Lesson 2

Drama

I. Learning Objectives:

II. Pre – Assessment:

III. Lesson Map:

Drama

Basic
Types of
Elements of
Drama
Drama

Tragedy Other Types

Comedy
of Drama

Drama is a type of literature which is long and may be prose in form. It has different type as well as with tragedy
and comedy but aside from these two there are also other types which re based from the first two, there are the
following: farce, melodrama, and social drama. And this kind of literature also consists of some basic elements of
drama.
IV. Core Content:

Why Woman Wash the Dishes

Have you ever wondered why women always wahses the dishes? Its because of this story:

In the town of Santa Rosa there once lived a couple named Hugo and Imelda. Every mealtime they
quarreled over the chore of washing the dishes. Imelda would scold Hugo if he refused to wash the
dishes. Sometimes she would become angry and call him names, and if he talked back she would get
coconut midrib broom and chase him with it. He would run to the house of his compadre and hide
there till his wife’s anger had passed.
The neighbors familiarly called Imelda, Ka Maldang and Hugo, Ka Ugong.

One day just as they were finishin their lunch, Ka Ugong announced: “I’m not going to wash the
dishes any more.” He threw out his chest and lifted his chin.

“Who says so?” asked Ka Maldang, holding up her chin, highert than his.

“I say so; I worked so hard in the field this morning. I’m not going to wash any dish.”

Ka Maldang stood up and with her arms akimbo, she glared down at Ka Ugong across the table. She
was at Ka Ugong across the table. She was a Big woman. Her arms were stourt. Her voice was also
big. “Ad who, Mister Hugo, is going to wash these dishes?” she asked.

Ka Ugong’s chest sank again. His chin salso went down. He held on the edge of the table nervously.

“You!” he said in a much lower tone. “You are the woman. You should do all the housework.”

“And what do you do?” asked Ka Maldang. “You tie the carabao to the reeds in the field and then you
lie down on the grass to watch it graze. You call that hard work? I cook, clean the house, wash your
clothes, I scrub the floor, I do all the work that only slaves should do. And yet, you even refuse to
help me wash the plate which you have eaten!” Ka Maldang’s voice was now raised to a high pitch
and her tears posed on her eyelids at Ka Ugong and at her broom. She grabbed the broom. She
raised the broom to strike him, crying, “You, you, you lazy man!”

Ka Ugong ducked under the table, “Don’t” he cried. “Don’t strike me!”

“Come out from under the table, you coward.” ordered Ka Maldang.

“Lay down your broom,” said Ka Ugong.

“All right, all right. Come out.” Ka Maldang put her broom behind the door.

Ka Ugong returned to his seat opposite her at the table.

“What have you to say?” asked Ka Maldang, wipingher eyes.

“Let’s stop quarreling over the plates. Let’s have a wager. The first one of us who will speak after I’d
said ‘Begin’ will wash the dishes. Always”

“Only that?” said Ka Maldang. “The first one who talks will always wash the plates, and bowls, and
pots and pans. Always.”
“Right.” said Ka Ugong. “If you ever say just one word to me or to anybody, or to anything after I had
said ‘Begin’, you will always wash the dishes.”

“That’s easy. I can keep my mouth shut even for a week. You can’t. You even talk to your carabao.”
“All right, are you ready?” asked Ka Ugong.

Ka Maldang sat upright in front of him across the table. She nodded her head, compressed her lips,
and Ka Ugong said “Begin.”

They both fell silent. They sat at the table looking at each other across the unwashed plates and
bowls and spoons. They did not like to leave each other for fear that one would talk to him self
without the other’s hearing. They sat there just staring.

Soon tje cat began to mew for its food. Neither Ka Maldang nor Ka Ugong paid attention to its
mewing. The cat jumped upon the drying dishes to lick the leftovers. Ka Maldang did not drive the
cat away. Neither did Ka Ugong. The cat licked the pot and pan on it, overturned a kettle, spilled its
contents, then went to lie down under the table. Ka Ugong pretended that nothing had happened. He
continue to sit still, and so did Ka Maldang.

Soon, it was getting late in the afternoon but they went on sitting mutely at the lunch table. Their
eyes were tired from staring hard at each other. Tears began to roll down their cheeks. Ka Ugong’s
shirt became damp with his sweat. Ka Maldang’s sweat gathered on her fore heat, and trickle down
to the sides of her face, and fell drop by drop to her breast.

