Western drama originated in ancient Greece with tragedies, comedies, and satyr plays performed as part of religious festivals honoring Dionysus. The two masks of drama represent comedy and tragedy, which were associated with the Muses Thalia and Melpomene. Drama was later considered a genre of poetry. Rituals differed from plays in their use of suspense and audience identification with characters. Significant Greek dramatists included Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, and Menander. Drama continued developing through Roman, Medieval, Renaissance, 18th century, 19th century, and modern eras with influences from various movements such as Romanticism, Realism, Symbolism

1. History and
Development of
Drama

2. • The term Drama comes from a Greek word
meaning "action" (Classical Greek: δρ μα,ᾶ
drama), which is derived from the verb
meaning "to do" or "to act" (Classical Greek:
δράω, draō).

3. • The two famous masks of
drama represent the
division between comedy
and tragedy.
• They are symbols of the
ancient Greeks Muses,
Thalia and Melpomene.
• Thalia was the Muse of
comedy, while
Melpomene was the Muse
of tragedy.

4. • At first, and after Aristotle's Poetics (the earliest
work of dramatic theory), drama was considered
as a genre of poetry, and was contrasted with the
epic and the lyrics.
• The use of "drama" in the narrow sense to
designate a specific type of play dates from the
19th century.
• Drama in this sense refers to a play that is neither
a comedy nor a tragedy—for example, Ibsen’s A
Doll’s House.

5. History Of Western
Drama
• Western drama
originates in classical
Greece.

6. • The theatrical culture of
the city-state of Athens
produced three genres of
drama: tragedy, comedy,
and the satyr play.
• The origins of drama go
back to competitions
held as part of festivities
celebrating the god
Dionysus

7. • Great Dionysia, also
called City Dionysia,
ancient dramatic
festival in which
tragedy, comedy, and
satyric drama
originated; it was held
in Athens in March in
honour of Dionysus, the
god of wine.

9. Ritual & Drama: Differences
• In the ancient world, ritual usually required
animal sacrifice; in tragic drama, the hero is
sacrificed onstage.
• Rituals do not involve us by way of identification
with a character, as plays do, and they do not
depend on surprise or suspense.

10. • It is perhaps because ancient Greek religion
strongly emphasized the power of the gods to
surprise us, to intervene in our lives and
sometimes overturn them, that drama became a
chosen form for the honoring of the divine.

11. Significant Greek Dramatists
• Only a small fraction of the work of five dramatists
has survived to this day:
• the tragedians: Aeschylus, Sophocles and
Euripides,
• and the comic writers Aristophanes and, from the
late 4th century, Menander

12. Chorus
• Among the ancient Greeks the chorus was a
group of people, wearing masks, who sang or
chanted verses while performing dancelike
movements at religious festivals.

13. Chorus
• A similar chorus played a part in Greek
tragedies, where (in the plays of Aeschylus
and Sophocles) they served mainly as
commentators on the dramatic actions and
events who express traditional moral,
religious, and social attitudes; beginning with
Euripides, however, the chorus assumed
primarily a lyrical function.

14. Satyr play
• Satyr plays were an ancient Greek form of
tragicomedy, similar in spirit to the burlesque.
They featured choruses of satyrs, were based on
Greek mythology, and were rife with mock
drunkenness, brazen sexuality, and general
merriment.

15. Roman Drama
• Following the expansion of the Roman Republic
(509–27 BCE) into several Greek territories
between 270–240 BCE, Rome encountered Greek
drama.

16. • In re-working the Greek originals, the Roman
comic dramatists abolished the role of the
chorus in dividing the drama into episodes and
introduced musical accompaniment to its
dialogue (between one-third of the dialogue in
the comedies of Plautus and two-thirds in
those of Terence).

17. Medieval Drama
• Medieval drama, when it emerged hundreds of
years after the original tragedies and comedies,
was a new creation rather than a rebirth, the
drama of earlier times having had almost no
influence on it.

18. Middle Ages
• The Middle Ages is a period
of European history that
lasted from the 5th until
the 15th centuries. It began
with the collapse of the
Western Roman Empire,
and was followed by the
Renaissance and the Age of
Discovery.

