History of English
Drama
Drama
Drama is a composition in verse or prose to be acted on the stage, in which a story is
related by means of dialogue and action and is represented with, accompanying
gesture, costume and scenery as in real life.
Drama is a composition designed for performance in the theatre in which actors take the
roles of the characters, perform the indicated action and utter the written dialogue
Elements of Drama
1. plot
2. characterization
3. dialogue
4. settings
5. stage directions
6. conflict
7. theme
Introduction to English Theatre
Drama has its origins in folk theatre.
The beginnings of drama in England are obscure. There is evidence to believe that
when the Romans were in England, they established vast amphitheaters for the
production of plays but when the Romans departed their theatre departed with them.
Amphitheatre
Minstrels: a medieval singer or musician, especially one who sang or recited lyric or heroic
poetry to a musical accompaniment for the nobility.) People enjoyed their performances.
10-13-14th Century
10th new century: got few features of a play
13-14th century : Drama started having themes which were separated from religion. The words
themselves were spoken in English, a longer dramatic script came into use, and they were called as
Miracle plays.
Miracle plays: Miracle plays are among the earliest formally developed plays in medieval Europe. These
plays focused on the representation of Bible stories in churches.
Later were called as Morality plays
Kind of allegorical drama having personified abstract qualities as the main characters and
presenting a lesson about good conduct and character, popular in the 15th and early 16th
centuries
Elizabethan And Restoration
Theatre
The Secular Morality plays have direct links with Elizabethan plays.F
Features of the Renaissance Period:
i) They imposed a learned tradition.
ii) They were classical in depth with themes of education.
iii) They presented general moral problems.
iv) They showed secular politics.
v) These plays had nothing to do with religion.
vi) They were examples of both comedy and tragedy
Prime Dramatist
Thomas Kyd
Christopher Marlowe
William Shakespeare
Kyd discovered how easily blank verse might be converted into a useful theatrical medium which
Shakespeare used brilliantly in all his plays.
Tragedy developed in the hands of Kyd and Marlowe.
Comedy had also proceeded beyond rustic humor
The public theatre of 16th
Century
1. It differed in many important ways from the modern theatre.
2. It was open to sky.
3. They were without artificial lighting.
4. The stage was a raised platform with the recess at the back supported by pillars.
5. There was no curtain and the main platform could be surrounded on three sides by the
audience.
6. There were galleries around the theatre
7. In the 17th century the enclosed theatre gained importance. There was increasing attention to
scenic device as theatre became private.
William Shakespeare:
Shakespearean era came into existence in the 16th century to the public theatre. He
wrote for the contemporary theatre, manipulating the Elizabethan stage with great
resource and invention. William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and
actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's
greatest dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon".
Ben Johnson
Ben Johnson was contemporary to William Shakespeare. He was a classicist, a moralist
and a reformer of drama. In comedy, Johnson’s genius is found at its best and his
influence was considerable. The Restoration dramatists leaned strongly upon him.
Closing of Theatres in 1642
The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to
purify the Church of England of Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church
of England had not been fully reformed and should become more Protestant. With the
Civil wars no theatre existed between 1642 to 1660.
In the next phase of restoration Chapman, Thomas Middleton, Webster and Dekker
were at the forefront.
Arrival of Charles II
When Charles II came back with the Restoration of 1660, the theatres were reopened.
The Restoration comedy achieved its peculiar excellence. Drama developed into class
drama with upper-class ethos. It lasted beyond this period into the first decade of the
18th century
Comedy declines to sentimentalism and became comedy of manners
George Etherege was an important supporter of this form
Richard Sheridan and Oliver Goldsmith
Modern
Use of picture frame stage.
Theatre Features
Actresses taking female parts.
Moveable scenery designed to create a visual image for each scene.
Use of artificial lights.
Irregular spectacle, melodrama and farce
Monopoly held by the two houses, Covent Garden and Drury Lane, for the performance of serious drama.
The audiences which gathered to the 19th century theatre had not the intelligence or the imagination of the
Elizabethan audience.
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen was the great Norwegian dramatist of the 19th century. He dominates the modern
drama. He developed modernist, realist, social and psychological dramas like The Doll's house,
Ghosts, and An Enemy of the People. They are far more subtle in stagecraft and profound in
thought than anything in the modern English theatre.
GB Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was deeply influenced and affected by Ibsen's innovative contributions
and experimentation. He was the most brilliant playwrights of his times. He alone had
understood the greatness of Ibsen and he was deterrained that his own plays should also be a
vehicle for ideas.
The responsibility of elevation of the English drama to the brilliance of the Ibsen, fell with Oscar
Wilde and G. B. Shaw in the late 19th and early 20th century.
20th Century Drama
H. Granville Barker, John Galsworthy, St. John Ervine were some of the playwrights who
explored contemporary problems.
St. John Ervine had been associated with a group of Irish dramatists whose work was
normally produced in the Abbey theatre in Dublin.
Other Irish playwrights :Lady Gregory with W. B. Yeats and J. M. Synge
They used a sense of tragic irony, a violent species of humour and a rich and highly
flavoured language.
…Contd
T.S. Eliot experimented with Greek tragedy in the early forties of the 20th century
John Osborne, wrote on people who grew up after the Second World War.
Kingsley Amis wrote about frustrated, anti-establishment young people. Osborne’s ‘Look Back in Ang
brought a new vitality to the theatre scene. More a cultural phenomenon than literature
Other important playwrights of the modern era include Anton Chekhov, Bertolt Brecht, Eugene O’Neil
Arthur Miller, Tennessee William, Eugène Ionesco, Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter
Indian Theatre features
Earliest seeds of modern Indian Drama can be found in the Sanskrit Drama.
From the first century A.D. ‘Mahabhasya’ by Patanjali provides a feasible date for the
beginning of theatre in India
Treatise on Theatre’ (Natya Shastra) by Bharat Muni is the most complete work of
dramatology in the ancient world. It gives mythological account of the origin of theatre
Indian drama has impact on Urdu and Sanskrit literature
One Act Play
