Elements of Drama

DRAMA
• Like poetry, drama is also an ancient form of
communal expression.
• Unlike modern fiction that encourages reflective
isolation and individuation in the act of reading,
dramas are best enjoyed when performed, with
the spectacle seen by an embodied audience.
 DRAMA
• Like the storytellers of the oral tradition, those
who composed plays long ago did not exactly
originate content but rather recycled stories and
characters already known in the community into
fresh artistic expressions on stage.
 What is drama?
• Drama is a type of literature telling a story, which is
intended to be performed to an audience on the
stage.
• Generally, while drama is the printed text of a play,
the word theatre often refers to the actual
production of the text on the stage. Theatre thus
involves action taking place on the stage, the
lighting, the scenery, the accompanying music, the
costumes, the atmosphere, and so on.
 Origins and a Brief History of Drama
Drama is generally thought to have started in Greece
between 600 and 200 BC, although some critics trace
it to Egyptian religious rites of coronation.
Greek Drama:
In Greece, dramatic performances were associated with
religious festivals. The Greeks produced different types of
drama, mainly tragedy and comedy. Famous Greek
tragedians include Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.
The best writer of
comedy was Aristophanes.
Roman Drama:
The Romans inherited the drama traditions
from the Greeks. The expansion of the
Roman Empire helped spread drama to
many places in Europe and the
Mediterranean world. Seneca is the most
important Roman tragedian.
A Roman Theatre
Medieval Drama:

The Middle Ages start with the fall of the Roman Empire. Most of
Classical learning was lost in medieval times. The Middle Ages were
dominated by religion and the study of theological matters. The
Christian doctrine and Christian values were the measure of
everything. During the Middle Ages, drama was looked down upon as
evil and a means of corruption. However, faced with the need to
spread the word of God to the illiterate masses, the Church came to
devise some form of dramatic performance to help in teaching
Christian beliefs and biblical stories. in which the characters personify
moral qualities (such as charity or vice) or abstractions (as death or
youth) and in which moral lessons are taught.
 The three main types of medieval drama are

• mystery plays, about Bible stories,

• miracle plays about the lives of saints and the miracles
they performed, and
• morality plays, in which the characters personify moral
qualities (such as charity or vice) or abstractions (as death
or youth) and in which moral lessons are taught.
The Renaissance:

The Renaissance is the period that followed the

Middle Ages. It started in Italy in the fourteenth
century and spread to other parts of Europe. The
word Renaissance is a French word which means
rebirth. The Renaissance period witnessed a new
interest in learning and discovery of the natural
world. The works of the Greek and Roman writers
were rediscovered. The invention of the printing
press helped make the production of books easier
and cheaper, hence, available to more people.
 Humanism: The humanist
movement stressed the role of
man and reason in understanding
the world and rejected the
predominance of religious
thinking.
Renaissance Drama
During the Renaissance, the works of
Greek and Roman dramatists were
rediscovered and imitated. Plays were no
longer restricted to religious themes. This
happened first in Italy and spread then to
other parts of Europe.
 In England, drama flourished during
the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603),
who was a patron of literature and the arts.
Theatres were built in London and people
attended plays in large numbers. The most
important dramatists were William
Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe.
The Globe Theatre in London
 Christopher Marlowe

William Shakespeare
 TRADITIONAL THEATER

•Traditional theatre did not always

require a stage.
•In the Philippines, folk and
indigenized dramatic forms like the
panunuluyan are communal
reenactments of familiar stories, in
this case the biblical tale of Mary
and Joseph’s search for a place to
stay on the night Jesus was born.
 Dramatic Terms
• Playwright: The writer of plays (dramatist)
• Stage directions: Instructions written in the script of a play,
describing the setting and indicating actions and movements of
the actors.
• Protagonist: The main character in a play.
• Antagonist: The character opposing the main character.
• Tragic hero: A character of high repute, who, because of a tragic
flaw and fate, suffers a fall from glory into suffering.
• Tragic flaw: A weakness or limitation of character, resulting in the
fall of the tragic hero.
• Dramatis Personae: "People of Drama" in Latin; a list of the characters in a
play, usually found on the first page of the script.
• Blank Verse: Unrhymed iambic pentameter verse. It is the preeminent
dramatic verse English (as in the plays of Christopher Marlowe and William
Shakespeare).
• Chorus: The course in Greek drama is a group of actors who speak or sing
together, commenting on the action.
In Elizabethan drama, the course consisted of one actor who recites the
prologue and epilogue to a play and sometimes comments on the action (As
in Doctor Faustus).
• Comic Relief: Humorous episodes in a play that is mainly tragic.
DRAMA

Its Elements
 DRAMA
Drama is a
composition in prose
form that presents a
story entirely told in
dialogue and action
and written with the
intention of its
eventual performance
before an audience.
Drama has a two-fold nature:
LITERATURE and THEATRE.
THEATRE
 Setting identifies the time and place in which
the events occur. It consists of the historical
period, the moment, day and season in which the
incidents take place. It also includes the sceneries
in the performance which are usually found in
the preliminary descriptions.
Characters are the people in the play
and thus considered as the principal
material in a drama.
 Character Aspects
Physical
• Physical identifies peripheral
facts such as age, sexual
category, size, race and color.
It deals with external
attributes which may be
envisaged from the
description of the playwright
or deduced from what the
characters say or what other
characters verbalize about his
appearance.
Social
• Social embraces all aspects
that can be gleaned from the
character’s world or
environment as exemplified by
the economic status,
occupation or trade, creed,
familial affiliation of the
characters.
 Character Aspects
Psychological Moral

