Drama is a form of text that is performed in front of an audience. It is also called a play. Its written text contains dialogues, and stage directions. This genre has further categories such as comedy, tragedy, and tragicomedy. William Shakespeare is known as the father of English drama. His well-known plays include Taming of the Shrew, Romeo & Juliet, and Hamlet. Greek playwrights were the pioneers in this field, such as Sophocles’ masterpiece Oedipus Rex, and Antigone, while modern dramas include Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller.
Primary Sub-Genres of Drama
- Tragedy
- Comedy
- History
- Melodrama
- Musical
Tragedy
Tragedy, branch of drama that treats in a serious and dignified style the sorrowful or terrible events encountered or caused by a heroic individual. By extension the term may be applied to other literary works, such as the novel.Although the word tragedy is often used loosely to describe any sort of disaster or misfortune, it more precisely refers to a work of art that probes with high seriousness questions concerning the role of man in the universe. The Greeks of Attica, the ancient state whose chief city was Athens, first used the word in the 5th century bce to describe a specific kind of play, which was presented at festivals in Greece. Sponsored by the local governments, these plays were attended by the entire community, a small admission fee being provided by the state for those who could not afford it themselves. The atmosphere surrounding the performances was more like that of a religious ceremony than entertainment. There were altars to the gods, with priests in attendance, and the subjects of the tragedies were the misfortunes of the heroes of legend, religious myth, and history. Most of the material was derived from the works of Homer and was common knowledge in the Greek communities. So powerful were the achievements of the three greatest Greek dramatists--Aeschylus (525–456 bce), Sophocles (c. 496–406 bce), and Euripides (c. 480–406 bce)—that the word they first used for their plays survived and came to describe a literary genre that, in spite of many transformations and lapses, has proved its viability through 25 centuries.
Historically, tragedy of a high order has been created in only four periods and locales: Attica, in Greece, in the 5th century bce; England in the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I, from 1558 to 1625; 17th-century France; and Europe and America during the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th. Each period saw the development of a special orientation and emphasis, a characteristic style of theatre. In the modern period, roughly from the middle of the 19th century, the idea of tragedy found embodiment in the collateral form of the novel.
Shakespeare was a long time coming to his tragic phase, the six or seven years that produced his five greatest tragedies--Hamlet (written c. 1599–1601), Othello (written c. 1603–04), King Lear (c. 1605–06), Macbeth (c. 1606–07), and Antony and Cleopatra (c. 1606–07). These were not the only plays written during those years. Troilus and Cressida (1601–02) may have come about the same time as or shortly after Hamlet, All’s Well That Ends Well (1601–05) shortly before or after Othello, and Measure for Measure (1603–04) shortly before King Lear.
Historically, tragedy of a high order has been created in only four periods and locales: Attica, in Greece, in the 5th century bce; England in the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I, from 1558 to 1625; 17th-century France; and Europe and America during the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th. Each period saw the development of a special orientation and emphasis, a characteristic style of theatre. In the modern period, roughly from the middle of the 19th century, the idea of tragedy found embodiment in the collateral form of the novel.
Shakespeare was a long time coming to his tragic phase, the six or seven years that produced his five greatest tragedies--Hamlet (written c. 1599–1601), Othello (written c. 1603–04), King Lear (c. 1605–06), Macbeth (c. 1606–07), and Antony and Cleopatra (c. 1606–07). These were not the only plays written during those years. Troilus and Cressida (1601–02) may have come about the same time as or shortly after Hamlet, All’s Well That Ends Well (1601–05) shortly before or after Othello, and Measure for Measure (1603–04) shortly before King Lear.
For more information, visit - www.britannica.com/art/tragedy-literature
Comedy
Comedy, type of drama or other art form the chief object of which, according to modern notions, is to amuse. It is contrasted on the one hand with tragedy and on the other with farce, burlesque, and other forms of humorous amusement.The classic conception of comedy, which began with Aristotle in ancient Greece of the 4th century bce and persists through the present, holds that it is primarily concerned with humans as social beings, rather than as private persons, and that its function is frankly corrective. The comic artist’s purpose is to hold a mirror up to society to reflect its follies and vices, in the hope that they will, as a result, be mended. The 20th-century French philosopher Henri Bergson shared this view of the corrective purpose of laughter; specifically, he felt, laughter is intended to bring the comic character back into conformity with his society, whose logic and conventions he abandons when “he slackens in the attention that is due to life.”
