An introduction to drama:

Definitions and the specific nature of drama:

• Drama is a literary form/genre  language/words used as a medium of expression.
• “Theater”/ “auditorium”  multi-sensory experience: an experience that engages/appeals to our
senses, emotions, and intellect.
• Drama as “action” or “deed” (from the Greek dran, “to do”)  an actor impersonates the role of
fictional characters by enacting/representing their actions and speech on stage.
• A more specific/narrow sense of the word: a particular example of this art, i.e. a play (Baldick, 71)/A
serious play; not necessarily a tragedy (Cuddon, 237).
A world of make-believe  a world of enacted pretense relying on the willing acceptance of the dramatic
illusion and the suspension of disbelief (e.g. of The Tempest: the analogy between the dramatist and the
magician the power of the artist to make the audience believe in the reality of what they see on stage).
• Drama is distinct from fiction in its mode of presentation: no narrator + lack of or minimal mediation 
reliance on dialogue, stage directions, and the actions of the characters (Aristotle’s distinction between
diegesis and mimesis: reporting/narration of events vs. the imitation/representation of action).
Drama and performance  Drama is distinguished by a sense of immediacy and vividness.
• The printed page is often not the final form of a dramatic work, and a dramatic work is not only
addressed to readers but also to spectators/ to an audience. (=/= closet plays: plays intended mainly
to be read rather than performed: e.g. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound).
• Drama encompasses several dimensions that go beyond the scope of the literary dramatist or
playwright  a collective creative endeavor that involves the work of directors, actors, and scene
designers (the element of mise en scène for example involves the arrangement of scenery and stage
properties (props) to represent the place where a play is enacted).
• Different attempts at staging can possibly yield different interpretations of a single work: the example of
Iago from Gioia and Kennedy: the character can be played as “a figure of pure evil, a madman, or a
suffering human being consumed by hatred, jealousy, and pride” (1064).
The experience of drama is one in which we participate on many levels simultaneously.
• Reading drama requires imaginative participation (with the guidance of such clues as the stage
directions). To bring the printed word to life, the reader is encouraged to imagine how the actors would
speak the lines (pitch, tone, intonation, gestures etc.) and to visualize a setting in which those lines are
spoken the reader as audience, director, actor, sound and lighting technician, setting the scene,
costuming the characters, giving them voices, and visualizing what they look like and how they act.
• The meaning/experience of seeing a play/watching a dramatic performance changes over time (e.g.
Greek drama was performed outdoors during the morning and the afternoon). Today, this usually
consists in sitting in a darkened theater looking at a lighted stage (=/= Shakespeare in the Park
festivals*).
• An isolated yet communal experience: “we instantly respond when others in the audience laugh, when
they gasp, when they shift restlessly. We recognize in those moments that we are part of a larger
community drawn together by theater and that we are all involved in the dramatic experience” (Jacobus
4).

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 Dramatic elements and conventions:
 Conventions are commonly used methods of presenting an action  audiences recognize them and
are willing to accept them.
 Responding to a play  observing the elements of drama in action together, yielding a total experience
that is rich and complex.
 Thinking analytically about a play: when we analyze something, we dissect it, we determine what its
components are, and we examine those elements minutely.
Dramatis personae:
• The Latin phrase for 'persons of the play', used to refer collectively to the characters represented in a
dramatic work. The list often published at the beginning of the text of a play or in a theatrical program.
• Subject to a dramatic and/or social hierarchy.
Acts and scenes:
• Act and scene divisions as the aspect of structure most obvious on the page.
• Scenes may correspond to a logical unit of action, a unit demarcated by the entrance and exits of
characters, and/or a unit without a break in time or change of place.
Stage directions:
• SDs constitute one way for the dramatist to comment on the action and characters. They are often
printed in italics and sometimes set off in [brackets].
• SDs may include:
• Information about the physical features, actions, and emotional responses of the actors
(including nonverbal behavior and body language)
• information about the setting and the staging details (music, lighting, sound effects, props,
scenery and furnishings, costume)
• Directions for acting (silence/rhythm/pitch/tone/positions on-stage)
• They can range from very elaborate to minimalistic:
•
mere indication of entrances and exits ([Exit She is an elderly matron who has worked hard
Hamlet], [Enter Ophelia], [Dies] [exeunt, and got nothing by it except dominion and
pursued by a bear]). detestation in her sordid home, and an
unquestioned reputation for her piety and
respectability among her neighbors, to whom
drink and debauchery are still so much more
tempting than religion and rectitude, that they
conceive goodness simply as self-denial. This
conception is easily extended to others - denial,
and finally generalized as covering anything
disagreeable. So Mrs. Dudgeon, being
extremely disagreeable, is held to be
exceedingly good. (The Devil’s Disciple, Act 1)

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Plot:
• the unique arrangement of a sequence of events (which can, for example, involve the deliberate
holding back of information).
• =/= not necessarily the story told in chronological order: the specific arrangement of events could make
for quite different works (e.g. Oedipus Rex).
• Plot often involves an element of conflict: The Greek word agon and the related agent-noun,
protagonist, associate the idea of a contest, struggle or conflict with drama.
• Conflict could be internal or external: a struggle in which a single individual is engaged against another
individual, against impersonal forces or circumstances and/or him/herself (as with conflicts between
different desires or deeply felt obligations in the consciousness of the protagonist) (Morgan 9-10).
• Freytag’s pyramid (1863): a tentative model that is not always applicable:

