Characteristics/Features of Drama

Manners when attending a live

theater show.
The Benefits of Drama for Children
Chapter One: The Nature and Elements
of Drama 4
1.1 The Nature of Drama 5
1.2 The Elements of Drama 6
Chapter Two: Types of Drama 20
Chapter Three: Language Dramatists Use
45
3.1 Tropes 47
3.2 Figures of Speech 58
CHAPTER ONE
THE NATURE AND ELEMENTS OF DRAMA
Characteristics/Features of Drama
The following are elements that are
present in dramatic pieces, regardless of
the form they come under. In order for
any piece to be qualified as `drama‘, it
must include the majority of these
elements. Here are ten major features of
drama:
1. Cast: A cast is includes every person
who played any character in the drama.
It includes the lead and supporting
actors, as well as people that play a
more background role.
2. Playwright: This is the person who
creates the dramatic piece. It could be
just one person or more.
3. Protagonist: The entire story usually
revolves around this character. It is
typically just a single character, although
there are plays that have more than one
protagonist. They are also referred to as
chief actors or lead actors. One common
trait in mostly all protagonist is that they
are often on the same side as the
viewing audience.
4. Antagonist: The character plays an
opposite role from the protagonist.
He/she is oftentimes the villain in the
story or narrative. Such character is
frequently responsible for the central
conflict.
5. Conflict: This is the central cause for
rivalry between the opposing characters.
It is oftentimes set off by the antagonist,
while the protagonist is burdened with
the responsibility of righting such wrong.
6. Soliloquy: This dramatic device is
often to give the audience a glimpse at
the character’s intentions by making
them speak their thoughts out loud. It is
also used to create emphasis for crucial
details in the story.
7. Tragic flaw: In other to thicken the
plot and get the audience more invested
in the story, the protagonist is made to
act in a certain way that rubs the
audience the wrong way. Such action
could be tied to his pride or lack of self-
control. The audience gets riled up
enough to create momentum for the
protagonist’s victory.
8. Prologue: This is the beginning of the
play. It offers an introduction to the
body of the drama. At this point,
adequate information is provided for the
audience to settle into the story.
9. Epilogue: This is usually the last part
of a drama that ties up loose ends in the
plot. It acts as a closing and a possible
explanation to the beginning of a story.
It is at this point that the reader or
viewer gets the entire point of the
literary piece.
10. Flashback: This device is used to
return to a past occurrence to offer the
audience a reason for the actions of any
character(s). It helps the audience gain
insight into why things are the way they
are, and where the story could be
headed. It could also offer an
explanation for the sudden arrival of a
fresh character example, a character
suddenly announces himself as the
protagonist’s husband.
Conclusion
The different features of drama
contribute to one goal of storytelling,
which is clarity of message. The viewing
or reading audience should be able to
get a clear picture of the events that
played out in any such drama. While
some features are almost compulsory,
some can be left out in a drama.
Manners when attending a live
theater show.
Some theater newcomers aren’t sure
what the proper behavior and theatre
etiquette is when attending a play or
musical. Common questions that first-
timers ask are: What is the appropriate
attire for the theater? Are refreshments
available at the theater? When do I
applaud during the performance?

Those are all good questions, but there

are also other important questions that
most visitors don’t think to ask, many of
which are related to how to behave (and
how not to behave) during the show so
as to better enjoy the performance and
to allow the rest of the people in the
audience to enjoy it as well.
Sitting in a live show is not like being at a
movie theater – it’s usually much more
quiet, so you have to be more careful
not to make noise. The performers who
are entertaining you are doing so live
and in person, so it’s important to be
respectful to them as well.
Because many first-time theater
attendees – and, frankly, many regular
theatergoers who should really know
better by now – aren’t exactly sure what
the proper theatre etiquette and
behavior is, we have created a primer on
the Do’s and Don’ts (mostly the latter) of
theatre etiquette when attending a live
performance.
1. Turn Off Your Cell Phone

Somehow the most obvious rule of good

theatre etiquette is still the most often
disregarded. Turn it off, people. Turn. It.
Off. And, no, putting your cell phone on
vibrate isn’t good enough – the people
next to you can hear that weird buzzing
sound, too. Be present for the moment.

2. Don’t Send Text Messages During the

Show

You may think you’re being all incognito,

but in a darkened theater, the light from
your cell phone screen is incredibly
distracting to those around you. And
why do you still have your phone on
anyway? We just told you to turn it off!

3. There is no photography or videoing

allowed in the theater.

As mentioned above it is super

distracting to the other people who are
trying to watch the show. Beyond that, it
is distracting to the performers who are
prepared to give you the best
performance possible. Finally, it is illegal
in many instances. The majority of most
performance contracts strictly forbid the
recording of a performance. The
organization producing the show has a
responsibility to discourage the practice.
Set designs, costume designs, direction,
performances and the script and music
are all the intellectual property of those
who created them. It is possible you may
be responsible for copyright
infringement by recording a live
theatrical production.

4. Eat Your Dinner Before the Show, Not

DURING It

This isn’t the movies. Munching on

candy and chips during a live
performance is annoying to your
neighbors. Bringing hamburgers and
large salads (oh, yes, we’ve seen people
do it) is really unacceptable. If you’re
absolutely starving (after all, nobody
wants to hear your stomach growling
either), then a little quiet snacking on
something fairly unobtrusive like M&Ms
is acceptable. But it’s still better if you
avoid eating altogether during the show
and get your treats in the lobby during
the intermission instead.

5. If You Have To Cough, Cover Your

Mouth

In this age of diseases-of-the-week from

SARS to swine flu, there is nothing more
bone-chilling to a theatergoer than the
sound of a nearby cough and an
accompanying gust of air. Yuck.
Coughing is inevitable, but failure to
cover your mouth is a real faux pas, so
try to keep kleenex or a handkerchief on
hand. And if you have a cold, be sure to
bring some lozenges with you.

6. Unwrap Cough Drops and Candies in

Advance

If you anticipate any coughing fits during

the show, be sure to unwrap your
lozenges before the performance starts
and have them at the ready. That
crinkling sound is like nails on a
chalkboard during a quiet play. And, no,
unwrapping it S-L-O-W-L-Y does not help
the situation … it’s much, much worse.
7. Don’t Be A Disruptive Miss (or Mr.)
Manners

Sure, it’s irritating when someone’s cell

phone goes off, but what’s even worse is
when the brief breach of theatre
etiquette is followed by a series of
overreactions from other audience
members. Annoyed “Tsks,” “Hmphs,”
hisses, snarls, and shouts of “Turn it off!”
along with scandalized glares can be just
as distracting as the original disruption.

8. Don’t Talk During the Show

A quick whisper to your neighbor, or an

audible reaction to something
interesting that happens on stage is fine
(this is the live theater, not the morgue),
but keep conversations to the
intermission and after the show. Nobody
needs to hear your theories on what the
next plot twist will be, and please refrain
from asking your companion to explain
to you what was just said onstage. By
the time he or she explains it to you,
you’ll have both missed something else
important.

9. Don’t Sing Along

It’s tempting sometimes, we know. But if

you want to sing on stage, then you’re
gonna have to audition like those people
up onstage did. Your fellow theater fans
paid money to hear the performers flex
their vocal muscles, not you. Save your
sweet singing for post-show karaoke.
(There are a few exceptions to this rule,
such as when the performers onstage
actually prompt the audience to join in.)

10. Don’t Feel Like You Have to Dress Up

Although opening night audiences

usually dress up a bit, there is no dress
code for Broadway. Your local of
regional theater may have different
community standards, but the important
point is that you are supporting live
theater no matter what you are
(appropriately) wearing. Technically you
can come in shorts and flip flops, but we
advise against this, especially since many
theaters usually crank up the air
conditioning.

11. Try Not To Fall Asleep

Your snoring may be taken as a protest

of sorts, but generally it’s just disruptive
to those around you. It’s also insulting to
the hard-working performers up
onstage.

12. Standing Ovations Are Overdone –

Don’t Give In To Peer Pressure

Traditionally, applause for an actor when

he or she first takes the stage and
standing ovations at the end of a
Broadway show were signs of an
audience so full of appreciation and
respect that they couldn’t help
themselves. Lately these reactions seem
to have become obligatory, and
unfortunately when standing ovations
and entrance applause are done out of
mere habit, they essentially become
meaningless. Ultimately, how you react
is up to you, but let your true feelings
guide you.

13. Respect the Space and Comfort of

Those Around You

a. Speak loudly and clearly.

b. Avoid turning your back to the
audience while speaking.
c. Remember correct body angle on
stage. (45 degrees or the"v" shape.)
d. Avoid covering your face with your
hair or any other object.
e. Concentrate. Don't giggle!
f.Avoid making eye contact with the
audience.
g. Don't have two or more actors
talking at once or two or more things
happening at once.
h. Don't block or 'mask' your fellow
actors on stage with your body or any
other object.
 i. Don't huddle up in one corner or at
the back of the stage. Use the whole
stage wisely.
Many theater seats make Economy Class
on a commercial airliner look luxurious,
so sometimes a little elbow bumping
can’t be helped. But you can practice
good theater etiquette by taking c
The Benefits of Drama for Children

An area of childhood development that

can be overlooked is the development of
a child’s creativity, self-confidence and
social skills. Learning drama from an
early age can lead to unlimited numbers
of positive benefits to children. Read on
to find out how children of all ages can
benefit from attending drama
workshops.

1. Drama builds confidence

Drama and theatre is a unique form of
creative expression, and it takes a lot of
courage to stand on a stage and speak in
front of an audience. Our drama
workshops encourage all children to
express their creative ideas in an
interactive, nurturing setting. Even the
shyest of children will be able to build up
their self-esteem through drama.

When a child is given space to be

creative and their imaginations
supported, this helps to builds their
confidence and their self-esteem levels.
This confidence gained from learning
drama will be very applicable in school,
careers and in life!

2. Drama develops creativity

In our drama workshops, we explore
new worlds, become people from
different times and places and learn
about different perspectives and ways of
thinking. Exploring these things can give
us the skills needed to be creative and
imaginative. In an ever-changing world,
having a creative and imaginative
approach is so important for thinking
‘outside the box’ and coming up with
new and interesting ideas and solutions.
Our improvisational activities and games
encourage children to come up with
ideas and respond imaginatively to a
range of scenarios.

3. Drama improves verbal and non-

verbal communication skills
Learning to act and drama skills can help
children develop their speech,
communication and presentation skills,
which are vital skills for anyone! In our
drama workshops, we include activities
where children take on different
personas – this gives children the
environment to develop their
vocabulary, vocal projection, articulation
and expression. Drama can develop
children into becoming better
communicators, and storytellers!
4. Drama develops empathy
Drama requires members to play
different characters. A good understand
of characters, roles and subtext of plays
will allow members to relate better to
different situations, context and even
cultures. As a result, members are
encouraged to develop empathy – the
ability to view the world from another
persons' perspective without judgement.
This in turn will build our members’
emotional intelligence through the use
of imagination.

5. Drama develops concentration

Drama develops members ability to be
able to focus the mind, the body, and
the voice. Many of our drama activities
and games during our workshops are
designed to develop concentration. Even
rehearsing and performing lines or
movements will require concentration
and improve memory, which requires
plenty of exercise, just like a muscle.

6. Drama encourages teamwork and

collaboration
Teamwork is undoubtedly an essential
element of drama - without it, no
theatre plays and performances can be
performed. Our drama workshops are a
strong platform to foster and develop
teamwork in our members.

For example, in one drama activity,

members are divided into small groups.
Each group is given a scenario to
perform and are left to develop the story
together as a. Children quickly realise
that teamwork and collaboration are
important skills to get the best out of
their workshops.

In a performance context, every member

of a performance has a specific role to
play during a scene and work together as
a team. Learning how to work together
as individuals is a skill that they will carry
with them their entire lives.

7. Drama workshops develops new

friendships
there is nothing that bonds a group of
people quicker than making a piece of
theatre together. This is because drama
is fun, and we bond through laughter
and enjoyment. Drama requires children
to openly express themselves
throughout the activities, which helps
members become friends by supporting
each other.

