Faculty of Philosophy

English Department
Introduction to the Anglophone Literary Theory
Professor: Radoje Šoškić, PhD

Lecture 3e – Week 4
Thinking Theoretically – Drama

So far we have identified distinct features

belonging to fiction and poetry, two genres
which rely on the written or spoken word as
their primary means of expression. The dramatic
or performing arts, however, combine the verbal
with a number of non-verbal or optical-visual
means, including stage, scenery, shifting of
scenes, facial expressions, gestures, make-up,
props, and lighting. This emphasis is also
reflected in the word drama itself, which
derives from the Greek “draein” (“to do,” “to
act”), thereby referring to a performance or
representation by actors.
Drama has its roots in cultic-ritual
practice, some features of which were still
present in stylized form in the classical Greek
drama of the fifth century BC. Ancient tragedies
and comedies were performed during festivals in
honor of Dionysos, the god of wine. While drama
was one of the main genres in classical
antiquity, its importance waned with the dawning
of the Middle Ages. After the turn of the
millennium, however, simple forms of drama re-
emerged. In mystery and miracle plays,
religious, allegorical, or biblical themes were
adapted from Christian liturgy and dramatized
for performance in front of churches and in the
yards of inns. These medieval plays, together
with the classical Roman plays by Plautus (c.
254–184 BC) and Seneca (c. 4 BC—AD 65),
influenced later Renaissance drama, which
reached its first peak in England with
Shakespeare and his contemporaries.
While classical literary theory overlooks the
nature of comedy, Aristotle (384–322 BC) deals
extensively with the general elements and
features of tragedy. In the sixth book of The
Poetics he characterizes tragedy as “a
representation of an action that is heroic and
complete” and which “represents men in action
and does not use narrative, and through pity and
fear it effects relief.” By watching the tragic
events on stage, the audience is meant to
experience a catharsis or spiritual cleansing.
Comedy, on the other hand, has humorous themes
intended to entertain the audience. It is often
regarded as the stylized continuation of
primitive regeneration cults, such as the
symbolic expulsion of winter by spring. This
fertility symbolism culminates in the form of
weddings, which comprise standard happy endings
in traditional comedies.
 Renaissance history plays, such as Shakespeare’s
Richard II (1597) or Henry IV (c. 1597), adapt English
history for stage performance. These plays portray a
historical event or figure but, through the
addition of contemporary references, transcend the
historical dimension and make general statements about
human weaknesses and virtues. In many cases, the author
chooses a historical pretext in order to comment on
contemporary sociopolitical misery while minimizing the
risk of censorship.
William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe (1564–
93) revived and developed classical forms of drama such
as tragedy and comedy and were among the first to
reflect on different dramatic genres. A passage in
Shakespeare’s Hamlet (c. 1601) wittily testifies to
this reflection: “The best actors in the world, either
for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-
comical, historical pastoral, tragical-historical,
tragical-comical historical-pastoral, scene
individable, or poem un limited” (Hamlet, II.2.378–81).
Shakespeare parodies various mixed forms which, roughly
speaking, can be reduced to the three basic forms of
tragedy, comedy, and history play.
When the Puritans under the rule of Oliver Cromwell
and his Commonwealth (1649–60) shut down the English
theaters on moral and religious grounds, drama lost its
status as a major genre. Although religion exercised
only a brief influence on drama in England in this
drastic way (until the Restoration of monarchy), it had
far-reaching consequences in America. Because of the
prominent position of Puritanism in American history,
drama was almost non-existent in the early phases of
American literature and was only re-established as a
serious genre in the beginning of the twentieth
century.
 During the Restoration period in the late
seventeenth century, the comedy of manners, or
Restoration comedy, portraying citizens from the upper
echelons of society in witty dialogues, was very
popular. William Congreve’s (1670–1729) The Way of the
World (1700) and William Wycherley’s (1641–1715) The
Country Wife (c. 1675) are well-known examples. The
heroic drama of the time—such as John Dryden’s (1631–
1700) All for Love (1677)—tries to recreate and adapt
epic themes on stage. In the Romantic period of the
early nineteenth century, England produced the closet
drama, a special form of drama which was not meant to
be performed on stage but rather to be read in private.
Percy Bysshe Shelley’s (1792–1822) Prometheus Unbound
(1820) is a well-known example of this unusual form of
drama.
With the arrival of realism and naturalism in the
late nineteenth century, social misery was dealt with
on a broader scale and drama regained its importance as
a major genre, albeit one which is intricately
interwoven with developments in fiction. George Bernard
Shaw (1856–1950) and Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) were among
the most important playwrights of this period. All
major developments in the theater of the twentieth
century can be seen as reactions to this early
movement, which favored a realistic representation of
life. The expressionist theater and the theater of the
absurd do away with the illusion that reality can be
truthfully portrayed on stage, emphasizing more
abstract and stylized modes of presentation. As with
the postmodern novel, the parody of conventional forms
and elements has become a striking feature in many
plays of the second half of the twentieth century, such
as Tom Stoppard’s (1937–) Travesties (1974) and
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966) or Samuel
Beckett’s (1906–89) Waiting for Godot (1952). Political
theater, characterized by social criticism, together
with the movements which have already been mentioned,
has become very influential. Important American
examples are Clifford Odets’ (1906–1963) Marxist
workers’ play Waiting for Lefty (1935) and Arthur
Miller’s (1915–) parable The Crucible (1953) about the
political persecutions during the McCarthy era.
Because of the element of performance, drama
generally transcends the textual dimension of the other
two major literary genres, fiction and poetry. Although
the written word serves as the basis of drama, it is,
in the end, intended to be transformed into a
performance before an audience. In order to do justice
to this change of medium, we ought to consider text,
transformation, and performance as three interdependent
levels of a play.

