What to study for drama?

 Shaded boxes = vital information

 White boxes = additional information, not for study

Drama = part of human culture for as long as we know  spontaneous desire to pretend that you’re
sb else
e.g. Advertising, politics (politicians do a great deal of action in order to persuade their opponents),
religion (a priest/equivalent that acts as a medium between God and the common people), wedding
(the rituals, sb pronouncing you to be married in the name of…)

Origins of Drama: Athens, 6th century

Differences Theatre/Drama
 Theatre = the building in which plays are performed, > theastai = to perform  the
performance that spectators see
 Drama > dram = to act  what the actors do, also looking at a play from the text (theatre is
the whole performance: the gestures, props, intonation, etc)

The stage is a world on its own: citation brooks p 41: 3 vital elements
 Location (stage)
 Actor
 Sb to be watching = a spectator
Some fourth element: the spectator have to play along, obviously what is on stage isn’t always
realistic. Sth on stage must not always be realistic (wht we are used to) to make it credible =
temporary contract that the spectator makes

Representation of reality
 Mimeses: sth that we have, like an instinct: desire to  Aristotle: mimeses on 3 levels
o (The place)
o The medium: sth you use to convey sth  the language
o Time: action
o Actors
 Verisimilitude = likeness to the truth (veritas + similitude): to be as close to reality as you can
get to be fully absorbed by the play = method acting (to emerge into the character itself, to
become that character, e.g. Marlin Monroe)
 Epic acting: Berthold Brecht  audience had to be conscient that what they were looking at
wasn’t real  tricks to do that (character bursting into singing)  Verfremdungseffekt
 Theatre quality

The fourth wall: imaginary wall between the stage and the audience. In method acting/verisimilitude
it is as if there is no wall, as if you are looking to a world in a ball of glass (actors are not aware that
they are being watched).

Within a play  different levels of communication

 Extratextual: the playwright, the stage director
 Intratextual:
o Dialogue: characters addressing each other
o Fictional mediation: stream of consciousness spoken out for the audience
Drama = governed by a specific set of rules
 Actor-related codes:
o Visual elements: looks, gestures
o Auditive: voice (tone, loudness etc.)
 Stage related codes:
o Visual: props, set, technical elements (lightning, curtains, projection etc.)
o Auditive: technical aspects (microfons, transistor rdio on stage etc.)

Characterization: different kinds (unlike a novel, no inside into the character’s mind, not much time
to get to know him)
 Indirect = actions (Gloster has his eyes pokes out by Regan’s husband: “One side will mock
the other out”  Regan is very cruel and heartless (stabbing sb from behind) = this
characterizes her as an evil peron)
 Direct = comments (actors commenting on themselves/on others e.g. Edmund’s monologue
in the first act of King Lear, the fool mocking Lear on his behavior etc.)

In drama: both text and performance. If we only look at the text, a pure/analytic study is possible
(//poetry: metre, sound effects, …) but we can’t do this: we must always imagine the character
saying this aloud with certain emotion (in that way, the text gets a deeper meaning)
e.g. soliloquy McBeth p 45: life is a play, when you have no more lines to say, it is the end

Primary text : dialogues, monologues

Secondary text = stages directions (= didascaly), dramatis personae (list of characters that will feature
in the play), description of the setting (usually printed in italics), who comes on/off the stage (usually
in Latin: exit), speech heading/prefix (who is speaking)

Different kinds of text:

 Prologue: information for the benefit of the audience alone, appeal of sympathy for the
audience (what can you expect)
 Epilogue: at the end of the play, summarizing the actions and giving a certain morality
 Monologue: addressed to sb on the stage
 Soliloquy: character is in the stream of consciousness, that are his true feelings spoken out,
no intentional false information
 Dialogue: sequence of speech between 2 characters (2< = multilogue)
 Chorus: comments on action of the characters, sometimes actions that have not taken place
yet
 Aside: for the benefit of the audience, a very brief expression of feelings when interacting
with another character
2 main genres in Drama:
 Tragedy: no happy ending (usually sb dies), aspect of fear with the audience = meant to
awaken in the audience the feelings of fear and pity (characters = usu. Persons that we can
sympathize with  we recognize ourselves in them)
o Unity of actions (according to Aristotle)
 Time: the time spent n stage must be the actual time of the story
 Place
 Action: only one plot, no extras
o Oedipus
o 5 stages in Greec tragedy (p 55):
 Exposition
 Reversal: reveals the bad action
 Discovery
 Catastrophe
 Catharsis: this is where pity in fear from the audience come in
o Typical: the characters do not know what is coming for them and if they know, they
can’t change anything about it
 Comedy (also Greec)
o Origin in rituals
o Not as structured
o Rather base
o Stock characters, very stereotypical = we don’t sympathize with them so we do not
pity them and laugh along
o Laughing human defects
 Morality plays (Middle ages)
o Teaching the audience a lesson
o Very abstract notions that become persons e.g. virtue, evil etc as characters
 Mystical plays (the passion of the Christ e.g.) <> miracle play(= saints’ lifes)
o Originated from a need to explain to the common people what the bible stories were
all about
 Renaissance: Elizabethan age (golden age)
o After Elizabeth dies  James I  afterwards: Cromwell taking over power and
becoming the first and only president ever in England. The Puritans shut down the
theatres