CHAPTER ONE
THE NATURE AND ELEMENTS OF DRAMA
1. 1. THE NATURE OF DRAMA
Dramatic literature is the record of the
attempts of playwrights to express and
communicate their ideas about man's
hopes, dreams, ideals, feelings, thoughts
and experience , and his relationship to
society. Drama, thus, deals with the life
of man in moments of crisis and anguish,
with the most intimate relationships
with his innermost thoughts and his
deepest loves and hates. With his
courage honor, hope, pride, compassion,
pity, and sacrifice.
Accordingly, every dramatic piece is built
upon a tension between an idea of order
and the reality of disorder in society, and
thus every detail of the work-the action,
the characters, their speeches, the
language and the range of themes
explored will reflect that tension.
To interpret life has ever been the aim
drama, and to this may be attributed its
enduring popularity. Through the study,
and more specially through the acting, of
plays, it is possible to become
imaginatively identified with characters
whose emotions and experiences have a
perfection rarely to be found in life itself.
This does not remove the experiences of
drama from those of life, but rather
brings the two closer together. It is the
imperfections of human experiences
which make it impossible for one man to
understand and identify himself with the
personality of another; and drama
passes beyond these imperfections to
emotions and situations which belong to
mankind, although they may be given an
intensely individual expression. Thus,
drama is not just the description or
discussion of events from real life, i. e.,
realistic or naturalistic; it is recreation of
real life (the imitation of an action, in
Aristotle's terms).
As such, drama makes use of all the
constituent elements of real activity.
These obviously include language and
also such things as movement, position,
gesture and facial expression. This is
definite
Since drama contains characters
conceived as being of separate existence
communicating in an imaginary but
recognizable society. Drama definitely
uses visual as well as spoken means of
creating its effect. The suprasegmental
features of speech such as stress and
intonation are available and vary
according to the habits of the individual
performer and the changing demands of
the situation. Even paralinguistic
features like gesture and facial
expression can have communicative
value and need to be assessed as part of
the whole. Drama, of course, dispenses
with the' he said 'type of interpolation
required in narrative fiction, and, in it,
we not only accept but positively require
the shifting of registers in order to
differentiate characters and their
situations.
1. 2. ELEMENTS OF DRAMA
Drama observes that drama is a social
art. The words of the text are not the
play, nor are the theatre in which it will
eventually be produced. Even a dress
rehearsal can hardly be called a
performance. A play is the cumulative
product of many relationships.
Accordingly, drama consists of the
following cumulative constituent
elements.
1. ARISTOTLE'S CONSTITUENT ELEMENTS
In his The Poetics, Aristotle provides his
theorization on tragedy alluding to
certain early tragedies performed
annually at Athens from the sixth
century BC onwards. He defines tragedy
as an imitation, through action rather
than narration, of a serious, complete,
and ample action, by means of language
rendered pleasant at different places in
the constituent parts by each of the aids,
in which imitation there is also affected
through pity and fear its catharsis of
these and similar emotion. He also
legislates that every tragedy must
necessarily have six elements according
to which the quality of a tragedy is
determined:
(1) Plot
(2) Character, and
(3) Thought, which tell us what the
tragedy proposes to achieve an
imitation?
(4) Spectacle, which tells us how it
proposes to do so, and
(5) Diction and
(6) Music, which tell us the means to be
used.
A. Plot
Plot, to Aristotle, is the most important
of all the constituent elements: it is the
soul of tragedy. Plot is the arrangement
of the incidents for "tragedy is not the
portrayal of men, but of action, and the
end is a certain kind of action, and not a
quality. Men are the certain kind of
individuals they are as a result of their
character actions. Without action, there
could be no tragedy, but there could be
tragedy without character.
Not all plays are concomitant to the
availability of action; nevertheless we
still have tragedies,
Which is an inaction play : What
distinguishes Beckett's play is the
absence of almost any action of any
kind. It leaves the audience exactly
where it finds them.
In this regard, action refers to the nature
of the literary appreciation; to the
method of the 1iterary work; and to the
are manner of its communication. He
maintains that there are four types of
action the distinction of which is largely
based on matters of emphasis, and we
might come across some plays
containing action of more than one type:
acted speech, visual enactment, activity
and behavior. Acted speech is that the
play is written in such a way that when
the words are enacted, the whole of the
drama is thereby communicated. Visual
enactment is the kind of action
developed from the separate minor
actions of the previous form. Activity is
the action which is often thought to be-
only kind of dramatic action: here there
is no direct unity of speech and
movement, but the movement usually is
arranged in a pattern of exiting events
and is primary. Behavior is meanwhile
the kind of action where the word and
movement have no direct and necessary
relation, but derive from a conception of
probable behavior.
The three most compelling elements in
tragedy, insofar as plot is concerned are
reversals, recognition and the tragic
experience. A reversal is a change by
which the action veers round in the
opposite direction and that in a
accordance with the laws of probability
or necessity. Recognition is a change by
which those marked by the plot for bad
for good or bad fortune pass from a
state of ignorance into a state
knowledge which disposes them either
to friendship or enmity towards each
other.
There are five kinds of recognition. The
first, which is the most inartistic but
most frequently used by poets because
of their lack of inventiveness, is
recognition through signs. Of course,
some are marks the characters are born
with while some others are required.
The second type is invented by the poet
and therefore inartistic. The third comes
about through memory. Here, one is
made known through one's reaction
upon seeing something. The fourth kind
is brought about through reasoning. The
fifth is a sort of composite recognition
which results from a false inference of
one of the characters. Of all forms of
recognition, the best is that which
results from the incidents themselves in
which the astonishment results from
what is probable. The above kinds of
recognition are the only ones which are
devoid of artificial tokens. The second
best type consists of those which are
brought about by reasoning. The third
element in tragedy insofar as the plot is
concerned is the tragic experience:
destructive or painful actions such as
deaths in plain view, extreme pains,
wounds, and the like.
A tragedy is that which has a beginning,
middle, and an end. A beginning is that
which of necessity does not follow
anything, while something by nature
follows or results from it. On the other
hand, an end is that which naturally, of
necessity, or most generally follows
something else but nothing follows it.
Middle is that which follows and is
followed by something. Therefore, those
who would arrange plots well must not
begin just anywhere in the story nor end
at just any point, but they must adhere
to the criteria laid down(p. l5-6). These
three parts of a tragedy are termed
exposition, complication and resolution.
In the exposition, the reader or audience
meets the characters. Here, the author
brings dominant ideas announcing the
themes of the text. In complication,
problems or mysteries, which
Have to be solved, test for the
character's action and movement. In this
section, the playwright makes the plot
happen. The complications of the plot
explore the complex nature of the
characters and the big issues of the text,
and put themes and characters under
pressure to force them to an outcome.
In resolution, an ending after the main
crisis, when the complications have been
resolved and a concluding state of affairs
is worked out. We expect, in this section,
the characters to die, marry, or come to
terms with their fate: the villain is
revealed, the falsely accused is set free,
etc.
Each tragedy, to Aristotle, should consist
of the above sections. Nevertheless,
examining some plays, whether one-act
or full-length modern, will clarify that
one or more of such parts is missed. In
Beckett's Waiting for God, we are
introduced to two tramps, and we are
left there waiting for God to come, i. e.
no. middle and no end. Likewise, in his
Act without Words we face every
movement of the character, but in vain,
i. e. at least there is no end. On the other
hand, has only a beginning.
In addition, Aristotle emphasizes the one
plot, but, to him, a plot which can be
said to be unified if it merely centers
about one person is wrong; for countless
things happen to that one person some
of which in no way constitute a unit. In
just the same way, there are many
actions of an individual which do not
constitute a single action. Therefore, a
unified imitation is an imitation of a
single thing, in the same way the plot in
tragedy, since it is an imitation of an
action, must deal with that action and
with the whole of it; and the different
parts of the action must be so related to
each other that if any part is changed or
taken away, the whole will be altered
and disturbed. For anything whose
presence or absence makes no
discernible difference is no essential part
of the whole.
In the process of numerating types of
plot, Aristotle mentions three types:
episodic, simple and complex. The
episodic, which is the worst, determines
an arrangement of the episodes
according to the law of probability and
necessity. Poor poets make such plots
because of their poor ability; good poets
make them on account of the actors. But
tragedies are imitations not only of
actions which are complete but of such
as inspire pity and fear; and actions tend
to
Inspire most pity and fear whenever
they happen contrary to expectation and
are brought about one by the other. For
anything so brought about will appear
more wonderful than if it happens
spontaneously or by chance since of the
things which happen by chance, those
seem to excite more wonder which
appear to have happened in accordance
with some design. A simple action is one
which is single and continuous and one
whose change of fortune comes about
without a recognition scene. A complex
action is one whose change of fortune is
brought about by a recognition scene, or
both. These recognitions must grow out
of the arrangement of the plot itself by
its being so constructed that each
succeeding incident happesns
necessarily or according to probability
from what has happened previously; for
it makes a great deal of difference
whether the incidents happen because
of what has preceded merely after it.
According to Aristotle, a tragedy is
regularly divided into separate parts:
prologue, episode, and choral odes
exode. These parts are common to all
tragedies, and some particular ones have
in addition songs from the stage and
common. The prologue is the entire part
of the tragedy which precedes the
entrance ode of the chorus. An episode
is that entire part of the tragedy which
comes between choral odes. An exode is
that entire part of the tragedy after
which there is no choral ode. The
parodus is the first complete ode of the
chorus. A stasimonis a song of the
chorus without anapests and trochaics.
A commus is a lamentation between the
chorus and one or more of the actors on
the stage. In this regard, the chorus, to
Aristotle, should be regarded as one of
the actors, as a constituent part of the
whole and should share in the action.
Sometimes, the choral odes have no
more connection with their plot than
with some other tragedy. Consequently,
their choral odes become interpolations.
The chorus is a group of characters who
represent ordinary people in their
attitudes to the action which they
witness as bystanders, and on which
they comment. Before its special use in
the theatre, the chorus had been
participants in Greek religious festivals,
dancing and chanting; thus the
connection of certain poetic terms and
forms, such as the strophe, and the ode,
with chorus conventions is clear. The
chorus , however, is fairly rare in modern
drama though choral characters are
common enough. Two plays which do
imitate the Greek convention quite
closely