Text
dialogue
monologue
plot
setting
stage direction
performance
transformation
actors
directing
methods
stage
facial expressions
props
gestures
lighting
language

a)
Text
Since many textual areas of drama—character, plot, and
setting—overlap with aspects of fiction which have
already been explained, the following section will only
deal with those elements specifically relevant to drama
per se. Within the textual dimension of drama, the
spoken word serves as the foundation for dialogue
(verbal commimication between two or more characters)
and monologue(soliloquy). The aside is a special form
of verbal communication on stage in which the actor
“passes on” to the audience information which remains
unknown to the rest of the characters in the play.
The basic elements of plot, including exposition,
complication, climax, and denouement, have already been
explained in the context of fiction. They have their
origin in classical descriptions of the ideal course of
a play and were only later adopted for analyses of
other genres. In connection with plot, the three
unities of time, place, and action are of primary
significance. These unities prescribe that the time
span of the action should roughly resemble the duration
of the play (or a day at the most) and that the place
where the action unfolds should always remain the same.
Furthermore, the action should be consistent and have a
linear plot.
Indirectly related to the three unities is the
division of a play into acts and scenes. Elizabethan
theater adopted this structure from classical
antiquity, which divided the drama into five acts. In
the nineteenth century, the number of acts in a play
was reduced to four, and in the twentieth century
generally to three. With the help of act and scene
changes, the setting, time, and action of a play can be
altered, thereby allowing the traditional unity of
place, time, and action to be maintained within a scene
or an act.
 The theater of the absurd, like its counterpart in
fiction, consciously does away with traditional plot
structures and leads the spectator into complicated
situations which often seem absurd or illogical. The
complication often does not lead to a climax,
resolution, or a logical ending. In this manner, the
theater of the absurd, like many post-modern novels or
films, attempts artistically to portray the general
feeling of uncertainty of the postwar era. Samuel
Beckett, whose play Waiting for Godot (1952)
contributed to the fame of the theater of the absurd,
is the best-known representative in the English-
speaking world. Comparing Beckett’s Waiting for Godot
with a traditional plot, containing exposition,
complication, climax, and denouement, we find few
similarities. The title of Beckett’s play gives away
the situation of the two main characters, Vladimir and
Estragon; Godot himself receives no further
characterization in the course of the play. The
entrance of other characters briefly distracts from—but
does not really change—the initial situation. The two
main characters do not pass through the main stages of
classical plot and do not undergo any development by
the end of the play. Offering neither logical messages
nor a conventional climax, Beckett’s play consciously
violates the expectations of audiences familiar only
with traditional theater.
In the twentieth century, with the innovations of
the experimental theater and the theater of the absurd,
non-textual aspects of drama are brought to the
foreground. Non-verbal features, which traditionally
functioned as connecting devices between text and
performance, abandon their supporting role and achieve
an artistic status equal to that of the text.