19. • The Middle Ages is the middle period of the
traditional division of Western history into
Classical, Medieval, and Modern periods. The
period is subdivided into the Early Middle
Ages, the High Middle Ages, and the Late
Middle Ages.

20. Medieval Drama
• The Christian church had traditionally opposed
any form of theater. But little by little, in the
Easter service, and later in the Christmas service,
bits of chanted dialogue, called tropes, were
interpolated into the liturgy. Priests,
impersonating biblical figures, acted out
minuscule scenes from the holiday stories.

21. Medieval Drama
• Eventually, these plays grew more elaborate and
moved out of the church. Secular elements crept
in as the artisan guilds took responsibility for
these performances; although the glorification of
God and the redemption of humanity remained
prime concerns, the celebration of local industry
was not neglected.

22. Renaissance (Elizabethan)
Drama
• The Renaissance saw a
huge resurgence in all
types of art, including
theater. It was during
this time that Commedia
Dell'arte flourished and
the first Elizabethan
playhouse opened.

23. • William Shakespeare,
one of the world's most
renowned playwrights,
wrote and produced
many plays that are still
performed regularly
even today.

24. • Shakespeare was one of
the first to weave comic
elements into tragedies.
He also developed a
structure and several
types of characters that
are still common in
modern drama

25. The 18th
Century Drama
• The 18th century was a time when more plays
were being written for and about the middle class.
• At first the theaters relied on the pre-Civil War
repertoire; before long, however, they felt called
upon to bring these plays into line with their more
"refined," French-influenced sensibilities.

26. The 18th
Century Drama
• The themes, language, and dramaturgy of
Shakespeare's plays were now considered out
of date, so that during the next two centuries
the works of England's greatest dramatist were
never produced intact. Owing much to Moliere,
the English comedy of manners was typically a
witty, brittle satire of current mores,
especially of relations between the sexes.

27. 19th
Century Drama and
Romanticism
• Toward the end of the century, the Romantic
period began in Western Europe, which heavily
influenced the theater of that era. Romanticism
focused on emotion rather than intellect. This
movement continued through the beginning of
the 19th century.

28. • In its purest form, Romanticism concentrated on
the spiritual, which would allow humankind to
transcend the limitations of the physical world
and body and find an ideal truth.
• Subject matter was drawn from nature and
"natural man" (such as the supposedly untouched
Native American). Perhaps one of the best
examples of Romantic drama is Faust (Part I,
1808; Part II, 1832) by the German playwright
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

29. • Romanticism first appeared in Germany, a
country with little native theatre other than
rustic farces before the 18th century. By the
1820s Romanticism dominated the theatre of
most of Europe.
• These plays had no single style but were
generally strongly emotional, and, in their
experimentation with form, laid the
groundwork for the rejection of Neo-
Classicism.

30. Modern Drama
• Romanticism gave way to Realism during the
19th century, paving the way for the era of
contemporary drama in the 20th century.
Contemporary drama shows the influence of all
that has come before.

31. Modern Drama
• Modern drama involved much experimentation
with new forms and ideas. In the early part of
the 20th century, musical drama came to
dominate stages in New York and England,
although each theater season saw the release
of straight dramatic plays as well.

32. Modern Drama
• Many movements generally lumped together as the
avant-garde, attempted to suggest alternatives to
the realistic drama and production.
• The various theoreticians felt that Naturalism
presented only superficial and thus limited or
surface reality-that a greater truth or reality could
be found in the spiritual or the unconscious.

33. • Others felt that theatre had lost touch with its
origins and had no meaning for modern society
other than as a form of entertainment.
Paralleling modern art movements, they turned
to symbol, abstraction, and ritual in an attempt
to revitalize the theatre. Although realism
continues to be dominant in contemporary
theatre, television and film now better serve its
earlier functions.

34. Symbolist Drama
• The Symbolist movement in France in the 1880s
affected the theater. The movement called for
"de-theatricalizing" the theatre, meaning
stripping away all the technological and scenic
encumbrances of the 19th century and replacing
them with a spirituality that was to come from
the text and the acting.

35. Symbolist Drama
• The texts were laden with symbolic imagery not
easily construed-rather they were suggestive.
The general mood of the plays was slow and
dream-like. The intention was to evoke an
unconscious response rather than an intellectual
one and to depict the non-rational aspects of
characters and events.