Aristotle conceived of tragedies as

having two types of ending: the correct
and double. The correct ending is one
which is most tragic, and one in which a
change of fortune happens from good to
bad, but not from bad to good. The
double ending, by definition, has a
twofold arrangement, and has a
different ending for the good and the
bad characters. But it is the weak
character of the spectators which makes
this seem the best type of plot; for the
poets, as they write, follow the wishes of
the spectators. But the pleasure this
type of plot gives is inherent in comedy
but foreign to tragedy ; for in comedy
those who are enemies, according to the
plot, become friends at the end and go
off stage without anyone's being killed
by anybody.
To Aristotle The aim of the plot is
catharsis, i. e the double feeling of pity
and fear on the part of the audience. In
the true performance of a tragedy, the
crude emotions of the audience were
absorbed into the perfect expression of
these emotions in the drama, where
they are cleansed and purified of their
imperfections. Definitely, Aristotle
wished to find a way of justifying
literature against Plato's argument that
it appealed only to the feelings and did
nothing to engage the audience's or
reader's power of reasoning. Catharsis
definitely occurs because of the
involvement between the audience and
the characters on the stage. On the
other hand, to Erwin Piscator and Bertolt
Brecht (1898-956), the initiators of epic
theatre, the audience , in the process of
watching a play , are not seeing life but
they are watching a play and they are
supposed to reason things out and not
to be swept away by feeling for an
illusion: this is Brecht's deliberate
alienation effect. Brecht's Three penny
Opera (1929)and Mother Courage and
Her Children (1941) are notable
examples of this kind of writing, which
he used to expound his Marxist political
views.
In sum, as tragedy is an imitation of an
action, it entails having one action and
coherent various plot incidents since a
removing of one incident can lead to
misachieving unity . The best plot is then
one which constitutes of a single story.
That is why, Aristotle legislates a law of
action or plot having one action.
12
B. Character
By Character, Aristotle means that by
which we determine what kinds of men
are being presented, and since tragedy is
an imitation of action and is for that
reason principally concerned with
characters in action. As such, characters
are the people in a text; they are part of
ordinary life, and they are complex
people whose feelings and experiences
bring to life the big, dominant issues of
the dramatic text.
The tragic hero, to Aristotle, is a man of
much glory and good fortune who is not
too superior in excellence and
uprightness and yet does not come into
his misfortune because positive of
baseness and rascality but through some
inadequacy or positive fault. In other
words, the downfall of a tragic hero
should not be caused by evil, but by
hamartia (error). Tragic flaw suggests
imperfection of character, rather than a
mistake of action. Shakespeare's tragic
heroes do often manifest a flawed
character, i. e. ' jealousy' in Othello
(1604), 'hesitation' in Hamlet, 'illegal
ambition' in Macbeth (1616), etc. But
this is not characteristic of all tragedies,
however.
In regard to character in tragedy, four
qualities must be aimed at. The first and
foremost is that it be good. And the
character will be good if the choice of
the speaker or doer is a good one. The
second quality is the character's fitting
as manly. The third quality required of a
character in tragedy is likeness to the
traditional character being portrayed.
The fourth quality is consistency even in
the sense of consistently inconsistent.
Nevertheless, not all of these qualities,
sometimes none, are present in some
Shakespearean and modern tragic
heroes. "Macbeth" in Shakespeare's
Macbeth, for instance, is a sort of tragic
hero in which at least three of those
qualities are absent, i. e. good, fitting
and likeness. "Hamlet" in Shakespeare's
Hamlet lacks all the four qualities.
Character to Aristotle is not as important
as plot in tragedy as there are plays
which are without characters. For
clarifying this point, Aristotle alluded to
Greek tragedy and we to English. In
Cangiullo's There Is No Dog, there is a
character in the modern sense, not in
the classical, i. e. a dog.
Generally, characters are of two types:
round and flat. A round character is one
which changes and develops in the
course of the play, as opposed to the flat
character which does not. A round
character in
13
drama will be presented with as much
complexity and detail of motiva-tion and
behavior as someone met with in real
life. Flat characters will be built upon a
single idea or quality. This distinction,
which is based on whether the character
is fully developed or not , is not always
clear-cut: at certain types of plays, it is
not easy to determine whether a
particular character is round or flat. One-
act plays, because of conciseness,
brevity and compression, provide many
examples for this claim. It is not easy, for
instance, to regard ''he'', ''she'' or ''Her
husband " in G. B. Shaw's (1856-950)
How He Lied to Her Husband (1904) as
flat or round characters . All of the above
characters are not fully developed in the
play.
Likewise the criterion for considering a
certain character to be round in absurd
drama, particularly one-act plays, is not
the full development of the character
but rather its being concentrated upon
in plot. ' 'Rose'' in Harold Pinter's ( b.
1930) The room (1957), for example, is a
complicated character whose past,
present and future is not predicated to
all the characters in the same play as
well as to us spectators or readers.
Nevertheless, it is a round character . On
the other hand , it is a remarkable
characteristic of full- length plays. e. g.
tragedies, comedies, etc. to fully develop
particular characters to be easily
diagnosed as round. In the
'weltanschauung (philosophy) of both
absurd drama and angry theatre i. e.
Beckett's Waiting for Godot and John
Osborne's (b. 1929) Look Back in Anger
(1956), it is straightforward to diagnose
"Estragon'' and ''Vladmir'', and "Jimmy",
''Alison " and "Cliff'' as round characters.
Characters can also be divided to
protagonists (heroes) and antagonists
(villains ). The protagonist is the
principal, leading character in play.
Strictly speaking, plays "can have only
one protagonist, clearly the focus of
major interest, perhaps in conflict with
an antagonist". The antagonist is the
chief opponent of the hero. Thus,
"Hamlet" and "Othello '', and ''Claudius"
and "Iago", for instance, are the
protagonists and antagonists in
Shakespeare's Hamlet and Othello
respectively.
Sometimes, in comedy from the earliest
times and the middle or working –class
protagonists of modern tragedies, the
protagonist for example is unheroic and
ordinary: a character whose
attractiveness or interest consists in the
inability to perform deeds of bravery,
courage
14
or generosity, namely, anti-hero.
Examples of such anti-heroes are so
many: ''Jimmy'' in Osborne's Look Back
in Anger, 'Willy Loman'' In Arthur
Miller's(b. 1915) Death of a Salesman
(1949), etc. might be called anti-heroes
to distinguish them from the kings,
princes and noblemen who figured in
classical drama. This view of making
heroes down to earth is orientated by
the spread of the interest in the
'common citizen' in modern literature.
Thus, we find 'tramps' expressing their '
weItschmerz ' as heroes, i. e. Beckett's
Waiting for Godot. In some cases, the
antagonist is a supernatural power, e. g.
the 'sea' in John Millington Synge's
(1871-909) Riders to the Sea, (1904).
Surprisingly, a protagonist can also be an
antagonist, e. g. "Macbeth" in
Shakespeare's Macbeth is both a
protagonist and the antagonist.
At other times mainly in comedy as well
as some modern dramas, heroines take
principal roles, i. e. they are the leading
characters. Shakespeare's romantic
comedies are well-known for their main
concentration, as far as plot, theme as
well as characterization are concerned,
on heroines, i. e. "Rosalind", "Viola " and
"Portia" in Shakespeare's As you like it
(1599), Twelfth Night (1601-2), and The
Merchant of Venice (1596-7)
respectively. Similarly "Maurya" is the
principal character in Synge's Riders to
the Sea. 'Ordinary' plays exhibit hero-
heroine presence; the heroine as being
subsidiary to the plot: "Hamlet- Ophelia
", "Macbeth-Lady Macbeth ", "Jimmy-
Alison", etc. in Shakespeare's Hamlet
and Macbeth, and Osborne's Look Back
in Anger, for instance. This hero-heroine
presence is not always so
straightforward as this might frequently
be assumed, e. g. "Maurya" is the
heroine of Synge's Riders to the Sea and
there is no hero beside her, "Mrs x" is
the same in August Strindberg's (1849-
912) The Stronger "Estragon " and
"Vladmir" are without heroines in
Beckett's Waiting for Godot, etc.:
playwrights can express their
philosophical positions sometimes via
characterization.
Clowns and fools are familiar characters
in modern literature. The clown, as
defined in the Encyclopedia Britannica is
"a familiar comic character who has a
distinctive make-up and performs a
graphic humour, absurd situations and
rigorous physical action". The fool is a
person who is employed in courts to
amuse dukes and kings. Fools are to be
distinguished from clowns and witty
servants. Clowns tend
15
to be rural or urban; fools belong to the
courts of nobles and kings.
Shakespeare's clowns, such as
"Costand", "Launce", "Launcelot
Gobbo", "Dogberry ", are to be
distinguished from his intelligent witty
professional fools or jesters, such as
"Touchstone", "Fesk", and Lear's "fool'''.
In addition, there are often quick -witted
servants such as the Dromiotwins,
speed, Tranio and Grumio. These are like
their counterparts are often called
clowns or fools. Lear's " fool" in
Shakespeare's king Lear (1605) is the
chief Shakespearean fool, with an
intelligent and fairly warning function in
recognizing and commenting on his
master's folly, ''Touchstone'' in
Shakespeare's As You Like It does not
only jest, but he also tells wisdom (See
also: Berry, 1972: 47), and this expresses
a Shakespearean belief that wisdom is
often found in the mouth of a fool and
that folly is universal.
Clowns and fools have something to do
with characters sometimes being as
caricatures. A caricature is generally a
grotesque or ludicrous rendering of
character, achieved by the exaggeration
of personality traits. In the visual arts, it
is easy to distinguish a caricature from a
realistic portrait, insofar as it departs
from an exact and credible reproduction
of the human form. In literature, it is
more difficult to know to what extant an
author wants a character to be
understood as a caricature. Caricatures
are most frequent in comic works and it
is not infrequent to find caricatures in
tragedies. '' Sir Andrew Aguecheck", "Sir
Toby Bekh" and "Malvdio" in
Shakespeare's Twelfth Night are
caricatures : the first two are dissipated
drunks, the third a self-righteous puritan
in Shakespeare's Hamlet, ''Osric'', the
ridiculous courtier is an example of
caricature in tragedies.
C. Thought
Thought is third element of tragedy to
Aristotle. It is that which manifests itself
in what all the characters say when they
present an argument or even make
evident an opinion. It is the thinking
ability of the characters, which is the
ability to say what is possible within the
limits of the situation and what is fitting.
Thought manifests itself in what the
characters say as they prove or disprove
something or make evident something
universal. Underthought is subsumed
under all those things which must be
affected by speech, such as presentation
of
16
a case, disproving a charge or
ameliorating a situation, arousing the
tragic elements of fear, pity, anger, and
the like, and also curtailing and enlarging
matters. It is evident that one must draw
from the same principles also in their
actions whenever it is necessary to
produce what is pitiful, fearful, great or
probable.
D. Spectacle
Spectacle, the fourth element of tragedy
to Aristotle, is one which tells us how it
proposes to achieve an imitation of
action. It is quite appealing and is the
most inartistic and has the least affinity
with poetry; for the essential power of
tragedy does not depend upon the
presentation and the actors. Moreover,
for achieving the effects of spectacle, the
art of the mechanic of stage properties is
more competent than the art of poetry.
E. Diction
By diction, Aristotle means an expression
of thought by means of language. It is
also the choice of words in a work of
literature; the kind of vocabulary used.
The diction of a work may by simple or
elaborate, colloquial or formal, racy or
dignified, latinate or Anglosaxon in
derivation, literal or full of figurative
language, exact or vague, densely
packed with nouns, floridly adjectival or
full of active verbs, etc.
The whole diction consists of letters,
syllables, binding words joining words,
nouns, verbs, inflection, and clauses and
sentences. The function of diction, to
Aristotle, is to make clear what is said
and to lift it above the level of the
ordinary. A diction which uses familiar
words is the clearest, but it is also
ordinary. Therefore, a writer must
somehow get a proper mixture of rare
words and of those with transferred
meanings; this will lend a tone of
professional skill and elevation to the
diction, while the familiar words will
make for clarity. The lengthening,
shortening and altering of words
contributes most to clarity of diction and
to expression which is above the
ordinary; for it will produce something
above the ordinary on account of its
being different from the familiar and the
customary.
F. Music
Music, along with diction, is the means
to be used for achieving an imitation of
action; it has the greatest enriching
written wholly or partly in poetry,
including some poems and power. Music
includes, in this context, the plays being
songs in the dramatic work, and physical
music using instruments to be in
harmony with the incidents of plays.
Music is important, for instance, in some
Shakespearean works through all the
above types of music implementation.
Shakespeare wrote 124 beautiful songs
for his plays. These were all set to music
in his lifetime; over the centuries, many
composers
2. OTHER ELEMENTS
Drama constitutes of other elements in
addition to those listed by Aristotle in
The Poetics:
A. 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.
B. Setting
The setting, the 'mise en scene', of a
theatrical production includes scenery,
properties, etc. The setting also refers to
the time and place in which a play takes
place. Suitable costume and props also
assist the audience to recognize the
work in a straight way. The setting may
be
18
crucially significant since writers may use
it to convey information about
temperament of the characters
themselves symbolically or adopting the
characters' views towards it. The
scenery, i. e. the decorations on the
stage of a theatre inside a house or in
the countryside, for example, helps to
create an illusion that it is a particular
place and it also helps to provide
information about the characters' way of
life and their social and economic states.
Scenery is not necessarily realistic, and
plays may be performed with very little
or no scenery. In Strindberg's The
Stronger, the scenery consists of only
"two small iron tables , a red worsted
shag sofa, and some chairs" in corner of
a women's café. In Beckett's Waiting for
Godot, the setting highly symbolic: A
country road, a tree, evening.
C. Audience
The audience is definitely an element of
drama; this is indirectly mentioned by
Aristotle since the effect of tragedy, i. e.
catharsis, depends on purging the
audience's emotions of pity and fear.
The differentiation of comedy from
tragedy is initiated by recognizing the
difference in the kind of emotional
response that the two forms excite in us,
audience. Shakespeare's audience, for
instance, included almost all ranks of
society, except the lowest and poorest.
The private theatres created for better-
off people. And it seems clear that the
London audience was alert and
intelligent, and one that became
increasingly so, if we may take as
evidence Shakespeare's increasingly
subtlety and complexity, and the cruder
but still complex and often learned plays
of his Jacobean contemporaries and
successors.
D. Stage
The stage is considered an element of
drama as plays are primarily written for
performance. Playhouses and stages
have developed a great deal. Plays were
acted out in temples and inn-yards. The
first building specially built for a theatre
and probably designed on the modal of
the inn-yards with galleries, where plays
had been performed, was The Theatre,
built in 1576. And because of the
hostility of the Corporation of London to
drama, believing it to attract crime and
lawlessness as well as crowds and the
possibility of spreading diseases so
theaters were built outside the city's
walled boundary. The Globe theater was
19
built in 1598-9, The Rose (1587), The
Hope (1614) and The Swan (1595).
The stage in the Elizabethan theatre, for
example, was a raised bare platform,
projecting to some distance into the
audience. It was surrounded on all sides
by the audience. The central part of the
theatre was unroofed. The plays were
given by day-light. There was no painted
scenery or curtain. At the back of the
stage was a wall, with decorative
columns and architecture, and there was
one large door immediately in the
middle of the wall and a small door
either side. Designed this way, the
Elizabethan stage gave every
opportunity rapid action. Several scenes
could follow quickly after each other
without a single break in the continuity
of the play.
E. Lighting
Lighting is an important element of
theatre making. It helps create and
sustain illusion in the audience.
Elizabethan stages were lit by suspended
hoops of candles. Little variety of effect
was possible, players were in danger
from hot wax, but the light given was
pleasing and mellow. The hoops could
be retracted into the files producing
effects of varying intensity, but the
imagination boggles at the fire hazard.
Candles were also used as footlight.
20
Chapter Two
TYPES OF DRAMA
21
CHAPTER TWO
TYPES OF DRAMA
Throughout the history of drama, a
variety of types appears. These
miscellaneous types emerge as a result
of place of origin, such as miracle and
morality plays; the type of emotional
effect they bring in the audience, e. g.
tragedy, comedy, etc. ; the appearance
of literary movements such as realism,
naturalism, imagism, expressionism,
etc.; the emergence of an economic
movement such as marxism which leads
to Brecht's epic theatre; the need for the
revival of an old type such as Eliot's
verse drama; the circumstances of the
modern age, such as absurd drama,
angry theatre, etc.; the need for
compression, such as the one-act play;
etc. These and other types are clarified
below:
1. Religious Drama
The term religious drama conveys all
plays which have directly religion as a
theme; this includes miracle plays,
mystery and morality plays. The place of
origin is the Christian church, Monks and
priests were concerned, starting from
the Norman Conquest, with stabilizing
the Christian beliefs since people at that
time could neither read nor write. Plays
concerned with Christ's sacrifice and
resurrection were celebrated through
dramatic means. These stories which
were taken from the Bible were acted in
a simple way in the church by the monks
and this proved popular that more and
more of the Bible was put in dramatic
form.
Early religious drama had been taken
from the Bible, acted by the monks and
inside the church. A step forward in this
type of drama is in the mystery plays
which were acted by trade-guilds, or
craft-guilds. Each guild would choose an
episode from the Bible, and the episode
would usually be appropriate to the craft
or trade practiced. Each guild had its
own decorated cart, called a 'pageant', a
sort of portable stage to be dragged
through the town, set up at different
spots, and to its shed in the end.
An advanced stage in religious drama
happened. Then, some playwrights
introduced certain stories which were
not taken from the Bible and the monks
refused to act them in the church , viz.,
the miracle plays. Such plays were then
acted outside the church; and developed
in a much freer way. Plays about the
Gospel characters and
22
the miracles of the saints more
elaborate, demanded more stage
managing, eventually turned into
complete presentations divorced from
the ritual of the church. In fact, they
moved out of the church building , into
the churchyard, and then into the t own
itself . With the emergence of the
miracle plays, the process of
secularization began - control and
participation by the non-religious, by the
man in the street as opposed to the
priest in the church.
Secularization in drama was then
accumulated through the development
of a new kind of religious or semi-
religious play -the morality. The morality
was not a guild play and it did not take
as its subject a story from the Bible.
Instead, it tried to teach a moral lesson
through allegory by presenting abstract
ideas as though they were real people.
The morality is a drama "the characters
of which are allegorical, abstract or
symbolical and the story which is
intended to convey a lesson for the
better conduct human life. To present
the sins and morals allegorically implies
that supernatural or magical powers
were conceived, at that time, of
assuming material shapes and liable to
intrude in man's life and that the moral
law is not merely man-made and that
moral choice is not a human
idiosyncrasy, but has a universal validity.
The character of the hero, in the
morality, was taken for granted, and
interest arouses "from seeing how the
life of a great man could end in disaster
even though his intentions and motives
might be founded on a high endeavor
towards what he felt to be a worthily
aim. The interest was not so much in a
man's misfortunes as in the causes of
those misfortunes. A man's character is
determined by his thoughts. Most
people have the feeling, at some time in
their life, that their mind is in two parts,
each part urging them to a different
course of action. The medieval
playwrights pretended that these
contrary wishes or impulses of the mind
were real people, and brought them on
the stage. There were the evil impulses,
viz., the Seven Deadly Sins: Pride, Envy,
sloth, Intemperance, Avarice, Anger and
lust, and the Seven Moral Virtues: Faith,
Hope, Charity, Justice, Prudence,
Temperance and Fortitude. The
characters proper to allegory are
impulses, moods, attitudes and states of
mind, qualities, virtues and vices,
physical and mental conditions, such as
old age and youth, etc.
23
The best known example and the most
appealing of surviving fifteen-century
morality plays is Everyman. It was
written about 1500 and possibly based
on a Dutch original called Elerlijk. This
play is a conflict between flesh and spirit
as taught by theologies. It takes its
theme the moments when death is
eminent, and shows what a revolution
"Everyman" has to make of the things in
his life which had once seemed all
important.
2. Tragedy
Tragedy traces the career and downfall
of an individual, and shows in this
downfall both the capacities and the
limitations of human life. Apart of these,
definitions of tragedy are both difficult
and unsatisfactory. The tragic as
distinguished from the comic is a matter
of the point of view from which the
dramatist looks at his material. Another
valid way of looking at tragedy is to
recognize the difference in the kind of
emotional response that the two forms
of literature excite in us, the audience.
Such emotional response, ranges
between unhappiness, in tragedy, and
happiness in comedy. Tragedy is
concerned with eternal values; comedy
