Introduction to Literature

Semester 4

Elements of Drama

Lahoucine Aammari
FLDM, Fez
 OUTLINE: ELEMENTS OF DRAMA

 CHARACTER
 PLOT AND STRUCTURE
 STAGES, SETS, AND SETTING
 TONE, LANGUAGE, AND SYMBOL
 THEME
DRAMA AND THEATER
 CHARACTER

 The word character refers not only to a person represented in an

imagined plot, whether narrated or acted out but also to the unique
qualities that make up a personality.
 The people in a play are referred to as characters. We assess them
on the basis of what they say and do, and what the other characters
say about them.
 We have to look through the characters as individuals and see that
they are just a means for dramatizing the themes of the play.
 Drama relies more on ‘indirect characterization.’

 The basic point about all plays, both in formal and thematic terms,
is that the characters are always caught up in some sort of crisis,
dilemma, or confusion; they are always faced by some sort of problem.
 Stage directions provide clues about characterization.
 [Stage Direction: Notes incorporated in or added to the script of a
play to indicate the moment of a character’s appearance, character
or manner; the style of delivery; the actors’ movement; details of
location, scenery and effects].
Makuri [despairingly]: No one. No one that could swear ... Ah, what a woman you
are for deceiving yourself (The Swamp Dwellers)
a)The setting:
The scene is a hut on stilts, built on one of the scattered semi-firm islands in the
swamps. Two doors on the left lead into other rooms, and the one on the right leads
outside. The walls are marsh stakes plaited with hemp ropes.
b) How the character feels:
Alu [stubbornly.]: I know he’s dead.
c) How the character moves
MAKURI [sits down and takes up his work.]: Well, I will not
perform the death rites for a son I know to be living.
d) How the character speaks
​[Alu begins to smile in spite of herself.]
MAKURI | futile effort to control himself.|: Ay—ya-ya! The river
bed .. . [Bursts out laughing again.]
- e) How the actors/actresses move on stage

The cast are usually told where to go on stage by stage directions.

Basic Stage Directions
 THE PATTERNS OF CHARACTERS

 The main character is called the hero or protagonist. The term

'hero' does not mean someone who is brave or noble : heroes
maybe good or evil, low or high born. Often opposing the hero
is the villain or antagonist, although sometimes, as in
Shakespeare's Macbeth, the hero himself can be a villain.
 In drama, there are minor characters or supporting roles.
Sometimes a minor character serves as a foil, a character
designed to bring out the qualities of another character by means
of contrast. A minor character can serve as an adjuvant to the
protagonist [The Beggar is a foil for Igwezu].
 What modern tragedy has in common with earlier tragedy is
that it explores the painfulness of a world where fictions of a
rational social order can no longer be maintained. Yet there is
a difference. It has something to do with the fact that the
heroes of modern tragedy are fairly insignificant figures: they
are anti-heroes, meaning that they are just ordinary people as
opposed to the great men who feature in earlier tragedies.
 Questions about Character

 Who is the protagonist? Why and how so? Which other characters, if any,
are main or major characters? Which are minor characters?
 What are the protagonist’s most distinctive traits, and what is most
distinctive about his or her outlook and values? What motivates the
character? What is it about the character that creates internal and/or
external conflict? Which lines or stage directions reveal most about the
character?
 What are the roles of other characters? Which, if any, functions as an
antagonist? Which, if any, serves as a foil? Does any character function as
a narrator or chorus, providing background information and commentary?
Why and how so?
 Is characterization diverse? How might this affect an audience’s
experience of the play? In what ways might an actor choose to go against
the expected types, and how would this complicate the play’s overall effect
and meaning?
 Which of the characters, or which aspects of the characters, does the play
encourage us to sympathize with or to admire? to view negatively? Why
and how so? Are there characters who might be more or less sympathetic,
depending on how the role is cast and interpreted?
 PLOT AND STRUCTURE

All plays have the same basic structure of exposition,

complication and resolution. The exposition stage prepares the
ground by showing us some sort of change taking place in the
characters' lives or the social order. In the central stage of the play
the dramatist develops the complication that arises from this
change as the characters seek to come to terms with the problems
that have developed so that a sense of disorder prevails. In the
resolution, however, as the play reaches its dénouement or
ending, order is re-established, or the characters at least come to
terms with the new situation that has developed.
 QUESTIONS ABOUT PLOT

 Read the first scene or the first few pages and then stop. What potential for
conflict do you see here? What do you expect to happen in the rest of the
play?
 How is the play divided into acts, scenes? What is the effect of this
structure? Does the division of the play correspond at all to the five stages
of plot development—exposition, rising action, climax, resolution,
conclusion?
 What is the inciting incident or destabilizing event? How and why does
this event destabilize the initial situation? How would you describe the
conflict that develops? To what extent is it external, internal, or both?
 What is the climax, or turning point? Why and how so? How is the conflict
resolved? How and why might this resolution fulfill or defy your
expectations?
 STAGES, SETS, AND SETTING

