed. The good and the bad struggled for the soul of a single hero. |
The period from the mid-fourteenth century to the end of the sixteenth century is recognized as the Renaissance, a period of learning, discovery, and culture that swept across Western Europe and England. The English Renaissance, during which drama flourished, occurred during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1553–1603).
Playwrights such as Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare wrote some of the most well-known and popular plays of Western society in the Elizabethan era. English drama during the early part of the sixteenth century developed slowly, but during Shakespeare’s youth the theatre scene exploded with vitality.
Throughout the Middle Ages, religion was the subject matter of drama, but Marlowe, and later Shakespeare, found inspiration for their plays in Greek tragedies, morality plays, and English history.
Blank verse was the preferred form of Elizabethan playwrights. Blank verse is unrhymed poetry that still contains a rhythm and meter.
Shakespeare’s thirty-seven plays can be divided into three categories: histories, tragedies, and comedies.
|
Types of Shakespearean Plays
|
||
|
Type of Drama |
Description |
Examples |
| History | The histories illustrate moral lessons to be learned from the ambitions and treachery of state leaders. | Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VI, Richard II, Richard III |
| Tragedy | The tragedies depict a character’s self-destruction through passion and ambition and show how breaking a moral law certainly leads to ruin. | King Lear, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet |
| Comedy | The comedies amuse audiences with romantic fantasies, mistaken identities, and satire. | A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, The Tempest |
Most of Shakespeare’s plays were originally performed at the famous Globe Theater across the Thames River from London. Wealthy theater patrons watched plays from seats in the gallery. Those who could afford a penny for a play stood in the yard.
Shakespearean costumes were colorful and elaborate versions of the dress of the time. Scenery was simple, nearly nonexistent, but the audiences who filled the playhouses came for the excellent entertainment—not the backdrops.
The period known as the Restoration began in 1660 when Charles II became king of England. Drama reached its height in sixteenth-century England; Shakespeare and his contemporaries entertained audiences from all walks of life.
Theater of the seventeenth century included satiric comedies and tragicomedies. Comedy grew more sophisticated and less dependent on mistaken identity situations and sight gags.
The comedy of manners was first written during the Restoration period as a reaction against the severity of Puritanism.
A comedy of manners is characterized by the following features:
In 1642, plays had to go underground when the Puritans, deeming them frivolous, made theater illegal. When the law was reversed in 1660, drama got back on track. For the first time, female actresses regularly played the female roles, as opposed to male actors.
Sentimental comedy grew in popularity during the eighteenth century. This type of theater came about as a reaction to the risqué nature of the comedies of manners.
The sentimental comedy or drama is characterized by the following features:
A wide array of playwrights from around the world offered their work to theatergoers during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
The problem play , which addresses a social problem, originated with playwrights Henrik Ibsen and George Bernard Shaw.
The following table describes the contributions of some of the modern playwrights.
|
Modern Playwrights
|
||
|
Name |
Country |
Contribution |
| Henrik Ibsen | Norway | Wrote A Doll’s House, a social drama on the institution of marriage, in 1879. Considered the father of modern drama by many critics. |
| Oscar Wilde | England | Wrote several witty plays, including his most noted, The Importance of Being Earnest in 1895. The play satirizes British nobility and clergy. |
| Anton Chekhov | Russia | Wrote The Cherry Orchard between early 1901 and late 1903. The play depicts the life of a landowning family about to lose its precious cherry orchard. |
| George Bernard Shaw | Ireland | Wrote the problem play Major Barbara, which uses comedy and interesting characters to address the issues of money and ethics. Written in 1913, Pygmalion, one of Shaw’s most popular plays, was later made into the musical My Fair Lady. That play satirizes male-female relationships and class divisions in England. |
| Eugene O’Neill | United States | Received the Pulitzer Prize in 1920 for Beyond the Horizon and later received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1936. He was the first American dramatist to win the prize. Before O’Neill, American theater consisted of mostly romantic melodrama, but O’Neill changed that. His plays, such as The Iceman Cometh and Long Day’s Journey into Night, introduced serious, psychological drama to American audiences. |
| Thornton Wilder | United States | His most famous play, Our Town, uses no scenery and very few props, yet it earned a Pulitzer Prize in 1938. It remains a classic of American theatre to this day. |
| Arthur Miller | United States | His Death of a Salesman won a Pulitzer in 1949. The play, widely regarded as the first great American tragedy, rocketed Miller to national stardom. |
Which type of verse was primarily used by Elizabethan playwrights such as Shakespeare and Marlowe?
The Roman Catholic Church greatly influenced the following three types of dramas during the Middle Ages:
A comedy of manners is a witty and risqué satire of upper-class etiquette and immoral behavior. A sentimental comedy lacks dramatic reality in its presentation of middle-class emotions and tenderness. A problem play addresses a social problem or issue.