with temporal.
The constituent elements of tragedy, as
said earlier, are: plot, character, thought,
spectacle, diction and music. These
elements are said to pursue the
imitation of the action to purgate the
audience's emotions of pity and fear
which is the function or tragedy to
Aristotle. Aristotle, depending upon the
plot types, differentiates four kinds of
tragedies: complex tragedies which are
wholly recognition; tragedies of
suffering; character tragedies and
tragedies depending, upon spectacle.
In The Poetics, Aristotle made certain
description comments which came to be
known as the dramatic unities of action,
time and space and thus considered
rules for the proper construction of
tragedies. As for the unity of time,
Aristotle remarks that the usual practice
of tragedy was to confine itself, so far as
possible, to the action of twenty –four
years. The unity of place obliges the
dramatist not to allow the action to take
place in two remote places having the
stricture of time in consideration. The
dramatist has also to concentrate on one
plot and should have no sub-plots, i. e.
unity of action. Likewise, the action
should take place within 24 hours. In
fact, violation of such unities is
24
frequently done particularly in
Shakespearean and modern drama.
Most Shakespearean tragedies have one
main plot and a number of sub-plots.
And, for instance, in sending "Hamlet" to
England, in Hamlet, the king of Denmark,
manipulated by Shakespeare, was
attempting to violate the unity of place
and consequently that of action.
Frequently linked with such cited unities
is the violence of tragedy by lining it to
comedy, i. e. be it tragi-comic. The desire
for comic relief, for instance, on the part
of an audience is a permanent craving of
human nature and a necessity of the
time for a hack playwright.
The university wits, viz., Robert Greene
( 1560-92), John Lyly (1554-606), Thomas
Kyd (1558-94) and Christopher Marlowe
(1564-93) having university education,
were brought into contact with the-
well-known Greek and Roman tragedies.
And accordingly, they, particularly
Marlowe, brought to English drama a
new dimension: to give to the striving
within the mind of man an expression as
tremendous as that which the classical
dramatists had given to the striving of
man against Fate.
In the initiation and development of
English drama, Seneca, the first century
AD stoic Roman philosopher, exerted a
huge influence. Seneca is credited with
adapting nine Greek tragedies,
translated into English in 1581, and thus
making a strong influence on English
drama remarkably in the Elizabethan
and Jacobean periods, the great age of
tragedy. These nine tragedies are
characterized by concentration on
imparting atmosphere and action
through the language by declamatory
passages, by stichomything the theme of
revenge and by certain stereotyped
figures, such as messenger reporting
disasters, the ghost, and the traditional
dramatic five-act structure based on the
Senecan model. In sum, Seneca's
contribution to English drama is in two
folds: He provides the model both for
the formal classical tragedy with five acts
and elaborate style, for example Thomas
Sackville and Thomas Norton's Gorboduc
(1561), and for the popular revenge
tragedies. Nevertheless, Senecan plays
were probably not meant to be
performed on stage. Shakespearean and
naturalistic tragedies affected by Seneca
in addition to revenge tragedies. Unlike
Seneca, Elizabethan and Jacobean
playwrights preferred to show the
horrors of revenge on the stage.
25
3. Revenge Tragedy
Revenge tragedy is a minor genre which
is especially associated with Seneca. This
special form of tragedy on the
protagonist's pursuit of vengeance
against those who have done him
wrong; such plays often concentrate on
the moral confusion caused by the need
to answer evil by evil. Such tragedies of
blood are full of horrific violent incidents
and sensational elements, in which
quest for vengeance leads to a
bloodthirsty Climax. Four examples are
often cited as ones for revenge
tragedians: Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy
(1586), Shakespeare's Hamlet, and John
Webster's (1580 -630). The white Devil
(1608) and The Duchess of Malfi (1614).
Notably, all the above examples show
the influence of Seneca. But in specific
terms, kyd is the father of revenge
tragedy and Hamlet is its notable
example.
Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy is an early
Elizabethan tragedy which had sounded
dark depths of treachery and
supernatural evil. Old "Hieronimo"
avenges his murdered son in a play
presided over by a ghost and by the
figure of revenge that directs the action
like a god. As it is clear in this passage
from the play, gloomy but exultant, the
avenger paid the price of his own crimes
in exacting blood for blood:
I would give all, ay and my soul to boot
But I would see thee ride in this red
pool.
(IV, 4: 205: -6)
Senecan and kyd's revenge tragedies are
very different: Whereas Seneca's plays
are largely verbal, kyd's work is behind
the dream of words. As such, Seneca's
actual work has an indirect influence in
which violent actions never shown on
the stage, but only reported by the
reported by the characters.
Webster's The White Devil and The
Duchess of Malfi are based on actual
events in the recent past as transmitted
through popular Italian novellas. What
gives them their tragic intensity is the
atmosphere of brooding darkness which
pervades them and the eloquent dignity
with which Webster's central figures
face their impending death. "Vitoria",
"Flamineo "and the "Duchess of Malfi "
find in their last moments epitaphs for
themselves of such compelling power
that forget how corrupt the course of
their lives has been:
"My soul like to a ship in a black storm,
26
Is driven, I know not whiter, "cries".
"Vitoria", the "white devil, " and her
brother responds with:
"while we look up to heaven we
confound
knowledge with knowledge".
Shakespeare's Hamlet is yet a third
example of revenge tragedy. It is based
on an earlier Elizabethan play, not
surviving and not know to have been
printed, most probably by kyd, author of
The Spanish Tragedy. the so-called Ur-
Hamlet is derived from the twelfth
century Historiae Danicae of Saxo
Grammaticus, a mixture of folk-legend
and Danish history. The play presents of
figure of unique complexity who is
pursuing his duty to revenge his father's
death. In such a play, less elements of
fear are shown on the stage, but other
elements of the common revenge
tragedy , such as the ghost, murder" etc.
are presented on the stage.
In Hamlet, each character is more than
one character. Hamlet comprises a
number of Hamlets: the prince, the
lover, the sad, the mad, the attacker,
etc. This is also applicable to all the
other characters. This is stylistically very
difficult to maintain. Besides, there is an
element of contrast between the way
the character appears and his reality. As
an example, Claudius appears to love
Hamlet and be sad about the death of
his father, but this might bring a sort of
irony since the king himself is the
murderer of Hamlet's father. This is
impossible to be achieved stylistically.
That is why, Shakespeare's skillfulness
cannot be denied (Betti, 2013: 20).
4. Comedy
As said earlier, comedy-tragedy
distinction depends on both the point of
view of both the playwright and the
audience, and the type emotional
response created in the audience - this
ranges between happiness and
unhappiness. Most frequently, comedy
arouses and vicariously satisfies the
human instinct for mischief.
As Aristotle, in The Poetics, concentrates
on tragedy, comedy was never subject to
the same attempt to impose rules
concerning its conventions.
Nevertheless, most comedies from the
Elizabethan until the present time share
certain features: They do not
concentrate on the fortunes of an
individual but interest is spread over a
group of people;
27
they deal with low life, and humble
people rather than with kings(though
not exclusively); their plots are usually
elaborate, involve from the possibility of
disaster towards a happy ending,
misunderstandings and deceptions, and
move often symbolised by a wedding. A
comic situation is one which to a comic
character seems dangerous, but which
implies no great threat audience or
humanity in general is a typical comic
situation.
Comedy is an ancient form dating to the
fifth century BC. It probably originated in
the seasonal festivities which were part
of the Dionysiac fertility cult. By the end
of the fifth century BC, individual
playwrights had already emerged:
Aristophanes is the most notable. His
plays such as The Frogs and Lyisistrate
combine lyrical poetry, buffoonery,
satire and fantastical plots and
characters. Another highly prized
playwright of comedies was Menandr:
his plays are only known because of his
strong influence on the Roman
playwrights Plautus and Terence. Their
comedies are more social in their forms,
contain songs and have elaborate plots,
involving stock characters, such as the
bragging soldier, spendthrift young men,
willy servants and so on.
The language of comedy is fluent and
articulate: characters do not feel a need
to develop exploratory, stretching uses
of language to account for themselves
and the world around them, but are
satisfied that the relationships between
them and the world are simple and
comprehensible. The comic character,
unlike the tragic hero, does not face up
to the task of reconciling inconstancies
in his own nature. He is, however, more
than willing to face up to the task, of
defending himself, particularly in the
cut-and-thrust of dramatic dialogue.
Comic characters may be fools, but are
capable of speaking the same language
as their opponents. Comic dialogue is
frequently a battle which needs evenly
balanced opponents to sustain its
momentum. With dialogue and
characterization as with other aspects of
comedy, it is perhaps by examining an
author's capacity to generate pace and
the repetitiveness or increasing subtlety
of the ways in which he exploits it, that
one can arrive at an assessment of him
as a comic dramatist.
The true beginning of the English
comedy starts with the interludes of the
mystery and morality plays, frequently
farcical. The interlude
28
is a short dramatic entertainment,
probably produced during a feast, or
between the acts of play. These are
many extant, dating from the late
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and
ranging in subject matter from farce to
something close to the morality plays. Its
weakness lies in the absence of material
for development of plot and theme.
Generally, the interlude is the direct
descendant of the older morality plays.
The main difference between them lies,
not in the theme, but in place and
occasion of performance as the interlude
was adapted to indoor performance in
private houses, inns and at courts.
With this form of plays, viz, the
interlude, such names appear: Rastal,
Bale, Henry Medwall and John Heywood
(1497-580). Rastal wrote Gentleness and
Nobility and Calisto and Melibea which
are plays of disputation on moral
themes. Bale in his interlude of God's
Promises argues that man cannot
achieve salvation through good works,
but only the power of Christ's scarifies,
only be the grace that God bestows
freely. Medwall writes Fulgens and
Lucrece which is a sort of dramatized
discussion of the nature of true nobility.
It is the first English play to have a title
suggesting an Elizabethan play.
The most enjoyable of all the interlude
dramatists is John Heywood; he wrote
several interludes without having
instructive purpose. In the courser force
The Four P's(1520), a Palmer, a
Pardoner, a Pothecary and a Pedlar do
nothing more than talk, but their
purpose is only to see who can tell the
biggest lie. In The play of the Weather
(1553), a courtly disputation, a number
of people have asked Jupiter for the kind
of weather they prefer to be granted all
the time; but the various requests are
contradictory and no two people agree,
and so things are left as they are. The
influence of the Latin models of comedy,
i. e. Plautus and Terence, on the
interlude can be seen in Nicholas Udall's
(1505-56)Ralph Roister Doister (1553). In
this play, much of the humor parallels
the interlude, and the classical model
helped Udall to build up a full-length
play, instead of a comic dialogue
dependent on a few tenuous situations.
This play is arranged into five acts and
several scenes, following the Raman
pattern, and the main character "Ralf" is
modeled on the boastful soldier of
Plautus.
Garmmer Gurton's Needle (1575,
possibly written by a Cambridge scholar,
William Stevenson) is a farcical tale
which is considered the
first extant English comedy. The central
situation is trivial-the loss and discovery
of a needle, but the dramatist had a gift
for dialogue and distinct power in
creating characters. This play also owes
something to the Roman comedies in its
skilful plot-construction .
The most brilliant intelligence to practise
comedy before Shakespeare and the
developer of a more sophisticated kind
of comedy is John Lyly. Lyly's style in
which he wrote his comedies is
euphuistican elaborate-prose style
which is full of alliteration. His plays are:
Campase (1584); Sapho and Phao (1584)
Gallathea (1585); Endimion (1588);
Midas (1589); Mother Bomi and Love's
Metamorphoses (1590); and The Woman
in the Moon (1594). Lyly's originality and
invention are remarkable: he combined
the realistic farce, the complexity of
Latin comedy, and the allegory of the
morality plays into a new design,
suffused with a gentle and dream-like
romanticism, and his greatest
achievement lay in the wit of his
dialogue. Accordingly, Lyly naturalized
some valuable dramatic conventions
from which Shakespeare and others
profited-notably; the use of stock
characters much fantasticated and
embellished by him from Latin comedy.
Both George Peele (1558-97) and Robert
Greene are comic specialists, though not
making a good imprint on English
comedy. Peele is responsible for one of
the most delightful of the pre-
Shakespearean comedies. His The Old
Wives' Tale is considered one of the
early attempts at dramatic satire of
those romantic tales of enchantment
and chivalry. Greene's Friar Bacon and
Friar Burtgay is clearly defined in the use
of the clown and has freshness and
charm and humour.
To George Meredith, the nineteenth
century writer, in The Idea of comedy
(1877), true comedy has for its own
business to awaken thoughtful laughter.
Thus, high comedy, in contrast to low
comedy, rests fundamentally on
thoughtful appreciation contrasted with
unthinking, spontaneous laughter.
In Shakespeare, there is often, a mixture:
of low and high comedy, which is
significant of the mixture of squalor and
splendor, barbarity and culture in the
Elizabethan era. Shakespeare's high
comedy is frequently called romantic
comedy and the phrase is an indication
of the unique quality of Shakespearean
comedy. If there is
30
any type of drama which Shakespeare
may be said to have created, it is
romantic comedy.
In his romantic comedies, Shakespeare
built on foundations of the old classical
comedy of satire and manners a new
comedy of romance and love. He
accommodated romance, and in
particular a romantic conception of love.
There is cheer optimism: Shakespeare
raises no problems: he sweetens our
feeling towards humanity and lursens
away to the restful land of romance. His
comedies are of two tones, they are
comic as well as romantic, and there is
always something to laugh at even in the
love stories of the novelty and gentry.
Romantic comic plays are characterized
by the following (Betti, 2013: 22):
1. It is a new type of comedy, which- is
full of romance and love. Shakespeare ,
elaborates upon a romantic conception
of love. There is cheer optimism: He
raises no problems and he sweetens the
audience's feeling towards humanity. His
comedies are both romantic and comic.
2. The male character is unimportant
compared to the female one in all his
four romantic comedies (The Merchant
of Venice, Much Ado about Nothing, As
You Like It and Twelfth Night).
3. In all the four romantic comedies,
there are two female characters
associated with each other such as Viola
and Olivia in the text under study.
4. There is a specific employment of
clowns and f fools. In our text, Feste
does not only invoke laughter in us, but
also gives us wisdom and proves that he
is wise. A good proof for this is Feste's
meeting with "Olivia in our text. He
proves her to be a fool.
5. There is the use of music and songs in
these comedies.
6. There is the employment of disguise
as a technique, which brings irony and
dramatic irony.
31
From 1592 to 1601, Shakespeare wrote
his most successful romantic comedies:
The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado
About Nothing (1598-9), As you Like It
and Twelfth Night. And by a full scrutiny
of such plays, certain features are
arrived at. First, in each of the four plays,
the male character is unimportant in
compared to "Rosalind", in As You like It
for instance. In all these plays, there are
two female characters associated with
each other in the same manner, as are
"Nerissa "and "Portia "in The Merchant
of Venice; " Rosalind" and """Celia "and
"Portia " in The Merchant of Venice;
"Rosalind " and "Celia" in As You Like It;
"Viola " and "Olivia "in Twelfth Night;
etc.
Second, there is a specific employment
of clowns or fools i. e. "Touchstone" in
As You Like It. The clown should provide
amusement annexed to ready wit. Third,
Shakespeare uses music and songs
frequently in his romantic comedies, i. e.
As You Like It, The Merchant of Venice.
Fourth, all Shakespeare's romantic
comedies have disguise as a technique.
The heroines are always in disguise: The
Two Gentlemen of Verona (1594); The
Taming of the Shrew (1593-4); The
Merchant of Venice; Much Ado About
Nothing; As You Like It; The Merry Wives
of Windsor (1597); All's W that Ends Well
(1602-3); Measure for Measure (1604);
and The Tempest (1611). By disguise,
Shakespeare keeps the audience
informed of what is hidden from some
or all of the characters on the stage. The
audience know that "Portia" in The
Merchant of Venice is disguised as a
lawyer and that "Shylock" will be foiled;
etc., and the only exception to this is
that in The Winter's Tale (1610-11), the
audience are allowed to suppose that
"Hermione" is dead.
Ben Jonson (1574-637), Shakespeare's
greatest contemporary, friend and rival,
developed a kind of comedy which
lasted for some years, viz., the comedy
of humor or satiric comedy. This method
of comedy was linked to a medical
theory of the time, which said that man's
temperament was determined by the
proportion of four fluids or humors in his
body. There was the sanguine humor,
the choleric, the phlegmatic, and the
melancholic. Too much of any of them
made man eccentric or humrous. The
characters are thus types not individuals.
As such, Jonson's comedies are realities
as he is interested in making them out of
the situations of his own time: he is
always contemporary in his themes and
setting.
32
Of all Jonson's comedies; i. e. Volpone,
The Alchemist, Bartholomews Fair, The
Silent Woman, Every Man in His Humour
( 1598) and Everyman Out of His Humour
(1599), Every Man in His Humour Seems
to be little more than a demonstration of
the theory.
The comedy of manners (restoration
comedy insofar as the historical periods
are concerned) focuses on the love
intrigues of cynical and sophisticated
youngaristocrates in high society: it
relies heavily on verbal wit. The
audience, hence, laugh not at the
characters themselves, but at the way
they express themselves. This type of
comedy reaches its zenith in the
restoration age and eighteenth century.
People, in restoration comedies, live in a
society which obeys very finite rules and
follows well-ordered conventions.
Accordingly, any violation of such rules
causes the audience to laugh. William
Congreve (1670-729), for instance, in his
The Old Bachelor (1693), The Double
Dealer (1694), Love for Love (1695), and
The Way of the World (1700), laughed at
the way wives treated their husbands, at
the trivial round of social observances
and idle gossip with people of good
sense were sometimes content so
occupy their time.
In this regard Sheridan's (1751-816),
comedy of manners is often cited,
alongside Oscar Wilde's (1954 - 900). In
Sheridan's three comedies; The Rivals
(1775), The School for Scandal (1777)
and The Critic (1779); something of the
of restoration dialogue returned into
comedy, a genial and romantic
atmosphere is created and his characters
are gayful and firmly presented.
Similarly, in Wilde's four comedies; Lady
Windermere's Fan (1892), A Woman of
No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband
(1895) and The Importance of Being
Earnest (1895), comedy of worth rank to
Sheridan is presented and one which
revives Sheridan's. His The importance of
Being Earnest shows a light, comic
artifice in the very spirit of Congreve.
Oliver Goldsmith (1728: 74) is often cited
along with Sheridan: they broke the spell
with their witty and original comedies so
that they hold the stage in competition
with comedy. Goldsmith's The Good-
Natured Man (1768) and She Stoops to
Conquer (1773), particularly the latter,
are great examples of comedy of
amateur genius in the language.
33
Modern drama is often more
sympathetic to comedy. In the Absurd
theatre where modernism and
existentialism is expressed, for instance,
comedy has been used to express the
ironic techniques and thus employ comic
conventions and even farce to convey a
profoundly serious view of human
existence. As in Shaw's and James M.
Barrie's (1860 – 937) we are brought to
satiric and sentimental comedy.
Shaw's dramatic pieces need to be
considered with special care as they do
not fit easily into the types, and they
cannot be expressed in terms other than
themselves. Some call them comedies of
ideas; some of manners; some satiric;
and yet some shavian. By shavian
comedies, it is meant plays which are
considered collections of witticisms.
In G. B. Shaw, the attitude towards the
suffering of human beings in the modern
age takes another direction. It is in the
form of a type of drama which Shaw
calls pleasant plays and which other
critics call Shavian (which is coined from
Shaw). G. B. Shaw invites people to go to
the theater and he does not ask them to
think. He does not have the patience of
Henrik Ibsen (who is the father of
naturalism in drama particularly in his A
Doll's House ) who allows the facts to
speak for themselves. Shaw strips from
the facts everything, which hides them
from his intellectual security until they
stand out in a form , which is quiet,
different from that which has been
familiar (Betti, 2013: 38).
Shaw's method is neither to allow the
facts to speak for themselves as Henrik
Ibsen (1828-906) does, nor to invite the
audience to think deeply of what is going
on, i. e expressionistic drama; he rather
stripes from the facts everything which
hides them from the intensity of his
intellectual scrutiny, until they, stand out
a form quite different from that which
made them familiar. This is implemented
in all Shaw's comedies, i. e. Arms and the
Man (1898)., Candida (1895), Pygmalion
(1912), Man and Superman (1903),
Heartbreak House (1971), Back to
Methuselah (1921), How He Lied to Her
Husband (1904).
James M. Barrie's comedy is sentimental
and whimsical, and in decided contrast
to Shaw's satirical comedy. He gives the
English theatre a touch 'faery ' and an
element of mythology in all his plays,
i .e. The Admirable Crichton (1902), Peter
Pan (1904), The Old Lady
34
Shows Her Medals (1914), Dear Brutus
(1971), etc. Barrie in Peter Pan, for
instance, is concerned with the present
and his sentimental fantasy becomes
less acceptable when extended to
ordinary life. Likewise, he, in The Old
Lady Shows Her Medals, blends humor
and pathos, as he does in most of his
plays.
In addition to the previous forms, other
forms also appeared in the history of