“Exposition is the presentation of background material —events which occurred before the drama begins
and which are relevant to an understanding of what happens in the play. It should blend as naturally as
possible into the rising action, or the sequence of events which complicate the original situation. The plot
rises toward the climax, in which the fate of the major characters is firmly established. The falling action
ensues as the major character in a tragedy gradually loses control, or in a comedy gradually gains control,
of the situation. The denouement (literally, the "untying") is the final outcome or resolution of the plot
complications” (Davis 757).
Character and characterization:
• The characters are arguably the most vivid and tangible element of a play. Characterization consists in
the presentation of a coherent (human?) identity in a given work (direct/indirect characterization).
• Unlike the fiction writer, who has more freedom to represent and comment on what the characters are
thinking and feeling, the dramatist mainly represents speech and action without (much) direct
interpretive comment.
How can the impression of a coherent human identity be created? (Morgan 109-110):
• A character’s appearance (e.g. significant costume choices)
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 • their own words + their expression of their thoughts and feelings (as in soliloquies, monologues and
asides)
• their interaction with other characters, from what other characters say about them and how they react to
them (could create an effect of irony).
• their presence on stage as expressed in movement, gesture and tone (Much of this information is often
found in the stage directions: details such as “sternly,” “contemptuously,” “with an effort,” “laughing,”’
could provide important clues to character and behavior).
• The dramatist’s repetition of certain distinctive/defining impressions: including mannerisms an opinion
or point-of-view, and/or the repeated demonstration of certain characteristics or temperamental qualities
(e.g. in slides of Mrs. Malaprop in Sheridan’s The Rivals).
• The reliance on style of speech for an impression of character: the habit/tradition of using prose and
verse (or simply more elevated diction) to distinguish types of characters =/= variation in the style of
speech of one single character (e.g. in the slides from Antony and Cleopatra)  a character in which
the differences are part of a total, well-rounded identity/highly Individualized and complexly portrayed
character.
• The syntax/rhythm of sentences in a cue/utterance (e.g. in slides of broken/irregular syntax as a clue
that a character is agitated, distraught or overwhelmed with deep emotion from Williams’s A Streetcar
Named Desire).
• The relationship between characters:
• Contrasts and parallels: similar characters (e.g. of King Lear and the blind Duke of Gloucester)
or foil characters whose qualities or actions serve to emphasize those of another character by
providing a strong contrast with them (e.g. of Hamlet and Laertes).
• The use of a character to convey/as an embodiment of another character’s thoughts and
feelings (e.g. of Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus from the slides: Mephistopheles as a tempter figure
and the use of the psychomachia convention from medieval drama).
Dialogue and examples of types of speech in drama:
• Dialogue is not merely a collection of separate speeches, but a fabric with its own complex structure.
• The highly efficient use of dialogue for revealing character, advancing action, and introducing central
themes (e.g. language often defines character: style of dialogue employed; verse or prose? formal or
colloquial?).
Aside (e.g. in the slides from Hamlet):
• An aside is a short speech or remark spoken by a character in a drama, directed either to the audience
or to another character, which is supposed to be inaudible to the other characters on stage. In comedy,
addressing the audience directly introduces a charming familiarity.
Soliloquy (e.gs in the slides from Macbeth and Richard III):
• A soliloquy is a dramatic speech uttered by one character speaking aloud while alone on the stage (or
while under the impression of being alone).
• The soliloquist reveals his or her inner thoughts and feelings to the audience, either in supposed self-
communion or in a consciously direct address (Baldick 239).
Monologue (e.gs in the slides from As You Like It and The Merchant of Venice):

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  A monologue is an extended speech uttered by one speaker, while other characters are on-stage (=/=
the soliloquy of the speaker who is alone on stage).
Elements pertaining to staging and performance:
Movement and proxemics: Stage directions inform the readers where the characters are, when they move,
how they move, and perhaps even what the significance of their movement is. In a live performance of a play,
the playwright’s directions enhance the actors’ interpretations of their characters’ actions (for example, pacing
back and forth could indicate anxiety).
Lighting: Spotlighted elements on-stage often command our attention (e.g. in the slides from The Glass
Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, showing how lighting helps delineate mood or character).
Music: Music can be used to create a certain mood on-stage and to enhance the action by underscoring
certain significant dramatic moments. (E.G in slides of Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire:
specific sounds and musical leitmotifs are only heard in the character’s mind  such subjective details allow
for an exploration of the deep recesses of the character’s psyche).
Categories of drama:
Generic distinctions are useful because they establish expectations in the minds of audiences with theatrical
experience. For example, tragedies and comedies make different demands on an audience.
In the Western literary tradition, one basic distinction is often made between tragedy and comedy, “but there
are other well-established dramatic modes, including melodrama, the chronicle play and the morality play”
(Morgan 56).

Bibliography:
Baldick, Chris. The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Oxford UP, USA, 2015.
Boulton, Marjorie. The Anatomy of Drama (Routledge Revivals). Routledge, 2014.
Cuddon, J. A. A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. John Wiley and Sons, 2012.
Jacobus, Lee A. The Bedford Introduction to Drama. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2012.
Kennedy, X. J., and Dana Gioia. Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. Longman
Publishing Group, 2007.
Morgan, Margery. Drama: Plays, Theatre and Performance. 1987.