Exclusive Features of Drama
June 6th, 2009 | 
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Exclusive Features of Drama
What is Drama?
Drama is an art of writing which can be personified, leading to the climax through series of events; dialogues are also presented between the characters. Here are some critical comments of some famous critics:
A play ought to be a just and lively image of human nature, representing its passions and humors, and the changes of fortune to which it is subject for the delight and instruction of mankind.
__________ John Dryden
The business of plays is to recommend virtue, and discountenance vice; to show the uncertainty of human greatness, the sudden turns of fate, and the unhappy conclusions of violence and injustice, it is to expose the singularities of pride and fancy, to make folly and falsehood contemptible, and to bring everything that is ill under infamy and neglect.
___________Jeremy Collier
Types of Drama
There are three types of drama which are discussed here:
Tragedy
Aristotle defined tragedy in a comprehensive way. According to him, “Tragedy is a representative action, which is serious, complete in itself, and of a certain length; it is expressed in speech made beautiful ways in different parts of the play, it is acted, not narrated and by exciting pity and fear, it gives a healthy relief to such emotions.”
He has defined logically firstly what tragedy is and what it represents. Secondly, the form it employs is closely elaborated by him. Thirdly, he mentions the manner in which it is communicated, and lastly the function it fulfills.
“A tragedy is the imitation of an action that is serious and also as having magnitude, complete, in itself; in language with pleasurable accessories; each kind brought in separately in the parts of the work; in a dramatic, not in a narrative form; with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish the catharsis of such emotions.”
Comedy
Comedy is a story of various habits and customs of public and private affairs, from which one may learn what is of use in life and what must be avoided.
____________ Aelius Donatus
Comedy is the mirror of everyday life.
___________ Livius Andronicus
Comedy is an imitation of life, a mirror of customs, an image of truth.
___________ Cicero
Tragi-Comedy
The fusion of tragedy and comedy, having significant elements as mixture of sorrows, romances, sufferings, forgiveness and reconciliation is called a tragic-comedy.
There is no theatre in the world has anything so absurd as the English tragic-comedy. Here a course of mirth; there another of sadness and passion; a third of honor; and the fourth deed. Thus in two hours and half we run through all fits of Bedlams.
__________J. Dryden
Who is Dramatist?
“The dramatic author has to paint his beaches with real sand, real live men and women move about the stage; we heard real voices; what is feigned merely puts a sense upon wht is; we do actively see a woman go behind screen as Lady Teazle and after a certain interval we do actually see her very shamefully produced again.”
Who is Hero?
The legacy of heroes__the memory of a great name and inheritance of a great example.
___________Benjamin Disraeli
What is Heroism?
When the will defies fear, when duty throws the gauntlet down the fate, when honor scorns to compromise with death____this is heroism.
___________R.G. Ingersall
“Heroism is the brilliant triumph of the soul over the flesh; that is to say over fear, fear of poverty, of suffering, of calamity, of sickness, of isolation and of death.”
Tragic Hero
Aristotle defines the tragic hero in his own words, “There remains, then the intermediate kind of personage, a man not pre-eminently virtuous and just, whose misfortune, however is brought upon him not by vice and depravity but by some error of judgment, of the member of those in the enjoyment of great reputation and prosperity.”
“The tragic hero will most effectively arouse pity and fear, if he is neither thoroughly good nor thoroughly evil but a man likes any of us, though the tragic effect will be stronger if he rather better than most of us. Such man is exhibited as suffering or change in fortune from happiness to misery because of mistaken act due to his Hamartia___that is his tragic flow or tragic error in judgment.”
Plot of Tragedy
The plot of tragedy has three characteristics according to Aristotle, “It must be of certain size, secondly it must be of a certain structure, finally, the most important thing is that it is the soul of drama.”
It means that it must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. “A beginning is a situation which has definite consequences, though not very obvious causes, a middle is a situation with both causes and consequences; and an end is the result of the middle but creates no further situation in its turn.”
The Opening Scenes contain the exposition of the subject. In other words, we are introduced to the principal characters, their stations in life, their viewpoints and interests. We are put in touch with their affairs at the time when the play opens and enough of the story is conveyed to us to stir up our curiosity and to enable us to understand the later parts of the play.
The Middle Part, the next step is called the growth or development of the plot towards the climax. The part of the action of this phase is the “Tying of Knot”. The different motives and interests of the leading characters become involved. Then the complicated situation arises.
As the story develops, the suspense and interest of the audience are aroused more and more until we reach a turning point which is called as the climax or crisis. Till this point, the action-movement has been an ascending one. It now begins to descend. After the turning point has been reached there begins what is known as denouement i.e. the “Untying of Knot”. The Denouement or resolution must proceed rapidly in order to keep alive the interest of the spectators and not to weary their patience. What is more important, it should proceed naturally from antecedent actions.
The final phase of the structure of tragedy is called Catastrophe that is in the case of tragedy, there is the unhappy ending and in the case of the comedy, there is the union of hero and heroine. It is very essential that the Catastrophe must be very simple. It must depend on few events and few passions. It must be brought about by probable and natural means. Thus in the development of the structure of a tragedy, there are five parts namely, the exposition, the complication, the climax, the denouement and the catastrophe.
Catharsis
The catharsis implies not only an emotional relief but a refining or clarifying of emotion. “Apply this to tragedy; we observe that the feelings of hate and fear in real life contain morbid and disturbing elements. In the process of tragic excitation, they find relief, and the morbid element is thrown off. As the tragic action progresses when the tumult of the mind, first roused, has afterwards subsided, the lower forms of the emotions are found to have been transmuted into higher and more refined forms. The painful elements in the pity and fear of reality are purged away; the emotions themselves are purged. The curative and tranquilizing influence that tragedy exercises follows as an immediate accompaniment of the transformation of the feelings. Tragedy then does more than homeopathetic cure of certain passions. Its function on this view is not merely to provide an outlet for pity and fear but to provide for them a distinctively aesthetic satisfaction, to purify and clarify them by passing them through the medium of art.”
Chorus
The chorus is a noteworthy element in Greek Tragedy. It consists a group of actions whose aim is to report what happened off the stage and to make such moral comments from time to time, as would be desired effects. It is sometimes an integral part of the plot.