Drama: An Introduction, Development,Popular Types of Drama, Ancient and Medieval Drama, Anglo-Norman Period, Drama of the Age of Revival,Dramatists of Elizabethan Age, Shakespeare, Heroic Drama, Comedy of Manners, Neo Classical drama, The Age of Johnson, The Victorian Drama, Modern Age Drama, Contemporary Drama

1. Drama
Hema Goswami
Visiting faculty at Maharani
Shree Nandkunvarba Mahila
Arts and Commerce College
GSET Qualified (2018)

3. Drama: An Introduction
• Performance
• Action on the stage
• Purification of heart
• Salvation
• Characterization, plot, dialogues
• Portrayal of fictional and non-fictional events
• Stage, film, radio
• Play and playwrights

4. Development
• Greek Drama: Religious ceremonies
• Medieval period: re-enactment of the
biblical stories
• Industrial Revolution: ‘Death of a
Salesman’ by Arthur Miller
• ‘I Will Marry When I Want’ by Ngugi wa
Thiong’o

5. 3 E
Education Enlightenment Entertainment

6. Popular Types of Drama
Comedy
Tragedy
Tragic-
comedyFarce
Melodrama

7. 6 elements of drama

8. Ancient and Medieval
Drama
• Drama arose in 10th century in
monastries
• Religion explained to illiterate
using the plays
• Events of Christian ritual
celebrations
• Liturgical dramas
• Whom do you seek Easter
Trope (925)
• Regularis Concordia by
Ethewold of Winchester

9. Anglo-Norman Period
• The battle of Hastings
• Introduction of Anglo Norman as the
language
• French words entered the English
Lexicon
• English began to be discarded in favor
of French and Latin
• Le Mystere D’ Adam :Earliest Play

10. Anglo Norman Drama
1. Le Jeu d’ Adam
 The Play of Adam in old
french
 Dramatic representation of
the stories from Bible
 It dramatises the fall of Adam
and Eve in the Garden of
Eden and the story of their
sons, Cain and Abel

11. 2. Seinte Resurrection
• Resurrection of the Saviour
• It deals with the burial and
Resurrection of Christ
• Historical Realism Style
• Only 522 lines remains
3. Le Jeu De Saint
Nicholas
• The play of St Nicholas
• Miracle play by Jean Bodel
• Characters like Saracen King,
Tervagan, Preudom are very
important

12. Drama of the Age of Revival
Mystery
- Stories from bible
Eg- Noah and The
second Shepherds
(Wakefield Cycle)
Miracle
-lives of saints
Eg- The
conversion of St
Paul, Mary
Magdalene, the
play of the
sacrament
Morality
- Life of man, his
temptation,
sinning, quest for
salvation
Eg- The Castle of
Perseverance(142
5), Everyman

13. Dramatist of the Age of Revival
Henry Medwall
• Nature (Morality Play)
• Fulgens and Lucrece (1497)
John Rastell
• Of gentylnes and nobylyte
• The nature of the four elements
• Calisto and Melibea
John Bale (BD and DD)
• King Johan
• A comedy Concernynge Thre Lawes
• The image of both churches

14. Elizabethan Age (1550-1625)
• Most glorious and Golden period of
English History
• Time of intense religious conflict
• Great advances in the realm of Science
and technology
• Drama was the dominant genre
• Establishment of theatre, The Rose,
The Swan and The Globe (1576)
• Gorboduc (first English tragedy), Ralph
Roister Doister (first English comedy)
• 1603-1625 is sometimes taken as
Jacobean Period

15. Dramatists of Elizabethan Age
1. University Wits
• John lyly, George Peele,
Robert Greene,
Christopher Marlowe,
Thomas Loadge, Thomas
Nashe, Thomas kyd
• Heroic themes, style and
treatment
• Tragic in nature

16. John Lyly
1. Woman in the moon
2. Endymion
3. Sappho and Phao
4. Midas
5. Mother Bombie
6. Love’s
Metamorphosisi
George Peele
1. Arraignment of
Paris (1584)
2. The Battle of
Alcazar (1594)
3. The old wives tale
Robert Greene
1. He is the founder of
romantic comedy
2. Honorable history of
Friar Bongay and Friar
Bacon
3. Pandosto: The triumph
of Wit (from this
Shakespeare drew the
plot for A Winter’s Tale
4. Th ehistory of Orlando
Furioso
5. Philomela