 Modern stage (the proscenium stage) looks like: a room

with the wall missing between us and it (the so-called fourth
wall).
 The thrust stage, where the audience sits around three sides
of the major acting area, and the arena stage, where the
audience sits all the way around the acting area and players
make their entrances and their exits through the auditorium.
 Most plays today are performed on a proscenium stage.
 In a modern play, there are likely to be several changes of scene,
sometimes marked by the lowering of the curtain or the darkening of the
stage while different sets and props are arranged.
 Sets (the design, decoration/scenery)
 and props/ theatrical property (articles or objects used
onstage) any object used in a performance.
Soyinka employed a single setting for The Swamp
Dwellers — a rustic hut in the Niger Delta
constructed of marsh stakes and hempen rope and
raised above the swamp water on stilts.
 QUESTIONS ABOUT SETTING AND STAGING

 Does all the action occur in one time and place, or in more than one? If the
latter, what are those times and places? How much time tends to pass
between scenes?
 How important do the time, place, and social milieu seem to be, and in
what ways are they important? What about the plot and characters that
would remain the same if a director chose to set the play in a different time
and place? What wouldn’t?
 What patterns do you notice regarding where and when things happen?
Which characters are associated with each setting? How do different
characters relate to the same setting? When, how, and why do scenes
change from one setting to another? Are there significant deviations?
 Do the stage directions describe particular settings and props in detail? If
so, what seems significant about the details? How might they establish
mood, reveal character, and affect individual characters and their
interactions with one another?
 Does the date of the play tell you anything about the way it was originally
intended to be staged? Does the representation of time and place in the
play implicitly call for a certain type of stage?
 TONE, LANGUAGE, AND SYMBOL

 In plays, as in other literary genres, tone (writer’s attitude,

mood, manner and moral outlook in his work) is difficult to
specify or explain. Perhaps tone is especially important in
drama because it is, in performance, a spoken form, and vocal
tone always affects the meaning of spoken words to some
extent, in any culture or language.
 Dramatic irony: when the audience understands the
implication and meaning of a situation on stage, or what is
being said, but the charcters do not .and even situational
irony, in which a character’s (and the audience’s) expectations
about what will happen are contradicted by what actually does
happen, are relatively easy to detect. But verbal irony, in
which a statement implies a meaning quite different from its
obvious, literal meaning, can be fairly subtle and easy to miss.
 Theme

 Theme is the abstract subject of a work; its central idea or

ideas which may or may not be explicit or obvious. Themes
may range, be multiple within each work, but should be
contributing to the main plot or subplots of the work. A theme
is not a summary of the story. Literature is about ordinary life
so the big themes in literature are the important subjects and
experiences of public and private lives: love, death, marriage,
freedom, hope, despair, power, war, revenge, evil, and so on.
So, anything which is a subject in life can become a theme in
literature.
 TIPS FOR IDENTIFYING THEME

 Pay attention to the title. A title will seldom indicate a play’s theme
directly, but some titles do suggest a central topic or a key question. Probe
the rest of the play to see what insights, if any, about that topic or answers
to that question it ultimately seems to offer.
 Identify any statements that the characters make about a general concept,
issue, or topic such as human nature, the natural world, and so on,
particularly in monologues or in debates between major characters. Look,
too, for statements that potentially have a general meaning beyond the
play, even if they refer to a specific situation.
 If a character changes over the course of the play, try to articulate the truth
or insight that character seems to discover. Then consider whether and
how the play as a whole corroborates or complicates that insight.
 Identify a conflict depicted in the play and state it in general terms or turn
it into a general question, leaving out any reference to specific characters,
setting, and so on. Then think about the insight or theme that might be
implied by the way the conflict is resolved.
The Swamp Dwellers, Wole Soyinka

Akinwande Oluwole "Wole"

Babatunde Soyinka was born
on 13 July 1934. He is a
playwright, poet and essayist.
The Nigerian Nobel laureate
and champion of political
freedom once imprisoned for
his outspoken denunciation of
corruption and abuse of power.
Key Facts
 Full Title- The Swamp Dwellers

 Author- Wole Soyinka

 Type of work- Play

 Genre- Realistic Fiction

 Language- English

 Date of Publication- 1965, London

 Setting - Swamp in the Southern Nigeria

 Narrative style- Dramatic

 Protagonist- Igwezu

 Antagonist- Kadiye
 In The Swamp Dwellers, the main conflict is between the old
and the new way of life in the Nigerian society and Africa in
general. In Southern Nigeria, the individual was tightly bound
to his society, and with the introduction of more modern ideas,
this relationship was not quite as cohesive as it used to be. In
addition, the power of nature was also a difficult factor to deal
with when trying to survive and build a life and preserve the
culture. There are three main categories of characters: parents,
corrupt priests and their followers, and individuals who are
always moving and changing.
 while the ethical dilemma at the
heart of The Swamp Dwellers
Alu, (1958) is grounded in the
history of the Nigerian nation
Makuri,
and in Yoruban notions of
Igwezu, twinship, the play reveals
A Beggar, something universal about how
migration and acculturation
The Kadiye,
erode traditional values and
Awuchike, reshape identity in ways that
Desela, privilege self-interest over
family and community, promote
The Servant of Kadiye, corruption, and accelerate the
The Drummer replacement of indigenous
ethical systems with the
depersonalized transactional
values of commerce and trade.
“Only the children and the old stay
here, bondsman. Only the innocent
and the dotards.” Igwezu
― Wole Soyinka, The Swamp
Dwellers: A Play in One Act