comedy. Farce is a kind of comedy
intended primarily to provoke laughter,
using and exaggerated characters and
complicated plots, full of absurd
episodes, ludicrous situations and
knockabout action. It has no apparent
intention other than rumbustious
entertainment and the good-natured
depiction of folly. Unlike satire it is not
censorious. Farcical elements date back
to Aristophanes and occur alongside
serious drama in all ages; then, it came
to be used in the interludes of the
English mystery plays. And though
elements of farce emerge in the work of
all great comic playwrights, a pure farce,
unmixed with other comic styles,
appears as a common genre only in the
nineteenth century and Brandon
Thomas's Charley's Aunt (1892) is often
cited as an example of farce.
Burlesque is a special kind of comic
writing; the mockery of a serious matter
or style, achieved by dealing with a
subject in a deliberately incongruous
manner. There are several types of
burlesque:
(1) Parody is the comic imitation of a
particular work or author, often
achieved by mimicking an author's style
and applying it to a ridiculous subject.
(2) Travesty is the mockery of a subject
by treating it in an absurdly low style.
The play put on by the rude mechanicals
within Shakespeare's A Midsummer
Night's Dream (1595-6) is a well - known
example: it burlesques the theatrical
Interlude.
Slapstick is a broad, comedy with
knockabout action, fighting, clown
people falling over each other, and so
on.
5. Heroic Drama
This type of drama includes plays written
mostly during the restoration period
with subjects which aspired to epic
grandeur, dealing with the exploits in
battles and love, of great warriors,
35
emperors, and kings. Typically, the
demands of love and patriotic duty come
into conflict. The audience here wanted
to be taken out of themselves and to be
shown a world which was not limited by
the petty restraints of conventional
existence. Such dramas are called heroic
because the characters were of larger
mould and moved in an ampler world
than that of ordinary experience
(Whitfield, 1968: 99; and 98). John
Dryden's (1631-700) All for Love (1677),
a reworking of Shakespeare's Antony
and Cleopatra (1606-700) is one of the
most successful examples of this kind of
drama.
6. Masque
Masque is a courtly dramatic
entertainment which, flourished in
Europe during the late sixteenth and
early seventeenth century by Ben Jonson
in 1609. It is a kind of drama played by
masked actors with extravagant
costumes and spectacular stage effects
and decorations combined in a loose
plot, usually allegorical or mythological.
The masque became to be more
elaborate and serious in subject matter,
but it remained poetic and symbolic,
never became naturalistic. Jonson
established the conventions of the
masque and seems to have originated
the anti-masque which provided a
contrast between the gods, goddesses
and courtly personages on the one hand
and rural or low characters, comic or
grotesque, or grotesque creatures of the
imagination, on the other· Shakespeare
used masque or masque elements in
Love's Labour's Lost (1594-5), Romeo
and Juliet (1595-6), Much Ado About
Nothing, The Merry Wives of Windsor,
Henry VIII (1612-3), A Midsummer
Night's Dream and The Tempest.
7. Chronicle plays
This term is used to mean history plays
which deal with historical facts. More
specifically, chronicle plays are those
which draw their material from
Holinshed's Chronicles of England,
Scotland and Ireland (1577-87)
recounting the history of England.
Marlowe's Edward II (1592) and
Shakespeare's Richard II (1595) , Richard
III (1592- 3), Henry IV (1596-7) and Henry
V (1599) are examples of such types of
plays. In this regard, Shakespeare's
history plays are the principal ones;
Shakespeare wrote also the Roman
history plays:
36
Julius Caesar (1599), Antony and
Cleopatra, and Croiolanus (1607-8).
8. The Plays of Sentiment
In the eighteen century, middle-class
people began to be interested neither in
Restoration comedies nor in heroic
dramas, but in another type drama: A
drama of sentiment. Such respectable
drama contains characters the audience
can be in sympathy with and thus be
spending much of their time altering
lofty sentiments. In such plays, there
were no villains, and the success of the
dramatist depended largely on his ability
to bring his characters into situations in
which their tender feelings should be so
distressed that the audience might weep
in sympathy with them. These plays
included both tragedies and comedies.
And most of the tragedies no longer had
kings and princes for their heroes but
every day characters- the audience were
familiar with in their ordinary lives. An
example of those sentimental
playwrights is George Lillo (1693-739)
who provoked sentimental tears and
stood solidly for middle –class morality
in plays like The London Merchant (1731)
and The Gamester (1737).
9. Melodrama
Melodrama flourished in the second half
of the eighteenth century after the
decline of sentimental plays and the
partial replacement of Goldsmith and
Sheridan's vigorous comedies. This type
of drama has more than little in common
with the sentimental plays, but had
altered so that less talk and much more
action is permitted. Such drama
portrayed villains who were torn by the
pangs of remorse without enjoying the
blessings of repentance. By definition
and originally, it meant a play with music
as a background to the dialogue,
including early opera, but in the
nineteenth century popular theatres in
London put on plays with musical
accompaniment. These plays were
naively sensational with simple, flat
characterization, unrelentingly vicious
villains, and much bloodthirsty action,
including horrible murders, ghosts and
the like. The most well-known examples
are T. W. Roberston's (1829-71) Caste
(1867), and Maria Marten; or The
Murder in the Red Barn (1830).
Roberston marked the end of the old
type of
37
drama and thus was natural in dialogue
and situations and closer to real life.
10. Naturalistic Drama
Naturalism is a more particularized
branch of realism. Thus, naturalistic
drama depicts life as it is; exposing the
social ills and problems on the stage
though sometimes they are radical and
shocking and thus, using language of
daily existence. This is hardly possible:
no play, no matter how natural it may
appear on the stage, does in fact present
life as it really is. What happens is that
the playwright is highly skilful to create
an illusion that what is going on in this
play might as well happen in real life;
this is manipulated by making his
characters do and say nothing which is in
obvious contrast to common experience.
It is the Norwegian dramatist Henrik
Ibsen, who first showed what powerful
effects can be produced when a play
creates an illusion in the audience that
they are watching on episode of life.
Ibsen's drama was serious in content,
simple and conversation in style and
realistic in portraying ordinary people
and the problems they face in life. His
plays invalidated the old beliefs and
proposed new ones.
For him, the evil he fights is 'idealism'
and the enemy he encounters is the
'idealist' who makes realities and
fancies. In sum, Ibsen's contribution lies
in his realism of action, character and
dialogue; the use of prose as opposed to
verse; the treatment of social problems
and ideas; the portrayal of the common
place; and the revolution of woman. All
such elements can be seen in all Ibsen's
plays: A Doll's House, Ghosts, The
Fretenders, An Enemy of the people,
Brand, Peer Gynt, and when We Dead
Awaken.
All the great features of modern plays
descend from Ibsen. These features
include the realism , the social
significance , the psychological
elements , the naturalness , the complex
characterization and some others. His
great contribution lies in their conceiving
of drama as a representation of life. His
recognition that life cannot be broken
down into numerous separate
compartments : ideas , emotions , and
actions. He saw life as in integration of
all these elements :action as motivated
by character , ideas as motivating
character , etc. In Ibsen , there is a
realism of action , character and
dialogue , and a treatment of the social
problems and ideas. He uses prose not
verse and portrays the
38
commonplace and the lives of the
middle class. He believes the more
successful the playwright is , the more
skilful he can create inside the
spectators a kind of illusion that what
they see represent life. All these features
of Ibsen's works were brought attention
to by a new critic who then became a
playwright himself , Shaw. These
features were then introduced into
Shaw's works (BEtti, 2013: 37).
A Short Biography of G. B. Shaw
Shaw's life was highly muIti-lateral in the
sense of being
Following Ibsen's style of naturalistic
drama, a number of other dramatists in
the modern age wrote their plays:
August Strindberge, John Millington
Synge, John Galsworthy (1867-933) and
Eugene O'Neill (1888-953).
Strindberg's, the Swedish playwright,
reputation rests on presenting
naturalistic views in The Father (1987)
and Miss Julie (1888); and expressionistic
ideas in The Road to Damascus (1898-
901) and A Dream play (1901). In The
Stronger, Strindberg presented a quart
d'heure about the struggle between the
sexes. What is important about the life
of the Irish playwright, Strindberge, as
related to The Stronger is that he
married three times but none of his
marriages was a success. That is why,
marriage is the prevailing theme of the
play (Betti, 2013: 34). In this play, the
playwright quotes something of his
personal life. He appears to be making a
social autobiography. He inserts two
characters struggling for the sake of a
man. This man is the playwright himself
whose three marriages were not
successful. In spite of that, the character
of the man does not appear which adds
to the suspense created in the play
(Betti, ibid).
Synge, the Irish playwright, wrote a
number of plays: The shadow of the Glen
(1903), Riders to the Sea, The Well of the
Saints (1905) and his comedy The
playboy of the Western World (1907).
His plays are full of realism, mysticism,
emotion and highly poetic prose.
Galsworthy wrote seven plays mostly
tragic and realistic: The Silver Box and
The man of property (1906), Escape
(1908), The Skin Game (1920), Localities
(1922), Strife (1909) and Justice (1910).
In all his plays, he selected social
problems rather blatantly and put them
in simple characterization.
O'Neill, the American playwright, was
influenced by Ibsen and Strindberg .
O'Neill's plays show naturalistic and
expressionistic
39
views: Beyond the Horizon (1920), The
Emperor Jones ( 1921), Anna Christie and
The Hairy Ape (1922), Desire Under the
Elms (1923), Strange Interlude (1928)
and The Iceman Cometh (1946).
11. One-Act plays
The one-act play is a form of drama,
which emerged in the modern era as the
modern society was influenced by
industrialization, two world wars, a
decline of values, etc. Its roots can he
traced back to the medieval morality
plays and Japanese Noah plays. Such
plays are restricted by time and diction.
As such, playwrights do their best to
make their characters and situations
easily understood and appreciated by
their audience. Thus, their dialogue must
be subtle and language must be concise,
trest and condensed. Unnecessary
details, ambiguous incidents, bombastic
speeches, length digressions,
superfluous statements and complicated
plots do not usually exist in this kind of
drama.
Though the one-act play is limited by
certain restrictions, it has its own
freedom and flexibility. All the types of
the full- length drama - ranging from
melodrama to mime and farce have
been successfully attempted. It also lent
itself to all the passing dramatic trends
and fashions, such as realistic,
naturalistic, romantic, epic, imagist,
symbolic, expressionistic, futurist,
absurd, etc. Playwrights like Strindberg,
Synge, Galsworthy and O'Neill wrote
naturalistic one-act plays, i. e. How He
Lied to Her Husband; Eliot poetic drama,
Sweeney Agonistes (1932); , Cangiullo
Futurist There Is No Dog; Brecht epic
one-act plays, The Seven Deadly Sins of
the and Lower Middle Class (1933);
Beckett's mime, Act Without Words; and
Pinter absurd drama, The Room; etc.
12. Modernist Drama
The First World War (1914-8) is generally
considered to be the catalyst that
initiated the modern period in literature.
Modernism is the label that distinguishes
some characteristics of twentieth -
century writing, in so far as it differs
from the conventions inherited from the
nineteenth century. Radical technical
innovations have taken place in all of the
three major genres. Further than this,
there are several
40
modernisms ranging from symbolism,
post-impressionism, expressionism
futurism, imagism, vorticism, dadaism
and surrealism.
The modernist theatre had celebrated
breaking the old forms and conventions,
and reflecting its reality and presenting
its trust through abstractions of reality.
Such modernistic attitudes can be easily
seen in Cangiullo's futurist and imagist
drama, i. e. There Is No Dog; Brecht's
epic theatre; Eliot's revival of religious
and verse drama; the theatre of cruelty;
Beckett's absurd drama,; and the angry
theatre.
13. Futurist Drama
Futurists advocated the destruction and
rejection of all grammatical and artistic
conventions and rules in their search for
new media, and perfect freedom for
their unconscious creative minds
without the rheumatism of logic'. They
espoused speed, war and fascism:
though apparently revolutionary, the
consequences of their views were highly
reactionary and isolationist. The main
advocate was the Italian poet and
publicist Emilio Fillippo Marinetti who
contributed to the futurist manifesto in
1909. In the theatre, Francisco Cangiullo
is one of the Italian dramatists who
established this movement during the
second decade of this century. A
collection of Cangiullo's short plays
including There Is No Dog was published
in 1915. These futurist plays were
examples of the play as an image
(tableau) carried to an extreme. Such
futurist plays, in which there is neither
character nor dialogue, embody modern
life in which language is not devoted to
bringing meaningful communication
among interlocutors but
misunderstanding, and give a feature of
openendedness which brings different
interpretations by the audience.
Beckett's Act without Words, serves as a
fruitful implementation of such views
and the like.
14. The Epic Theatre
The epic theatre is an influential style of
theatrical presentation and dramatic
writing developed in Germany in the
1920. It presents a series of episodes in a
simple, direct way, with accompaniment
of a narrator, poetic fragment,
summaries of the plot, songs, projection
of slides onto a screen, music and so on.
Brecht, who propagates this type of
theatre, tries hard to bring about the
alienation effect in the production of his
plays: the creation of a sort of
detachment between
41
the audience and the characters in order
to create a belief in the audience that
they are not watching their lives
manifested, and thus they, should not be
swept away by their emotions. Thus,
many of the above techniques are
resorted to achieve this end-alienation
effect. By virtue of its relevance and
realistic nature, this type of theatre
stands in opposition to Aristotle's
catharsis whose main concern is the
creation of contact between the
audience and the characters to bring
about purgation of the former's
emotions. The modern stage, by its
facilities and structure, aids a lot in
implementing this theory. This theory is
followed in many of Brecht's plays: The
Life of Galileo (1938); Mother Courage
and Her Children; The Good Woman of
Setzuan (1943) and The Caucasian Chalk
Circle (1948). In three of his plays; The
Seven Deadly Sins of the Lower Middle
Class, A Man's a Man (1924-6), and The
Woman of Setzuan, Brecht employed the
technique of monopolylogue, i. e.
showing the double personalities of one
character.
15. Verse Drama
English drama has been greatly affected
by Greek drama and thus many Greek
dramatic elements appeared in the
English theatre starting from Gorboduc
by Sackville and Norton. In addition, the
beginning of Greek drama as well as
English is religious i. e. morality, mystery
and miracle plays, dealing with certain
extracts of the Bible for secularization.
Likewise , the medium of expression for
a number of dramatists, before and after
Shakespeare, is poetical as poetry was
the normal medium of drama .
Shakespeare, for instance, "was all along
holding out to him the most
'unattainable' ideal of poetic drama- a
rare synthesis of and of musical order.
What is evident is that modern
playwrights had long abandoned
religious plays and the inclusion of Greek
elements of drama and of certain
dramatic conventions. As believed by T.
S. Eliot: The theatre has reached a point
at which a revolution in principles should
take place although that necessary
convention might be in technique, in
subject matter, in form, the surest
convention was to be found in the
liturgy. Drama springs from religious
liturgy, and it cannot afford to depart
too far from it. It is clear that Eliot
emphasized liturgy as a sort of store for
conventions and which can supply
English drama with
42
conventions to rescue present state.
Thus, verse is a necessary element in the
recovery of drama. That is why, he wrote
in 1935 a play about the martyrdom of
Thomas a Becket, i. e. Murder in the
Cathedral. This play was followed by a
rash of religious plays, written for
performance in churches and cathedrals.
The wheel had come full circle: the
English drama had returned to its place
of origin, the Christian church. A revival
of poetic drama thus occurred.
In Murder in the Cathedral, Eliot
combined a medieval subject with the
style of ancient Greek drama, having a
chorus on the significance of the action.
Part of the success of this play was due
to the re-discovery of the effectiveness
of dramatic conventions. The
contribution of a chorus and the
cadences of choral verse-speaking came
as a revelation of delight to audiences to
whom they were unfamiliar. None of
Eliot's subsequent plays in verse has had
quite the success of this first.
In addition to Eliot, W. H. Auden (b.
1907), Christopher- Isherwood (b.
1904 ), Christopher Fry (b. 1907),
Lawrence, Dorothy Sayer and James
Schevill re-established verse drama in
the contemporary theatre. Auden and
Isherwood used the stage for left-wing
propaganda in The Dance of Death and
The Dog Beneath the Skin, plays which
employed verse of a racy, colloquial
kind, songs in popular idiom, and various
expressionist devices. Similarly in The
Ascent of F6 (1936) and On the Frontier,
they confirmed the ideas and the
political agility of Auden's non-dramatic
verse, but they made no major impact.
Fry's The Boy With a Cart (1939), A
Phoenix Too Frequent (1946), The Lady's
Not For Burning (1949), Venus Observed
(1950) and A Sleep of Prisoners (1951)
made him to be compared with
Elizabethan playwrights for brilliance of
imagery and felicity of language. In
addition, Lawrence's David, Sayers's The
Zeal of Thy House and Schevill's The
Bloody Tenent are all religious dramas
written as one-act plays.
16. Theatre of Cruelty
The theatre of cruelty is a type of
theatre in which vivid effects, mime, and
sensational, even horrific action and
spectacle predominate. This theatre,
was initiated by the French playwright
Antonin Artand who arguedin 1938 that
plays should shock the audience in order
to release
43
subconscious truths. The German
playwright Peter Weiss's Marat/Sade
(1964) is a famous example.
17. Absurd Drama
Absurd drama is a mass of inchocate
materials which bide Farwell to the
conventional techniques and elements
of traditional theatre. This type of drama
is absurd in this sense-it has none of the
age-old values or qualities of a well-
made play. It has no plot to speak of, no
plausible motivation, no well-sketched
character, etc. This type is absurd also
because it expresses the philosophy of
the absurd which is related to the
philosophy of existentialism which tends
to depict man as isolated in a
purposeless and incomprehensible
universe of space and time.
Absurd drama was derived from the
French philosopher and novelist Albert
Camus in the collection of essays called
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942). This term
was popularized by Martin Esslin's book
The Theatre of the Absurd (1961). Camus
defined the absurd as the tension which
emerges from man's determination to
discover purpose and order in a world
which steadfastly refuses to evidence
either. To Esslin, the term is applied to
dramatists as diverse as Beckett,
Ionesco, Adamov , Genet, Arrabal and
Simpson .
The treatment of language in absurd
drama is of special nature and reveals
some intrinsic qualities of this type. In
conventional drama, language occupies
a central position and is never at cross
purpose to the action. Meanwhile, the
absurd dramatists refuse to recognize
the centrality of language which is in
practice used only as one of the
components. In fact, language is
devalued by these writers perhaps
because they feel that language hides
more things than it reveals. Language, to
absurd dramatists, perhaps, is not
enough for communication; sometimes,
it brings misunderstanding.
This type of drama is closely associated
with such names as Beckett, in such
works as Waiting for Godot, Endgame
(1957), Act Without Words, krapp's Last
Tape (1958) and Not I (1973); Eugene
Ionesco (b. 1912) in The Chairs (1952),
Maid to Mary (1953), and Amedeeand
The killer (I959); Pinter in The Room, The
Birthday Party (1958); The Caretaker
(1960), . The Party and The Homecoming
(1965), No Man's Land (1975), etc.
44
18. The Theatre of Anger
The Theatre of Anger for certain British
playwrights and public figures, appeared
in the 1950. John Osborne's (b. 1929 )
Look Back in Anger is the most famous
and enduring work of this movement.
This type of theatre is that of the
Proletariate. "Jimmy Porter", the hero,
indulges his anguished consciousness in
long tirades against the mid class
mentality of his wife and her family:
"porter" is the quintessential 'Anger' .
45
CHAPTER THREE
LANGUAGE
DRAMATISTS USE
46
CHAPTER THREE
LANGUAGE DRAMATISTS USE
Literature, including drama, is
characterized by the use of special
devices which heighten the effect of
linguistic speech acts to the degree that
in some periods and cultures, literary
language gains such prestige that other
styles have been judged good or bad
according to their resemblance to it.
Consequently, writers of different
literary genres are given liberty
adjustment or allowance to allow them
to manipulate language according to
their needs, distorting syntax , using odd
archaic or novel words and
constructions, i. e. , figures of speech,
and to make mistaken assumptions
about the world they describe by
departing from historical or scientific
accuracy tropes. This liberty or
allowance is sometimes called poetic
license though this license is not
restricted to poets, but poets are freer
than other writers. Generally, writers
adopt figurative language in order to
achieve certain effects and express
certain meanings through ornamenting
and decorating style. This departure, i. e.
formally permitted as license, is
manipulated consciously or
unconsciously by the writer.
Through the employment of figurative
language, the writer tries to achieve an
image or images which refer to objects
and qualities: such images appeal to the
senses and feelings. Though the image,
in its narrowest sense, describes some
originated in the study of rhetoric,
visible scene or object, it also describes
all the other senses. Of all types,
thematic imagery is one which recurs
throughout a work of art: for example in
Shakespeare's Macbeth, images of
animals, birds, darkness and disease are
common, and they are used in such a
way as to underpin the play's theme of
the battle between unnatural evil and
goodness.

