Drama as Entertainment

Entertainment is a form of activity that holds the attention and interest of an audience, or
gives pleasure and delight. It can be an idea or a task, but is more likely to be one of the activities
or events that have developed over thousands of years specifically for the purpose of keeping an
audience's attention.

It can be an idea or a task, but is more likely to be one of the activities or events that have
developed over thousands of years specifically for the purpose of keeping an audience's
attention.

Although people's attention is held by different things, because individuals have different
preferences in entertainment, most forms are recognisable and familiar.

Storytelling, music, drama, dance, and different kinds of performance exist in all cultures,
were supported in royal courts, developed into sophisticated forms and over time became
available to all citizens.

The process has been accelerated in modern times by an entertainment industry which records
and sells entertainment products.

Entertainment evolves and can be adapted to suit any scale, ranging from an individual
who chooses a private entertainment from a now enormous array of pre-recorded products; to a
banquet adapted for two; to any size or type of party, with appropriate music and dance; to
performances intended for thousands; and even for a global audience.

The experience of being entertained has come to be strongly associated with amusement,
so that one common understanding of the idea is fun and laughter, although many entertainments
have a serious purpose.

This may be the case in the various forms of ceremony, celebration, religious festival, or
satire for example.

Hence, there is the possibility that what appears as entertainment may also be a means of
achieving insight or intellectual growth.

An important aspect of entertainment is the audience, which turns a private recreation or

leisure activity into entertainment.

The audience may have a passive role, as in the case of persons watching a play, opera,
television show, or film; or the audience role may be active, as in the case of games, where the
participant/audience roles may be routinely reversed.

The origin of the drama is deep-rooted in the religious predispositions of mankind. Same
is the case not only with English drama, but with dramas of other nations as well. The ancient
Greek and Roman dramas were mostly concerned with religious ceremonials of people. It was
the religious elements that resulted in the development of drama. As most of the Bible was
written into Latin, common people could not understand its meanings. Thats why the clergy
tried to find out some new methods of teaching and expounding the teachings of Bible to the
common people. For this purpose, they developed a new method, wherein the stories of the
Gospel were explained through the living pictures. The performers acted out the story in a dumb
show.
Regarding the lay element and the craving for amusement, we note that in the Middle
Ages, the juggler, the tumbler and jester ministered to the needs of the time. They are found in
the twelfth century, and Langland tells us how gaily and unblushingly they flourished in the
fourteenth century, though the serious-minded, wished to restrain them to a modest hilarity.
Much of it was very primitive fooling, but there were dialogues and repartees of which fragments
only have survived. The Middle Ages solely needed a Pepys. Of these entertainers, the jester was
the best. He lived by his wits in a very literal manner, disgrace and death following upon an
unsuccessful sally, and he survived into Shakespeares day, though fallen then from his high state
to play the fool between the acts of a play. What he had been at this zenith we may judge from
the picture of Touchstone, of Feste, and the Fool in Lear. Such debates as The Owl and
Nightingale influenced the development of the drama; for before Chaucers time some of these
were turned into story ( Rafiq, 2017).
Yet, even if one understands these differences, one may find it difficult at first to
appreciate the drama of a past time. Modern drama from 980 A. D. onward passes from the
simple Latin trope, already described, by accumulation of incident, developing characterization,
and a feeling for expression for its own sake, to similar work in the vernacular, be it English,
French, or German. Then slowly it gains enormously in characterization till some of the miracle
and morality plays of the late fifteenth century equal or surpass any English drama up to
Marlowe. But what lay behind all this drama of miracle play and morality was an undivided
church. With the coming of the Reformation and its insistence on the value and finality of
individual judgment, the didactic drama gave way to the drama of entertainmentthe interludes
and the beginnings of the five-act plays. Yet, fine as are some of the plays of the days of
Elizabeth and James I, we find in them a brutality of mood, a childish sense of the comic, a love
of story for mere storys sake that make them oftentimes a little hard reading. Moreover, their
techniquetheir frequent disregard of our ideas of unity, their methods of exposition by chorus,
soliloquy, and asidefrequently appears to us antiquated. Except for the greatest of these plays
mainly by Shakespearethe Elizabethan drama seems strange to us at a first reading. Only
coming to know the conditions from which it sprang can give us its real values (Baker, 1914).
List of References:
Rafiq, M. (2017, February 25) Origin of Drama in English Literature. Retrieved from
www.kent.ac.uk
Baker, G. P. (1909-1914) Drama. Retrieved from www.bartleby.com