17. 2. William Shakespeare
• Most of his plays written in quarto texts, on a
sheet of paper folded in four ways.
• His literary life can be divided into four main
periods: -
• Pre-1594 (King Richard III, The Comedy of
Errors)
• 1594-1600 (King Henry V, A Midsummer’s
night’s Dream)
• 1601-1608 (Macbeth, King Lear)
• Post-1608 (Cymbeline, The Tempest)

18. Shakespeare’s Comedies
All’s Well
That Ends
Well
The Comedy
of Errrors
Love’s
Labor’s Lost
The Winter’s
Tale
Taming of
the Shrew
The
Merchant of
Venice
As You Like
It
Cymbeline
The Tempest

19. Shakespeare’s Tragedies
Romeo and
Juliet
Macbeth
King Lear
The tragedy
of Julius
Caesar
Othello
Hamlet
Antony and
Cleopatra
The history of
Troilus and
Cressida
Cymbeline

20. Shakespeare’s Historical Plays
King
John
Edward II
Richard
II
Henry VI
Part 1,2,3
Henry V
Henry IV
Part 1.2
Richard
III
Henry
VIII

21. Other Elizabethan Dramatists
1. George Chapmen: His first extant play was “The Blind Beggar of Alexandria”
2. Thomas Heywood: he was called prose Shakespeare by Charles Lamb, his first
play was The Four Prentices of London
3. Ben Johnson: His first major success ‘Every Man in his Humor’ elaborated his
famous theory of humors
4. Thomas Dekker: most successful play was ‘The Honest Whore’ (1604-05)
5. John Marston: Histriomastix is considered as his first play.
6. Thomas Middleton: his earliest surviving independent play was ‘Blurt,Master
Constable’ (1602)
7. John Webster: his first individually written play was ‘The Devil’s Law Case’, a
tragicomedy
8. Beaumont and Fletcher: their collaboration started in 1607, they worked
together on more than 50 plays

22. Restoration Age (1660-1700)
• In 1660 monarchy was restored in
England with King Charles II which led
to complete restoration of Puritanical
Ideas
• Drama was the most popular trend in
restoration
• The Heroic Drama and the Comedy of
Manners
• John Dryden was the main exponent of
Heroic Drama

23. Heroic Drama
• Larger than life characters
• Highly rhetorical dialogues
• The plot of the play involved the fate of an
Empire
• The first Heroic Drama: The Siege of Rhodes by
Sir William D’ Avenant
• Dryden's first Heroic Drama “The Indian Queen”
(1664) was joint effort with Robert Howard
• Dryden’s other Heroic Plays: Tyrranic Love
(1669), The Conquest of Granada (1670),
Amboyna (1673), Aureng- Zebe (1675)
• Dryden and his genre of heroic plays were
mocke dby Buckingham’s burlesque “The
Rehearsal” (1671)

24. Comedy of Manners
• Life, ideals and manners of
upper class society
• Relations and intrigues of Men
and Women
• Influenced by Ben Johnson’s
Comedy of humors
• Main Dramatists of this form:
William Congreve, George
Etherege, Wycherley and
Aphra Ben

25. Main Dramatists of Restoration age
1. George Etherege: His first play “The Comical revenge or Love in a
Tub” premiered at the Duke’s Theatre in 1664
2. William Wycherley: his first play “Love in a wood” was performed
by king’s Men at Theatre Royal, in 1671. His two successful
comedies were “The Country Wife” and The Plain Dealer”.
3. William Congreve: His first play “The Old Bachelor” was first acted
in January, 1693
4. Aphra Ben: first professional woman writer, her first play, The
For’d Marriage appeared in 1670
5. John Vanbrugh: first comedy play- The Relapse: Or Virtue in
Danger- sequel to Colley Cibber’s Love’s Last Shift
6. George Farquhar: his first comedy, “Love and a Bottle” (1698) was
performed at Drury Lane in 1699.

26. Neo Classical drama
• Neo-Classical or Augustan Drama refer to the
Dramas of ancient Rome during the reign of
Caesar Augustus
• In drama it was an age in transition between the
highly witty and sexually playful Restoration
Comedy.
• During the 18th century, drama steadily declined.
Only remarkable dramatists shone out during
this age.
• Goldsmith, Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
were a few prominent figure.