Here comedy is considered primarily as a literary genre. The wellsprings of comedy are dealt with in the article humour. The comic impulse in the visual arts is discussed in the articles caricature and cartoon and comic strip.
The word comedy seems to be connected by derivation with the Greek verb meaning “to revel,” and comedy arose out of the revels associated with the rites of Dionysus, a god of vegetation. The origins of comedy are thus bound up with vegetation ritual. Aristotle, in his Poetics, states that comedy originated in phallic songs and that, like tragedy, it began in improvisation. Though tragedy evolved by stages that can be traced, the progress of comedy passed unnoticed because it was not taken seriously.
Here comedy is considered primarily as a literary genre. The wellsprings of comedy are dealt with in the article humour. The comic impulse in the visual arts is discussed in the articles caricature and cartoon and comic strip.
The word comedy seems to be connected by derivation with the Greek verb meaning “to revel,” and comedy arose out of the revels associated with the rites of Dionysus, a god of vegetation. The origins of comedy are thus bound up with vegetation ritual. Aristotle, in his Poetics, states that comedy originated in phallic songs and that, like tragedy, it began in improvisation. Though tragedy evolved by stages that can be traced, the progress of comedy passed unnoticed because it was not taken seriously.
For more information, visit - https://www.britannica.com/art/comedy
History
Chronicle play, also called chronicle history or history play, drama with a theme from history consisting usually of loosely connected episodes chronologically arranged.Plays of this type typically lay emphasis on the public welfare by pointing to the past as a lesson for the present, and the genre is often characterized by its assumption of a national consciousness in its audience. It has flourished in times of intensely nationalistic feeling, notably in England from the 1580s until the 1630s, by which time it was “out of fashion,” according to the prologue of John Ford’s play Perkin Warbeck. Early examples of the chronicle play include The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth, The Life and Death of Jacke Straw, The Troublesome Raigne of John King of England, and The True Tragedie of Richard III. The genre came to maturity with the work of Christopher Marlowe (Edward II) and William Shakespeare (Henry VI, parts 2 and 3).
In An Apology for Actors (1612) the dramatist Thomas Heywood wrote that chronicle plays
are writ with this ayme, and carryed with this methode, to teach their subjects obedience to their king, to shew the people the untimely ends of such as have moved tumults, commotions, and insurrections, to present them with the flourishing estate of such as live in obedience, exhorting them to allegeance, dehorting them from all trayterous and fellonious stratagems.
At the same time, it was argued that the overthrow of a tyrant (such as Richard III, according to the Tudor reading of events) was right and proper.
Elizabethan dramatists drew their material from the wealth of chronicle writing for which the age is renowned, notably Edward Hall’s The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Famelies of Lancastre & Yorke and the Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande of Raphael Holinshed. The genre was a natural development from the morality plays of the Middle Ages. In a forerunner of the chronicle play, John Bale’s Kynge Johan, all the characters except the king himself are allegorical and have names such as Widow England, Sedition, and Private Wealth.
No age has matched the Elizabethan, either in England or elsewhere, in this kind of play. But chronicle plays are still sometimes written—for example, by the 20th-century English playwright John Arden (Left-Handed Liberty, Armstrong’s Last Goodnight)—and the genre corresponds in many respects, especially in its didactic purpose and episodic structure, with the influential 20th-century epic theatre of Bertolt Brecht in Germany and Tony Kushner in the United States, specifically Kushner’s AIDS drama Angels in America, which debuted on Broadway in 1993.
In An Apology for Actors (1612) the dramatist Thomas Heywood wrote that chronicle plays
are writ with this ayme, and carryed with this methode, to teach their subjects obedience to their king, to shew the people the untimely ends of such as have moved tumults, commotions, and insurrections, to present them with the flourishing estate of such as live in obedience, exhorting them to allegeance, dehorting them from all trayterous and fellonious stratagems.