A neighbor called, “Compadre Ugong! Oh! Compadre!”

Ka Ugong did not answer.

The neighbor called again, “Comadre Maldang! Yoo-hoo Comadre Maldang. Yoo-hoo, Compadre
Ugong, may I borrow your ax?”

Ka Maldang did not answer. Ka Ugong looked at her silently.

“Perhaps nobody is at home ,” they heard the neighbor say to himself. “But why did they leave their
ladder at the door? They usually remove the ladder when they go away. Well, I’ll just go up get the ax
and return it later.” The neighbor went up.

When the neighbor went u the bamboo ladder he was surprised to see Ka Maldang and Ka Ugong
sitting silently at the table where the plates had dried up with the leftovers. He hurried toward
them.
Ka Ugong nether moved nor talked. The neighbor repeated his question. He shook Ka Ugong;s
shoulder. Ka Ugong let him shake him, closing his lips tighter.

The neighbor turned to Ka Maldang. “Speak, Comadre! What happened?” He shook her shoulders,
too.

She pushed him roughly aside but did not speak.

“Did you eat something poisonous? Some food that has made you dumb?” He shook each one
alternately. But still neither stood up nor talked.

The neighbor was alarmed . He did not get the ax but ran out to the rest of the neighbors, He told
them that something terrible had happened to to his Compadre Ugong and Compadre Maldang. The
neighbors gathered at Ka Maldang’s dining room. They took turns trying to make them speak. But
the two continued to sit staring at each other in silence. Ka Maldang looked at her husband
threateningly for a moment then closed her eyes. Ka Ugong knew that she did so to avoid looking at
the neighbors, He also closed his eyesand ignored every one who had come up to his house. Ka
Maldang was very angry with her Compadre’s interference but she dared not to speak her mind, She
pretended to be asleep.

The compadre was very much worried. He ran to the village herb man. The herb man came and when
he saw the motionless, silent husband and wife sitting at the table, he declared that they were
bewitched. He spread a woven bud mat in the center of the sala and asked the “bewitched” couple to
lie down. Ka Ugong obediently lay down and closed his eyes. He curled up and went to sleep. But Ka
Maldang refused to get up from where she sat at the dining table

The herb man said “Ah, the spirit that has taken possession of her is very stubborn. I must break its
spell.”

He turned, then produced from a small bag which he always carried nine pieces of betel leaf, a piece
of areca nut, and a little lime from a tiny bottle. He examined the leaves closely to choose those
which had veins running in identical arrangements on each side of the midrib. He cut the nut into
nine pieces. He spread a little lime on each betel leaf, rolled them and wrapped them around each
piece of areca nut. He now had nine rings of the leaves.

“This represents the lost spirit of the couple,” he said.

He chewed the leaf and nut. When he had chewed it he spat it on his palm, dipped a forefinger of the
other hand into the nut colored saliva and marked with it a cross on the foreheads of Ka Ugong and
Ka Maldang. Ka Ugong did not seem to feel the old man’s finger on his forehead. Ka Maldang caught
the man’s forefinger and twisted it. The old herb doctor cried “aray” and pulled back his hand. He
moved toward Ka Ugong who was lying down. Calling his name softly and slowly several times.
“Come, Ugong, Come back, Ugong!” Ka Ugong did not move nor speak.

“Come Maldang…come home to your body now…come. Maldang…!” chanted the old man. Ka
Maldang did not answer.

Evening fell on the frightened village, frightened because the herb doctor said that the spell might be
cast on some other villagers besides Ka Ugong and Ka Maldang. He called to the bewitched couple
softly at first, and then louder, but became tired so she reclined against the bamboo wall. The old
her man said, “This is the first witchery of its kind that I have met here. By their silence I believe that
they are dead. Their spirits, driven away by the witch, have left their bodies. The only thing to do in
order to keep their souls in peace and to prevent this witchery craft from spreading among us is to
bury them.”

The herb man ordered some of the men to look for boards and make two coffins immediately before
the malady would go to them. In no time, the two coffins, made of rough planks, hurriedly nailed
together, were finished .

The women began to weep for Ka Maldang. She had leaned rigidly against the back of her chair,
closed her eyes, and shut her lips tight. The herb man asked the men gathered around to lift the
couple into the coffins.