27. Oliver Goldsmith
1. She stoops to conquer
or Mistakes of a night was
performed in London in
1773
2. The play’s heroine is
Kate hardcastle who falls
in love with Chalrles
Marlow
3.The play deals with the
theme of social class
Joseph Addison
1. Addison is famous as
an essayist
2. He began contributing
to essay “The Tatler”
which Richard Steele had
founded in 1709
3. Another periodical: The
Spectator
4. ‘Cato’, a play with
political overtones
Richard Steele
1. His first play ‘The
Funeral or Grief a-la-
mode, was performed at
Drury Lane Theater in
1701
2. ‘The dear Prue’ of a
series of delightful letters
had been addressed to
the second wife of Steele,
Mary Scurlock,
3. ‘The Conscious lover’ a
popular play

28. The Age of Johnson
• It is also referred as the age of sensibility
• Samuel Johnson was the most famous poet, critic
and playwright and fictional writer
• He focused on qualities of intellect, reason, balance
and order
• His hundreds papers were contributed to ‘The Idler’
• His only play ‘Irene; is a Neo-classical Tragedy
• Most notable work of this age: A Philosophical
Inquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas on the Sublime
and Beautiful by Burke, The Rambler by Johnson,
The Vicar of Wakefield by Goldsmith

29. The Victorian Drama
• During this age the theatre took
back seat due to other issues
like growth of industry, labour
legislation etc.
• Oscar Wilde: Lady
Windermere’s fan, a woman of
no importance
• John Millington Synge: Riders to
the Sea, The Playboy of the
western world
• Dion Boucicault: The Colleen
Bawn, The Shaughraun

30. Modern Age Drama
• Modern Drama focused on the theme of Alienation and
disconnection
• Realism is the outstanding quality of Modern English drama
• Henry Ibsen popularized realism in Modern Drama.
• Modern dramatists dealt with the problems of marriage, justice, law,
administration etc
• Henry Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” is a good example of Problem play
• Drama of ideas rather than Action
• Poetic drama: The Dog beneath the skin and The Ascent of F6:
Tragedy in two acts (Collaborators: WH Auden and Christopher
Isherwood
• Historical Plays: Caesar and Cleopatra by Shaw, Abraham Lincoln
and Mary Stuart by John Drinkwater

31. Major dramatists of Modern Age
1. Henry Ibsen:
• His first play Catilina, was published under the pseudonym ‘Brynjolf
Bjarme’ , His first play to be staged, ‘The Burial Mound’
• He is known as father of Modern Drama
• His play ‘Brand’ brought him the critical acclaim
• In ‘Hedda Gabler’ and ‘The Master Builder’ he explored
psychological conflict

32. 2. Lady Gregory
• She was born as Isabella
Augusta Persse
• She helped, found the Irish
National Theatre Society and
served as manager of the
Abbey Theatre in Dublin
• Her first play ‘The Jackdow
and a Losing Game
• Her first performed play was
‘Twenty Five’

33. 3. George Bernard Shaw
• He is the only person to have been
awarded both the Noble Prize in
Literature and an Oscar for his work on
the film Adaption of his plays,
‘Pygmalion’
• His early plays, ‘Widowers’ Houses’,
‘The Philanderer’ and ‘Mrs Warren’s
Profession’ have been characterized as
‘unpleasant plays
• Arms and the man, Candida, You
never can tell, The Man of Destiny
were ‘pleasant plays’

34. Contemporary Drama
• It began with the
rejection of 19th century
realistic model
• Epic theatre, theatre of
cruelty and the theatre of
absurd took the centre
stage
• Brechtian Epic Theatre,
Artaud’s Theatre of
Cruelty

35. Major Contemporary dramatists
1. Bertolt Brecht
• German poet and playwright
• He is known for his anti-Aristotalean epic
theatre
• His first play: Baal (1922)
• His play ‘Mother Courage and Her Children’
was written against the backdrop of the rise
of Hitler.
• Other plays: Drums in the Night, Jungle of the
Cities, Man equals Man, A respectable
wedding

36. 2. Arnold Wesker
• British Dramatist born in 1932
• He wrote three plays in the
beginning of his career,
‘Chicken Soup with Barley’,
‘Roots’, ‘ I’ m talking about
Jerusalem’
• He describes in these plays
East End’s Jews search for
security, principles and
happiness

37. 3. Tom Stoppard
• He is a Czech born British Playwright
• He scored his first success with the play
‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead’
(inspired from Shakespeare’s Hamlet) in
1966
• Other works: If you’re Glad I’ll be Frank,
Jumpers, Travesties, The Real Inspector
Hound, every Good boy deserves Favor
etc

38. Conclusion
• Drama has developed a lot from beginning to present
time
• There is always the change of theme between all these
ages
• Playwrights reflects the reality, the society, cultural
background, philosophy, problems through their work of
art
• All the plays were a transition between the classical
drama and the plays we see today