3. 1. TROPES
In this group of figurative language, the
following devices are included:
1. Metaphor, Symbol, Simile, Analogy
and Personification
All the members of this group of tropes
involve a comparison of one type or
another with a difference in quantity.
Metaphor is the most important trope
and the commonest. It is that trope in
which one thing (or idea place, person,
deed, etc. ) is compared to another
without acknowledging in a form of
words (' like', 'as', 'as if ', 'even as', etc.)
that any comparison is being made.
"Dogberry's" speech to "Conrade" in
Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing
serves as an example:
Dogberry: Do you not suspect my
position
Do you not suspect my tears! O that he
were here to write down that I have
been
called an ass! but, masters, remember
that
I am an ass.
(V, 1, 15-9)
I. A. Richards (1936) in Philosophy of
Rhetoric introduced terms for the
different parts of a metaphor: the tenor
is the subject metaphoric ('I' the speaker
in the example), while the metaphoric
word, which 'carries over' its meaning, is
called the vehicle (the ass).
Within metaphor, a number of types can
be diagnosed, an implicit metaphor is
one which is not overtly stated, the
tenor is not stated , and it is left for the
reader to infer from the context. An
example is the adjective 'pregnant' in
what "Polonius "says in an aside in
Shakespeare's Hamlet (II, 2, 211):
Polonius: How pregnant sometimes, his
replies are!
Playwrights, however, use metaphor to
create original and thrilling new
combinations of ideas, objects and
sensations. Sometimes, these
combinations are too daring and we feel
the parts do not fuse together
successfully: such a failure can be called
mixed metaphor: the application of a
term to a thing which it does not denote,
i. e.
catachresis. "Hamlet's" comments in a
flattery is an example (III, 1, 61-3):
No, let the candied tongue lick pomp
And crook the pregnant hinges of the
knee
Where thrift may follow fawning.
The 'hinges' of the knee are 'pregnant'
because flattery successfully gains
advancement: Shakespeare (or
"Hamlet") may be said to be in control of
his mixed metaphor. Meanwhile, a
compound metaphor comprises two or
more individual metaphors
Shakespeare's Hamlet):
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
and by opposing end them?
(III, 1, 59-60)
However, dead metaphors are
metaphors which no longer carry any
strong metaphorical 'Charge; . Examples
of such metaphors are: the heart of the
matter'. 'the leg of the table', etc.
A symbol may be seen as a species of
metaphor, in which the exact subject of
the metaphor is not made explicit, and
may even be mysterious. Generally, a
symbol is something ( i. e. an image)
which represents something else. It can
be an 'idea', 'quality', an 'object', a
'situation', a 'character', etc. by analogy
or association. Playwrights use
conventional symbols, such as 'white' : '
innocence' , 'lion': courage, 'rose':
beauty, etc. , but also may invent and
create symbols of their own. Some of
the symbols used by playwrights, as well
as poets, are taken from nature: natural
objects are less liable than artificial,
made by man, ones. Thus, 'winter'
stands for death, 'spring' for life and
hope, etc. The symbol helps in making
concrete a meaning that otherwise
remains inexpressible. It can be
effectively applied to develop,
summarize, suggest, dramatize, or
explore complex ideas and feelings that
are otherwise difficult, for one reason or
another, to express. Here concreteness
refers to abstraction.
As it has been made obvious, a symbol is
related to an image, but this correlation
is not always straightforward and clear-
cut as it is a symbolic correlation.
Allegory draws out a series of clear
relationships between an object or
person and the abstraction for which
they stand. Much of the imagery in
Hamlet is interrelated to form a pattern