36. • Strong Symbolist elements can be found in
the plays of Chekhov and the late works of
Ibsen and Strindberg.

37. • Symbolist influences are also evident in the
works of such later playwrights as the Americans
Eugene O'Neill and Tennessee Williams and the
Englishman Harold Pinter, pro-pounder of
"theatre of silence".

38. Expressionist Drama
• The Expressionist movement was
popular in the 1910s and 1920s,
largely in Germany. It explored the
more violent, grotesque aspects of
the human psyche, creating a
nightmare world onstage. Distortion
and exaggeration and a suggestive
use of light and shadow typify
Expressionism.

39. • Stock types replaced individualized characters or
allegorical figures, much as in the morality plays,
and plots often revolved around the salvation of
humankind.

40. Contemporary Drama
• Many playwrights of the 1960s and 1970s-Sam
Shepard in the United States, Tom Stoppard in
England-built plays around language: language
as a game, language as sound, language as a
barrier, language as a reflection of society. In
their plays, dialogue frequently cannot be read
simply as a rational exchange of information.
Many playwrights also mirrored society's
frustration with a seemingly uncontrollable,
self-destructive world.

41. • In Europe in the 1970s, new playwriting was
largely overshadowed by theatricalist
productions, which generally took classical
plays and reinterpreted them, often in bold
new scenographic spectacles, expressing
ideas more through action and the use of
space than through language.

42. Development of the Drama
Clay figurines of actors from the Golden Age of Greek
Drama-5th
C BC.
These figures shows the actors wearing the
characteristic mask or “personae.”

43. Drama:
A Thing Done
Theater:
A Seeing Place

44. Dionysus
Patron God of Drama.
All plays where performed
in his honor.
The God of Fruitfulness &
the Vine.

45. A marble relief of a maenad (a female follower of
Dionysus) and two satyrs (half-man, half-goat creatures)
in an ecstatic procession. The maenad plays a drum,
while the 1st
satyr plays a flute and the 2nd
carries the
staff of Dionysus (“a thyrsus”).

46. The Acropolis
The Acropolis was a sacred location to the people of Athens.
Note the Parthenon, a temple to Athena at the upper center.
Note the Theater of Dionysus and Odeon in the lower right
corner.

47. Comedy:
Komos: Revel
Ode: Song
Comedies was presented only during the Lenean
Festivals held during the winter when the new wine
had been pressed. The “Lenos” is the wine press,
traditionally ascribed to Dionysus.

48. Tragedy
The word “tragedy” is from tragoidia, meaning “Goat
Song.”
The goat was a sacred
animal to Dionysus.
It was used as both a
prize for winning
Play competitions and
as a sacrifice to the
god.

49. Dionysia
Tragedies were performed only during the summer,
during the Festival of Dionysus, the “Dionysia.”

50. Golden Age of Greek Drama
In the 5th
Century B.C., dramatic play competitions where held.
During the Dionysia, playwrights submitted a trilogy of tragedies
and a satyrplay.
The audience would attend plays from morning till evening as
part their civic and religious obligations.
Since all members of the were expected to go to the
performances, families would attend with their slaves, criminals
were freed from prison, and practically all activities would
ceased.
A wealthy resident would assume the cost of the play productions
as a form of income tax.

51. Major Greek Playwrights

52. Thespis
C. 6th
century BC.
Poet Playwright & actor.
He modified the “dithyramb” (the
hymns sung in honor of Dionysus)
by having an actor step out of the
chorus to carry on dialogue with
the remaining choral members.
Actors are called “Thespians” in
his honor.

53. Aeschylus
525-456 BC.
Wrote 80 plays, only 7 extent.
He added a second actor and
increased the dramatic possibilities
and action.

54. Sophocles
495-406 BC.
Wrote over 100 plays, 7 extent.
He increased the number of actors
to three, and set the chorus
number at 15.
He is considered by many as the
finest of the ancient tragedians.

55. Euripides
480-406 BC.
Wrote 90 plays, 18 or 19 extent.
He was the most irreverent of
the poets.
He wrote on topics very critical
of Athenian culture and its
leaders.

56. Greek Theater

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