“We shall bury them at sunrise. Some of us have to stay to keep the wake for the dead,” he said.
The man easily lifted Ka Ugong and places him inside his coffin. Surely, he thought to himself, he
would win the wager. He would not be afraid of being buried. Why, he would just get cut of the grave
when the neighbors were gone. He thought everything going on was great fun and he was enjoying
himself. How he would frighten them all when he returned from his grave!

The herb man approached Ka Maldang. Although her eyes were closed, she had been listening to his
directions. She was afraid that he would surely force her into the coffin if she did not tell him to go
away. But she did not want to talk. She hoped her husband would object to the men’s lifting her into
the coffin.

“Surely, Hugo will not let me be buried tomorrow. Uh, I’m afraid to sleep in that coffin tonight. No, I’ll
not let them lift me into it,” she thought to herself.

But she did not hear Ka Ugong speak. She opened her eyes just as the herb man, aided by two other
men, put his arms around her to lift up from her chair.

Ka Maldang pushed the men, got up to her feet, and shouted, “Don’t touch us! Get out! Get out of
my house. Shame on you for coming here, meddling with our lives!”
Ka Ugong leaped to his feet. He also shouted, “You talked first!”

He jumped about clapping his hands and saying to the astonished neighbors, “She talked first. We
had a wager. Now she will always wash the dishes!’

Ka Maldang lifted up the lid of Ka Ugong’s coffin to strike his head with it but he ran out with his
neighbors, still shouting happily and saying “I won, I knew I would win! Now I’ll never wash dishes.”

Drama

The word drama comes from the Greek word “dran” which means “to do” or “to act,” – and
doing and acting have always been drama’s major characteristics.

A person who writes plays is a playwright or a dramatist. Playwright is a combination of “play”

and “wright” (worker or builder).

Types of Drama

The dram is ordinarily studied under two major headings: the tragedy and the comedy. Though
any attempt to strictly define the tragedy and the comedy will lead to arguments about
exception, still some understanding of what critics have said about these two modes of the
drama will help us make up our own minds as we read the plays.

Tragedy
Tragedy began during the 6 th century B.C. in ancient Athens. It began with a small number of
choral members impersonating heroes and other important figure. The heroes were noteworthy
for their achievements, but they were morals and suffered death. They also experienced grief
and sorrow.

In his Poetics, Aristotle developed a classic definition of tragedy as an organized

presentation of human suffering. But suffering alone does not make the tragedy. We must
examine the causes and the effects of suffering. There are two main causes: FATE, the portion
of the person’s life that he cannot control, and CHARACTER, that which he can control and the
choices that he makes in dealing with his predicament.
Comedy

Then, ancient Athens developed comedy. Since there was great freedom of speech, the
comedy writers created a boisterous, lewd, and freely critical type of comedy called the Old
Comedy. When freedom of speech declined in the 4 th century B.C., the Older Comedy was
replaced by “Middle Comedy” a more social, discreet, and international drama. This was then
followed by New Comedy or Comedy of Manners, a play which features the development of
plot, situation, and character. This type of comedy dramatizes the regeneration of individuals,
beginning in doubt and ending in success.

If a writer intends to reform human behavior, he can do it best writing comedy. Few
people like to be thought of as a being funny. George Meredith described humor as carrying the
“Sword of Common Sense” with which the writer attacks deviations from common sense. The
comic spirit has a moral purpose in “teaching the world what ails it,” and in giving rise to
“thoughtful laughter.”

Other Types of Drama Flowing from Tragedy and Comedy

Farce is a drama which intends to make the audience laugh. It is full of slapstick and
extravagant dialogue, with exaggerated emotions and actions.

Melodrama brings characters to the brink of ruin, only to be saved by the hero, who always
arrives just in time – and with the superhuman resources and strength pays the mortgage, saves
the business, and rescues the heroines while the villain flees.

Social drama is sometimes called problem drama. This type of play which evolves in the
nineteenth century explores social problems and the individual’s place in society. The plays can
be tragic, comic, or mixed.

The Basic Elements of Drama

Drama has similar basic elements as the short story, novel, and other forms of fiction. It
has plot, character, point of view, language, tone, symbolism, and theme or meaning.

Plot, Action Conflict

A classic full-length play has a five-stage plot structure: exposition, complication, crisis
or climax, catastrophe, and resolution.