• Psychological discloses the inner • Moral discloses the

mechanism of the mind of the
character as exemplified by his decisions of the
habitual responses, attitudes, characters, either socially
longings, purposes, likes and acceptable or not,
dislikes. It is considered as the most
indispensable level of character exposing their intentions,
categorization because routines and thus projecting what is
emotions, thoughts, attitude and upright or not.
behavior enable the readers to
know the character intrinsically.
 Plot lays out the series of events that
form the entirety of the play. It serves as
a structural framework which brings the
events to a cohesive form and sense.
 Types of Plot
Natural Plot Episodic Plot

• Natural Plot is a • Episodic Plot – each

chronological sequence of
events arrangement where
actions continuously take
place as an end result of
the previous action
episode independently
comprises a setting,
climax, and resolution;
therefore, a full story in
itself is formed.
Beginning
Middle
Ending
 Beginning identifies information about the place, such as
geographical location, social, cultural, political background or period
when the event took place.

Exposition
• Exposition is the point
where the playwright
commences his story. It
reveals the identity of
story’s initial crisis.
 Middle is composed of a series of difficulties:
Complications Crisis

• Complications bring • Crisis reveals the peak

changes and alterations in the
movement of the action which
of anticipation in the
take place when discovery of series of incidents.
novel information, unexpected
alteration of plan, choosing
between two courses of action
or preface of new ideas are
revealed.
 Middle is composed of a series of difficulties:
Obligatory Scene Discovery

• Obligatory Scene • Discovery discloses points

which are previously
identifies the open unknown, characterized as
collision between two something mysterious,
opposing characters or strange, unfamiliar and thus
forces. revealed through objects,
persons, facts, values, or self-
discovered.
 Ending is the final major
component of the story which brings
the condition back to its stability. This
part brings satisfaction to the audience
which extends to the final curtain as
peace is completely restored.
 Theme is considered as the unifying element that
defines the dramatized idea of the play. It is the
over-all sense or implication of the action. It defines
the problem, emphasizes the ethical judgment and
suggest attitude or course of action that eliminates
the crisis is an acceptable way.
 Style refers to the mode of
expression or presentation of the
play which points out the
playwright’s position or
viewpoint in life.
 Major Dramatic Attitude
Realism
• Realism is an accurate
detailed, and life-like
description in a play where
things are presented as
real as can be set in actual
life, with dialogues
sounding like day-to-day
conversation.
Non-realism
• Non-realism is method
of presentation identified
as something stylized or
theatricalized whereby
artist uses his feral
imagination in projecting
his ideas.
Tragedy is a type of drama that shows the downfall and
destruction of a noble or outstanding person,
traditionally one who possesses a character weakness
called a tragic flaw. The tragic hero, through choice or
circumstance, is caught up in a sequence of events that
inevitably results in disaster.
Comedy is a type of drama intended to interest
and amuse the audience rather than make them
deeply concerned about events that happen. The
characters overcome some difficulties, but they
always overcome their ill fortune and find
happiness in the end.
Tragicomedy is a play that does not adhere
strictly to the structure of tragedy. This is
usually serious play that also has some of the
qualities of comedy. It arouses thought even
with laughter.
Farce is a play that brings laughter for the sake of
laughter, usually making use grossly embellished
events and characters. It has very swift
movements, has ridiculous situations, and does
not stimulate thought.
Melodrama shows events that follow each
other rapidly, but seems to be governed
always by chance. The characters are victims
in the hands of merciless fate.
In drama, there is usually no narrator, the audience is
invited to infer meaning from the character’s actions,
words, and the props on stage and on other sensorial
embellishments (costumes, lightings, music, sound
effects, etc.).
1. When a single character delivers a long
speech, it is called MONOLOGUE.
2. When that long speech is delivered as
though the character is speaking to
himself/herself alone on the stage, it is
called SOLILOQUY.
3. When characters speak to one another, the exchange
of the words is called DIALOGUE.

4. When a character steps out of the scene for a while to

confidentially address the audience, perhaps to
comment about the scene or another character, it is
called ASIDE.
Plays are largely classified into two according to purpose:
• Tragedy
• Comedy

• The purpose of tragedy is to elicit two emotions from

the audience: pity and fear, to produce CATHARSIS
or emotional release from the audience.
• To attain the purpose of tragedy, the protagonist
called a tragic hero must be highly relatable to the
audience in that he/she, like a typical human being,
possesses a noble character yet afflicted with a
weakness called a tragic flaw.
• This weakness, minor in comparison to the hugeness
of the character’s noble traits, nevertheless causes
his/her downfall. The result is called tragic fall, or an
overdetermined series of events that have snowballed
into inevitable, and to some degree undeserved ruin.