conveying to our senses a realization of

Denmark's rottenness and "Hamlet's"
disgust with it. In Osborn's Look Black in
Anger, "Jimmy Poter" and his wife,
"Alison", are symbolized "and also
metaphorized as symbols are
metaphoric as 'bear' and 'squirrel', upon
which the whole play depends. Similarly,
"Rose" in Pinter's The Room is not a
symbol for innocence, purity, rather the
contrary. This can be seen in analogy
with Blake's 'The Sick Rose' (1794).
However, if an object, scene or animal in
a play, is not spelt out in systematic
detail as in the manner of allegory nor is
it full of nuance and suggestiveness like
a symbol, such a device is called an
emblem, i.e. a symbolic or allegorical
picture. The 'deer' is the forest of Arden
in Shakespeare's As You like It is an
emblem.
A simile is very much like a metaphor, in
that it makes a comparison but in simile,
we use a word, generally 'like' or 'as'.
This trope is as common as the
metaphor, and it may be used to make
something clearer or merely as an
ornament (Shakespeare's Much Ado
About Nothing ):
Dogberry: if I were as tedious as a king, I
could find
in my heart to bestow it all of your
worship. .
(III, V, 20-1)
Analogy is a trope that seems to be half-
way between a simile and a metaphor:
this is a comparison in which some
acknowledgment is made, but, as it
were, indirectly. Analogy may extend
over several pages. Its proper function is
to make something clear, but the trick of
making something less clear by an
analogy that is not really illuminating
and only appears to be so is so common
that in logic it is given the special name
of false analogy. 'Gloucester's'
relationship with his two sons is the
subplot of Shakespeare's King Lear is
analogous to Lear's relationship with his
daughters.
Personification is a special kind of
metaphor, in which some object, place
or abstract idea is turned into a person
with human attributes so that we can
talk about it more intelligibly or
vigorously. In the morality plays,
attributes like goodness, chastity,
friendship are given human attributes.
This trope is connected with another in
which
the attribution of a human form is given
to abstractions or even to animals and
inanimate objects, anthropomorphism.
Likewise, pathetic fallacy is used to
describe the habit of assuming an
equation between the writer's mood and
the world about them. Writers go
further to describe nature in terms of
their feelings, i. e.: the sky weeps, the
mind moans. In this sense, pathetic
fallacy is the attribution of human
feeling to inanimate nature. This
phenomenon was given this name by
Ruskin wishes to discriminate between
accurate depictions of nature and the
distortions caused when the writer's
emotions falsify the appearance of
things, an effect which he regarded as
'morbid'. In analogy with this, critics
since them coined a number of other
'fallacies'.
2. Metonymy, Synecdoche and
Euphemism
These three tropes contribute to using
an attribute, one way or another, for a
thing.
Metonymy is the substitution for a name
of a thing of the name of an attribute to
it, or something closely associated with
it. For example, the 'crown' for
monarchy; the 'pen' for literature and
the 'sword' for war in 'the pen is
mightier than the sword, etc. Nearly the
same is applicable in synecdoche: a part
is used to describe the whole of
something, or vice versa, as in the use of
the word 'hand' in the phrase 'all hands
on deck' to refer to sailors. Likewise,
euphemism is a word or phrase that is
less burnt, rude or terrifying which can
be used to conceal unpleasant,
embarrassing or frightening facts or
words. Thus, it is dealt with
euphemistically: to die is to 'pass away';
'to wash our hand in the cloakroom ' is
to urinate; etc.
3. Hyperbole and Understatement
These two tropes have something in
common: either exaggeration or
lessening of a thing is made.
Hyperbole emphasizes by exaggeration
which is used to reflect both comic and
serious effect. It is mainly concerned
with expressing sentiments and values.
In Shakespeare's Macbeth, " Macbeth"
expresses in hyperbole his guilt at
murdering "Nuncan":
Macbeth: will all great Neptunes's ocean
wash this blood Clean from my hand?
(II, 2, 59-62)
Contrastively, understatement (Meiosis)
is a trope where the true magnitude of
an event or fact is minimized or not
stated overtly. "Othello", in
Shakespeare's Othello addresses the
officers who came to arrest him by
saying (IV, 2, 59):
Keep up your bright swords, for the dew
will rust then.
Though the situation is serious, it is
made less serious, i. e. there is
minimization of the fact or event stated
through an understatement. A trope
which is akin to understatement is
litotes in which an affirmation is
expressed by its contrary denied to
negative. The common everyday use of
'not bad' to mean 'good' is an example.
4. Irony, Sarcasm and Innuendo
All the above three tropes imply saying
one thing while meaning another.
Irony is one of the most important
tropes in English. The stock definition of
irony is: "saying one thing while meaning
another", but this is not in the sense of
untruth of the kind of double meaning
found in pun and metaphor, but in the
sense of meaning something different to
someone else who hears the speech and
is intelligent enough to see the further
meaning, or equipped with the
knowledge to do so. It is then a special
use of double meaning the effect of
which is often bitter and a bit sinister,
always concentrated and full of
suggestion. Irony may be structural,
verbal, dramatic, of situation, a sarcasm
or an innuendo.
Structural Irony is found in a literary
work which persistently presents more
than one point of view because of some
element in its structure, such as a native
hero or fallible narrator like Gulliver in
Jonathan Swift's (1667-745) Gulliver's
Travels (1726) who persistently adopts
the ridiculous local perspectives of all
the countries he visits.
Verbal Irony designates a kind of irony
which results from a kind of discrepancy
between the implicit meaning of the
speaker and what is really stated in the
situation. "Touchstone" in Shakespeare's
As You Like It states the opposite of what
the audience know of him:
Touchstone: why, if thou never wast at
Court, thou never sawest good manners.
(III, 2, 34-5)
Irony of situation involves a gap
between the realistic outcome of a
situation and the expected situation. An
example occurs in the gravediggers'
scene in Shakespeare's Hamlet when
"Hamlet" was watching the gravediggers
digging a grave, and he consequently
found that it is for his mistress. Another
example is when "Hamlet "spares
"Claudius" at his prayers (III, 3)thinking
that "Claudius" is making his peace with
God, while in fact 'Claudius ' is merely
discovering that he cannot repent and
that to continue in villainous intrigue is
his only course. This device is very
effective because of the note of grim
humor, the sharp twist it can administer.
Dramatic irony is a special type of irony
which is found in a play, an irony of
situation in which what is said on the
stage means more to the audience than
to the person who says it or hears it. The
development of the plot allows the
audience to possess more information
about what is happening than some of
the characters themselves have. The
Greek tragedies, and Shakespeare's
Macbeth and Hamlet are full of
examples. One of example of this is
"Claudius's" speech to "Laertes" in
Hamlet (IV, 7, 33). He has diverted
"Laertes' "revengeful energy onto
"Hamlet"; then he says "You shortly shall
heave more" meaning the news of
"Hamlet's" death in England. But we
know from I V, 6 of the play that
"Hamlet" has returned and "Claudius"
will hear more in a sense very different
from his own meaning.
Sarcasm is an extreme form of irony: it is
a statement which is intended to hurt or
insult. Unfortunately, ironical
statements in literature are not so easily
discerned or understood, and in certain
cases the context of an ironical comment
will make clear the true meaning
intended.
Innuendo is a special type of irony. It
hints at something without actually
saying it: it is an allusion used for
depreciation.
5. Cliché
A cliché is a boring phrase, made tedious
by frequent repetition. A cliché is a form
of irony while by definition it is a form of
ellipsis, but
53
a cliché can be used in realistic and
ironic ways. Clichés usually seek to be
clever or sound fine, but are enfeebled
by constant use. This phrase is repeated
so as to expose its emptiness of falsity.
There exists an employment of many
clichés in modern drama: Beckett's
Waiting for Godot and Osborne's Look
Back in Anger, for instance, contain
many examples. Clichés are sometimes
considered as triteness.
6. Pun (Paronomasia)
This trope is usually defined as a play
upon words: two widely different
meanings are drawn out of a single
word, usually for comic, playful or witty
purposes though there are serious pus in
Shakespeare, for instance. The pun is
regarded as vulgar because many bad
ones are made, and a character who is
always making puns is a social nuisance,
but a good pun in the right place may be
amusing and clever. A famous pun is one
in Shakespeare's Hamlet when "Hamlet"
was talking to "Claudius" (I, 2, 64-7) and
punning the word 'son':
king: But now, my cousin Hamlet, and
my son,
Hamlet: Not so, my lord; I am too much i
' th sun
7. Zeugma
Zeugma is a trope in which words or
phrases with widely different meanings
are 'yoked together' with comic effect by
being made syntactically dependent on
the same word. "Hamlet" responds to
"Claudius" in an aside in (I, 2, 65):
A little more than kin, and less than kind.
8. Prolepsis
It is the device by which we refer to
something as done before the intended
action is completed. However, this figure
seldom has any emotional power in
English. " Hero" in Shakespeare's Much
Ado About Nothing speaks to "Ursula" (I
I I, 1, 32-3):
Hero: Then go we near her, that her, ear
lose nothing
of the false sweet bait that we lay for it:
her ear will not lose anything unless they
go to her.
54
9. Epithet
Epithet is a device in which an adjective
properly attached to one word is
transferred to another. This trope
seldom has powerful emotional effects.
In Homer's epics, we have Homeric
epithets where there are certain
recurrent adjectival expressions, such as
the wine-dark sea', or 'rose-fingered
dawn ', etc. The most well-known of
these are transferred epithets.
10. Rhetorical Question
Rhetorical question is a question which
is asked not for the sake of enquiry, but
for emphasis: the playwright or
character expects his audience to be
totally convinced about the appropriate
reply. This question, which does not
necessitate a reply, brings a future
dramatic importance. "Rosalind" in
Shakespeare's As You Like It speaks to
"Celia" about "Orlando" using rhetorical
questions (III, 2, 194-9).
11. Syllepsis
Syllepsis is a word which is used to cover
two senses at once; the result is formally
grammatical, but odd. This trope is
generally used facetiously.
12. Aposiopesis (Rhetorical Reticence)
This is the trick of suddenly breaking off
a sentence, leaving something unsaid
that the heave or reader can add. This
trope can be a good way to touch the
heart, or to achieve a comic or
threatening effect; it is also a good way
for an inferior writer to shirk a piece of
description for which he lacks the skill. In
modern drama, particularly absurd
drama and the angry theatre, such a
trope expresses the characters'
uncertainty of themselves, and of what
is going on. In Beckett's Waiting for
Godot, "Estragon "and "Vladimir
"frequently break off their sentences for
both comic effect and expressing the
dilemma which the human mind is in.
13. Colloquialism
Colloquialism is the use of the kinds of
expression and grammar associated with
ordinary, everyday speech rather than
formal language. This trope may simply
be part of a relaxed style of writing: or it
may be employed perhaps with slang, to
provide additional color and word-play.
Taboos, in this sense, is part of
colloquialism: "Jimmy Porter" in
Osborne's Look Back in Anger employs
such words frequently.
14. Literalism
This trope includes playing with a
familiar expression taking it in its literal
sense instead of its usual metaphorical
sense. This can be irritating and profane
when done too often, like the
mannerism of a habitual punster, but
the trick can be useful counterattack to
rhetorical devices unskillfully used. It is
frequently found in humorous prose
passages in Shakespeare. This is an
example from Shakespeare's The Taming
of the Shrew:
Curtis: All ready; and therefore, I pray
thee, news?
Mistress fallen out.
Grumio: First, know my horse is tired;
my master and
mistress fallen out.
Curtis: How?
Grumio: Out of their saddles into the
direct; and
thereby hangs a tale
Curtis: Let's ha't, good Grumio.
Grumio: (striking him): these.
Curtis: This is to feel a tale, not to hear a
tale.
Grumio: And therefore it is called a
sensible tale.
(III, 3, 19-29)
15. Surprise Ending
This trope implies that the end of a
sentence is not what we expected while
waiting for it. This is a fairly common
device in English. While we are waiting
for" Lucky" in Beckett's Waiting for
Godot to talk, his talk was nonsense.
16. Quotation
This is favorite by many writers: to take a
quotation from any author to add
authority to the work or to employ it as
saying. This employment may be serious,
frivolous or rhetorical. Sometimes, the
use of quotation is to strengthen an
argument or make a passage more
elegant, to evoke the strong emotion
aroused by the original dramatic piece,
or even to show learning. But nowadays
it is usual to employ a quotation which is
serious in content humorously. This can
be very clumsy and irritating. For
example, Wordsworth's manifesto
definition of poetry as "the spontaneous
overflow of powerful feelings recollected
in tranquility "is employed in Beckett's
Waiting for Godot.
17. Synaesthesia
This is the description of a sense
impression in terms more appropriate to
a different sense, ; the mixing of sense
impressions order to create a particular
kind of Metaphor. In As You Like It,
Shakespeare describes 'winter' in a song,
i. e. the sense of sight through that of
perception (II, 7, 174):
blow, blow, thou winter wind".
18. Apostrophe
Apostrophe is speaking to a person or
abstract quality, when not present, as if
they were; this is usually an interruption
of speech. Definitely, when the
addressee is an abstract quality,
personification results as human
attributes are given to the abstract
quality. Two examples are worth
mentioning. The song by the Amiens in
As You Like It (II, 7, 74): "Blow, blow,
than winter wind ". In this example,
personification occurs. Meanwhile, in
the second example, Shakespeare's
Twelfth Night, there is no
personification, as the protagonist is
speaking to his mistress (II, 3, 25):
O Mistress Mine, where are you
roaming?
O Stay and hear! Your true love's
coming.
19. Allusion
Allusion is a passing reference in a
literary work to something outside itself.
A writer may allude to legends, historical
facts or personages, to other works of
literature, or even to autobiographical
details. Some writers include in their
works passages form other writers, or
imitations or parodies of the style of
other writers to introduce implicit,
contrast or comparison in order to
achieve compression, and for widening
its frame of reference. However, such
allusions depend on the reader's prior
knowledge, their effect may go
unnoticed by the general reader. In
many Shakespearean and modern plays,
there are allusions to legends other
works of literature. Shaw's Pygmalion
was taken as far as title is concerned
from a Greek myth, in which the sculptor
"Pygmalion" carved an ivory statue of a
maiden and then fell in love with it.