• Exposition, the audience receives essential background information. The characters, the
conflicts and the situations are introduced.
• Complication, the conflicts grow heated and the plot becomes more involved.
• Crisis or climax, as the complications develops, the situation becomes more and more
tightly knotted leads to this, this is the so called as the turning point.
 • Catastrophe (an overturning), the hero or heroine is in dilemma as to what course of
action should be taken. All the pieces and strands of the plot fall into place. It is often
caused by the discovery of certain information or events that have been unknown to most
of the characters. (Catastrophe should not be confused with our modern use of the term to
mean disaster.)
• Resolution or Denouement, conflicts are resolved, lines are straightened out or ended,
loose ends are tied up, and the play ends.

Character

A character is a person created by the playwright to carry the action, language, ideas, and
emotions of play. Just like other prose fiction, a character can either be flat or round, static or
dynamic. The protagonist is usually the central character in the action. The antagonist opposes
the protagonist and is often a villain.

Dramatic Characters

▪ Realistic characters - are imitations of individualized men and women; they are given
backgrounds, personalities, desires, motivations and thoughts.
▪ Nonrealistic characters – do not have these individualizing touches; they are often
underdeveloped and symbolic.
▪ Symbolic characters – represent an idea, a way of life, moral values, or some other
abstraction.
▪ Stereotyped or stock characters – have general characteristics of their kind such as an
honest policeman, a female prostitute, a stubborn father, an oppressive stepmother, and
others.

Point of View and Perspective

Playwright employ the dramatic point of view whereby they arrange the actions and the
words in such a way that audience must draw all conclusions.

Within these limits, playwrights use techniques to lead the audience to see things from a specific
character’s perspective. A commonly used device is the soliloquy in which a character reveals his
or her thoughts directly to the audience. Another device is the aside which allows a character to
address brief remarks to the audience – or to another character – which the other characters do
not hear.

Setting or Scenery

The scenery or setting is first seen on the stage to bring written directions to life through
backdrops, furnishings, properties, and lighting. The scenery establishes specific places and
times. It also determines the level of reality.
 ▪ Realistic setting requires extensive construction and props to create a life a like stage.
▪ Nonrealistic setting is often symbolic. A unit set is produced; a series of platforms, room,
stairs, and exits.

Diction, Imagery, Style and Language

Through the use of dramatic language, the audience learns about characters,
relationships, and conflict. The dialogue of the characters reveals the details of their daily lives,
or their deepest thoughts about life and death, their hopes, fears, desires – as well as the time and
place of the play.

Tone and Atmosphere

Like in fiction and poetry, tone in drama signifies the moods and attitudes. In plays, tone may
conveyed to the audience through voice and gestures that accompany the dialogue. Even silence
can be an effective device for creating tone and mood.

Tone may create an atmosphere or mood that dominates a play. Tempo and diction can create an
atmosphere of fear and apprehension, anger, desperation, and more.

Playwrights commonly use dramatic irony to control the tone of the play. This is created when
the audience knows more than the characters in a play or when one or two characters know more
than the others.

Symbolism and Allegory

Just like fiction and poetry, the meaning of symbols are extensive. Dramatics symbols such as
characters, settings, object, actions, situations, or statements, may be both universal and private.
Cultural or universal symbols, namely: crosses, flags, snakes, flowers, or seasons are generally
understood by the audience or reader.

When a play offers symbols of general human experience, that play may be read as an allegory.

Subject and Theme

Dramatist write plays to put forward ideas about the human condition. This is the subject. Plays
may thus be about love, religion, hatred, war, ambition, death, envy, or any human condition.

The ideas that the play dramatizes about its subject make up the theme or meaning of the play.
Thus, a play might explore the idea that love will always find a way, or that marriage may be
deconstructive, the pride always lead to disaster, or that marriage may be destructive, that pride
always lead to disaster, or that grief can be conquered through strength and a commitment to life.
III. Topic Summary:

This lesson will enlighten the minds of the readers that same as other literary piece, drama or play have
elements as well. The difference and the similarities of other forms in literature will be exposed based on
the information given.

IV. References:

• Patron, Ida Yap. Interactive Reading-Responding to and Writing about

Philippine Literature . Quezon City: Great Books Trading, 2002.
Weblinks:

• https://literarydevices.net/drama/
• https://examples.yourdictionary.com/different-types-ofdrama-in-
literature.html