At the same time, it was argued that the overthrow of a tyrant (such as Richard III, according to the Tudor reading of events) was right and proper.
Elizabethan dramatists drew their material from the wealth of chronicle writing for which the age is renowned, notably Edward Hall’s The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Famelies of Lancastre & Yorke and the Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande of Raphael Holinshed. The genre was a natural development from the morality plays of the Middle Ages. In a forerunner of the chronicle play, John Bale’s Kynge Johan, all the characters except the king himself are allegorical and have names such as Widow England, Sedition, and Private Wealth.
No age has matched the Elizabethan, either in England or elsewhere, in this kind of play. But chronicle plays are still sometimes written—for example, by the 20th-century English playwright John Arden (Left-Handed Liberty, Armstrong’s Last Goodnight)—and the genre corresponds in many respects, especially in its didactic purpose and episodic structure, with the influential 20th-century epic theatre of Bertolt Brecht in Germany and Tony Kushner in the United States, specifically Kushner’s AIDS drama Angels in America, which debuted on Broadway in 1993.
For more information, visit - www.britannica.com/art/chronicle-play
Melodrama
Melodrama is a subgenre of drama, which is an exaggerated form of this genre. Melodramas deal with sensational and romantic topics that appeal to the emotions of the common audience. Originally, it made use of melody and music, while modern melodramas may not contain any music at all. In fact, a melodrama gives preference to a detailed characterization where characters are simply drawn, one-dimensional, or stereotyped. Typically, melodrama uses stock characters including a heroes, heroines, and villains.
Functions of melodrama :-
Melodrama is an exaggerated form of drama, where authors enhance the storylines in order to tug the heartstrings of the audience. Typically, these types of dramas focus on sensational plots that revolve around tragedy, unrequited love, loss, or heightened emotion; featuring long-suffering protagonists, especially females, attempting in vain to overcome impossible odds. Its purpose is to play on the feelings and emotions of the audience. We see the use of melodramatic plots more often in films, theater, television, radio, cartoons, and comics.
Functions of melodrama :-
Melodrama is an exaggerated form of drama, where authors enhance the storylines in order to tug the heartstrings of the audience. Typically, these types of dramas focus on sensational plots that revolve around tragedy, unrequited love, loss, or heightened emotion; featuring long-suffering protagonists, especially females, attempting in vain to overcome impossible odds. Its purpose is to play on the feelings and emotions of the audience. We see the use of melodramatic plots more often in films, theater, television, radio, cartoons, and comics.
For more information, visit - https://literarydevices.net/melodrama/
Musical
Music drama, type of serious musical theatre, first advanced by Richard Wagner in his book Oper und Drama (1850–51; “Opera and Drama”), that was originally referred to as simply “drama.” (Wagner himself never used the term music drama, which was later used by his successors and by critics and scholars.) This new type of work was intended as a return to the Greek drama as Wagner understood it—the public expression of national human aspirations in symbolic form by enacting racial myths and using music for the full expression of the dramatic action. Wagner’s emphasis on opera as drama merely resumed and developed the ideas of Claudio Monteverdi and Christoph Gluck. He envisaged the disappearance of the old type of opera, with its libretto provided by a hack versifier, as an opportunity for the composer to make a “set piece” opera out of purely musical forms separated by a recitative.Briefly put, the new art form would be created by a single artist, who would write a poetic drama that should find full expression when it was set to a continuous vocal-symphonic texture. This texture would be woven from basic thematic ideas, or leitmotivs (“leading motives”); these would arise naturally as expressive vocal phrases sung by characters at crucial emotional points of the drama and then be developed by the orchestra as “reminiscences” in accordance with the expressive need of the dramatic and psychological development of the action. This conception found full embodiment in Der Ring des Nibelungen, a cycle of four operas first performed in 1876; the only variation from Wagner’s theory was that the leading motives did not always arise as vocal utterances but were often introduced by the orchestra to portray characters, emotions, or events.
For more information, visit - www.britannica.com/art/music-drama