20. Anachronism
An anachronism is a confusion of
historical periods. This device has been
included by Shakespeare in Hamlet and
by modern playwrights notably Shaw.
For example, though the Hamlet story
come out of the seventh century,
"Hamlet" in the play has been studying
at Wittenberg, the famous protestant
university founded in (1502): Such
historical impossibilities are common to
most Shakespeare's plays. Anachronism
can be regard as semantic deviation.
21. Spoonerism, Malapropism,
Alliteration, Assonance and
Onomatopoeia
All the above five tropes have something
to do with the sound features.
Spoonerism is a transposition of usually,
the initial consonant of the words,
resulting in a different or nonsensical
meaning called after W. A. Spooner
(1844-930), and malapropism means
mistaken and muddled used of long
words: so called after "Mrs. Malaprop"
in Sheridan's The Rivals, who continually
utter nonsense in her attempts to sound
learned. "Dogberry" in Shakespeare's
Much Ado About Nothing is another
dramatic character whose language is
full of errors of this kind.
Alliteration is the use of two or more
words, near to each other, beginning
with the same sound. This is much more
common in poetry
than in prose and can be overdone in
both, especially in prose; but it is
agreeable in small quantities. Shaw's
Pygmalion is full of alliteration as well as
many verse dramas of Shakespeare and
Eliot. In Act I, The "Bystander" is talking
to the "note taker":
"He ain't a tec. He's a blooming busyboy:
that's what he is I tell you, look at his
boots.
Assonance is meanwhile the
correspondence or near correspondence
in two words of the stressed vowel.
Thus, it is the vocalic equivalent of
alliteration. On the other hand,
onomatopoeia designates words which
sound like the noise which they describe.
It is the meaning which creates the
effect, not solely the sound of the words.

3.2 FIGURES OF SPEECH

This group of figures of speech includes
what follows:
1. Inversion (Chiasmus)
Inversion is a figure of speech in which a
turning round the order of words so as
to give special emphasis to one word or
group occurs. This device is very
effective in poetry and prose for both
rhythm and for the sense. In James M.
Barrie's The Old Lady Shows Her Medals;
"Mrs. Dowey " is speaking to "Mrs.
Michleham": "And very relieved I am to
hear you say it", where the adjective
phrase is inverted to front position for
emphasis.
2. Ellipsis
Ellipsis is a figure which allows the
maximum meaning to be condensed into
the shortest from of words: the omission
of words is essential in the complete
form of the sentence. Shaw in Pygmalion
provides us with many examples of such
a device:
The Bystander: "you be careful; give him
a flower for it."
In this line, 'ought to' or 'should ' is
ellipted in the first sentence, and 'you' in
the second.
Ellipsis is connected with two other
figures: parataxis and asyndeton.
Parataxis is the placing of clauses,
sentences, or propositions side by side
without connecting words: this involves
ellipsis by definition. An opposite type of
style, to paratactic style, is called
hypotactic style which seizes
relationships between ideas which are
constantly made explicit by connectives
like 'however', ' because', etc. Likewise,
asyndeton is a rhetorical device which
omits small words-definite and indefinite
articles, prepositions, conjunctions, for
the sake of speed and conciseness.
3. Antithesis, Paradox, Oxymoron,
Aphorism and Epigram
These five devices include an element of
opposition or contrast.
Antithesis necessitates opposing or
contrasting ideas in next-door sentences
and clauses, using opposite or strongly
contrasting form of words. "Macbeth" in
Shakespeare's Macbeth (1, 3, 38) says:
"so foul and fair a day I have not seen ".
Antithesis is closely associated with
paradox and oxymoron. Paradox is an
apparently self-contradictory statement,
or one that seems in conflict with all
logic and opinion: yet lying behind the
superficial absurdity is a meaning or
truth. Succinctly, paradox plays on ideas.
Oxymoron is a special type of paradox
and it is a paradox compressed into few
words. In Shakespeare's Much Ado
About Nothing (II, 3, 42)we hear: "thou
pure impiety purity".
Oxymoron is one of aphorism, a
generally accepted principle or truth
expressed in a short, pithy manner, and
of epigram, a short pointed saying that
may be more emphatic than a whole
paragraph on the subject would be. An
Aphorism does not necessarily
constitute the element of wit we find in
an epigram. Prose epigrams are found in
the plays of Oscar Wilde.
4. Repetition
Repetition is common in English poetry
and prose; it is maintained for emphasis,
emotional effect or comic arousing in
the audience. Repetition may be with
variation of sound patterns or repetition
of incidents or symbols. "Hamlet's" first
line in his famous soliloquy, "to die: to
sleep" (III, 1, 56) is repeated for
emphasis also. In the
gravediggers' scene in Hamlet as well,
the words 'water' and 'good' are
repeated for bring laughter (V, 1, 16-22):
First Clown: Give me leave. Here lies the
water; good; here stands the man; good:
if
the man go to this water, and drown
himself, it is, will he, nill he goes;
mark you that ?but if the water came to
him, and drown him, he drowns not
himself: argal, he that is not guilty of
his own death shortens not his own life.
In the minute subdivisions of rhetorical
devices, repetition is divided into many
classes:
1. Epizeuxis (palilogia): the simple
repetition of words or phrases in the
same form;
2. Anadiplosis: repetition in which the
last words of one sentence or phrases
are repeated at the beginning of the
next;
3. Anaphra: the repetition of words or
phrases at the beginning of several
sentences;
4. Epistrophe: the repetition of words or
sentences at the end of sentences or
shorter groups;
5. Symploce: repetition at both
beginning and end of a sentence;
6. Epanalepsis: the same word or
phrases repeated at the end and the
beginning of the same sentence;
7. Epanodos: the same word or phrases
repeated at the beginning and middle or
middle and end of a sentence; and
8. Polyoptoton: the use of a word in
several of its grammatical forms.
Repetition is sometimes tied to"
periphrasis (circumlocution). Periphrasis
is the trick of style used by "Polonius" in
Hamlet, of saying
in many words that could be said in few.
Its use in drama is generally for comic
effect or euphemism. If either of the two
repeated words carries the meaning
adequately, this is redundancy, and if
these words belong to the same part of
speech, it is tautology (pleonasm).
5. Climax and Anticlimax
Climax is the arrangement of ideas,
words and so on in order to increase
importance or the arrangement of
thoughts in ascending impressiveness
where they reach the highest point, the
point which is given a dramatic
emphasis. In Shakespeare's Much Ado
About Nothing, "Hero" says:
"Refuse me, hate me, torture me to
death " (IV, 3, 186).
Meanwhile, Anticlimax is just the
opposite to climax: it is a situation of
break and falling of the elevated
intention to the trivial. When anticlimax
is done accidentally, out of carelessness,
the effect is comic. Or it may be used
deliberately for an purpose. This is very
much available in many and in Beckett's
Waiting for Godot when a supreme
philosophical topic is discussed, a foolery
is introduced.
6. Parallelism
Parallelism is one in which building up of
a sentence or statement is done using
repeated syntactic units or repeated
words with varying grammatical
inflections. This figure of speech consists
in the introduction of extra regularities
and irregularities into language. It is
cumulatively used for emphasis or
musicality.
Syntactic parallelism is one instance of
parallelism and this term associated
above all with syntactic repetition. In
Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice
(III, I. 46), an expectation is raised by
syntactic parallelism; if there are more
than two phases to the pattern, it moves
towards a climax:
If you brick us, do we not bleed? If you
Tickle us, do we not love? If you poison
Us, do we not die? And if you wrong us,
Shall we not revenge?
In this passage, the potentousness and
emotive force of language coming after
bleed, laugh, and die, is underlined by a
slight verbal variation in the pattern; the
replacement of do by shall. The
unsatisfactory if (disregarding the
position of "and" ), and the lines had
been put in the opposite order.
7. Foregrounding
Foregrounding is a very general principle
of artistic communication that a work of
art deviates from norms which native
speakers of the language learnt to
expect in the medium used. It is also a
term used in stylistics to refer to any
deviation from a linguistic or socially
accepted norm; the deviant feature is
said to have been foregrounded, i. e. the
use of rhyme, alliteration and metrical
regularity are examples of foregrounding
operating at the level of phonology.
However, as a general rule, anyone who
wishes to investigate the significance
and value of a work of art must
concentrate on the element of interest
and surprise, rather than on the
automatic pattern. Such deviations from
linguistic or other socially accepted
norms are called foregrounding. In
addition, this term involves the analogy
of a figure seen against a background.
The artistic deviation "sticks out from its
background; the automatic system, like a
figure in the foreground of a visual field.
Its effect is to push the relevant part of
the text in to the reader's attention, to
place as if in the foreground of a picture.
Generally, foregrounding helps in
directing the reader's attention by
concentrating upon deviated, i. e.
foregrounded, elements. In this regard,
foregrounding sometimes indulges the
playwright's inclusion of ordinary
language in plays for foregrounding.
Shaw's Pygmalion might furnish us with
an example:
The Flower Girl: Ow, eez ye-ooa san , is
e? wal, fewd dany ' de-ooty bawmz a
mather should, eed now bettern to
spwal a pove yel's flahrzn than ran awy
athahtpy in. (oh, he is your son, is he ?
well if you had done your duty by him as
a mother should, he would know better
than to spoil a poor girls flowers and
then run away without paying).
63
Definitely, in this example foregrounding
equals colloquialism.
Foregrounding can also occur in
phonology where, in some plays, there
are differences in vocalic – consonantal
distribution and syllable number. In
Synge's masterpiece, Riders to the sea,
Maurya's last words are the following:
No man at all can be living forever, and
we must be satisfied.
In this example, there are thirteen words
three of which only are polysyllabic. This
expresses the situation "Maurya" was in
after losing her last son, Michael, in the
sea likewise. This line consists of twenty
six consonants and eighteen vowels only
as follows:
/noman ət o: l k ən bi: liviŋ fər evə ənd
wi: mɅst bi: satisfaid /=/cv cvc vc vc cvc
cv cvcv cvcvcv vcc cv cvcc cv cvcvccvc /.
At some other situations, paralleled –
grammatical constructions are instances
of foregrounding.
8. Ambiguity
This figure of speech indicates the
capacity of words and sentences to have
double, multiple or uncertain meanings.
William Empson in his influential Seven
Types of Ambiguity defines it as "any
verbal nuance, however slight, which
gives room for alternative re-actions to
the same piece of language ".
A pun is the simplest type of ambiguity,
where a word is used so as to have two
sharply different meanings, usually with
comic or wry effect. Previously-cited
examples of puns are in place here.
"Hamlet's" playing on the meaning of
'matter' in II, 2, 194-6 can be cited as an
example.
A dramatic piece may be ambiguous in
feeling. In I, 1, 12-3, the "Witches" in the
opening scene in Shakespeare's Macbeth
say:
Fair is foul, and foul is fair: Hover
through the fog and filthy air.
Here, the line suggests that the
"Witches" completely reverse accepted
standards and accordingly the reader or
theatre goer is suspicious of his
64
feeling about what is going on. This
results in an uneasy but fascinating
complexity of tone.
9. Deviation
Deviation is a kind of due allowance
made for the distinctive usages of
different styles which depart to greater
or lesser extent from the common stock-
the established rules of language. Seeing
that he wants to communicate a
profound thought or image, the
playwright finds the existing rules of
language unserviceable to achieve this
end; he breaks the code establishing his
interlanguage or dialect with an interim
grammar. Analyzed from the point of
view of contemporary readers, deviation
is disputable: it is difficult to perceive
whether a word order which seems
unusual, i. e. preaching the code, gains
its effect from change in the language
over time, or from creating a particular
literary effect.
Two main types of deviation appear in
the literature: statistical and novel.
Statistical deviation includes items that
are infrequent in the total: phonological,
lexical, syntactic, semantic and
orthographic. Novel deviation includes
the novel and distinctive usage of the
writer in all the aforementioned levels of
language.
Phonological deviation is the result of
pronouncing certain words in the
performance of plays or of having these
words pronounced thus in archaic
usage . Pun, elision, stress, placement,
etc. are to be signaled as phonological
deviation. Stress placement is only
sometimes marked on the dramatic text;
this is manipulated through the words
put in italics. Meanwhile, it is mainly
noticed in the performance of plays. In
Ibsen's An Enemy of the People , the
following dialogue persists different
stress placement:
Aslaksen: I'd better have that manuscript
Hovstad: It's on the desk there.
Aslaksen: Good.
Mayor : But I say, surely that's
Aslakesen: Yes that's the Doctor's article.
Mr. Mayor.
Hovstad: Oh , is that what you were
talking about ?
65
In the above dialogue, there appears the
demonstrative 'that' four times two of
which are stressed, i. e. written
underlined. The two times in which 'that'
should be stressed ought to be in line 1
and 5 and not in the other lines.
Lexical deviation, whether statistical or
novel, involves affixation different from
current ones; it entails coining new
lexical items, i. e. neologism. This is also
related to nuance-word and
portmanteau word. It also involves using
a word not in its normal grammatical
category.
Grammatical deviation concerns syntax.
Playwrights sometimes feel that they are
in need of departing form the ordinary
syntactic structures to achieve emphasis,
musicality, etc. In William Congreve's
The Way of the World, "Wit" says (1):
Like Moths about Candle – I had like to
have lost my comparison for want of
Breath.
This sentence is syntactically deviating
for want of emphasis upon the simile:
I had like to have lost my comparison for
want of breath like Moths about Candle.
In semantic deviation, however, readers
need to go beyond the common
meaning of words. This is definite as new
compounding of words and structures
are oscilitated.
Pupils learn the 6 'Cs' of
Drama: Communication, Courage,
Consideration, Commitment, Co-
operation and Concentration – these
skills are the foundation to success in
Drama and Theatre.