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Drama. What Is Drama?. A drama is a story enacted onstage for a live audience. The Origins of Drama. The word drama comes from the Greek verb dran , which means “to do.” The earliest known plays . . . were written around the fifth century B.C.
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What Is Drama? Adramais a story enacted onstage for a live audience.
The Origins of Drama • The word drama comes from the Greek verb dran, which means “to do.” • The earliest known plays . . . • were written around the fifth century B.C. • produced for festivals to honor Dionysus, the god of wine and fertility
Tragedy A tragedyis a play that ends unhappily. • Most classic Greek tragedies deal with serious, universal themes such as right and wrong justice and injustice life and death • Tragedies endeavor to display human limitations.
Tragedy The protagonist of most classical tragedies is a tragic hero.This hero pride • is noble and in many ways admirable rebelliousness • has a tragic flaw, a personal failing that leads to a tragic end jealousy
Greek Tragedy • Tragedy comes from tragos, the Greek word for a goat: fertility. • The first tragedies were mere dances around sacrificial goat. • The great Greek dramatists-Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides-wrotereligious drama geared towards portraying the moral relation bet. Gods and men , having always an instructive moral purpose
Oedipus: disease, famine. Parricide& incest. Gods are just: suicide of his mother& self inflected blindness are means of expiating his crime. • Pity& fear. • Purgation. • Milton:' calm of mind, all passion spent'. • Catharsis: Aristotle said that the function of tragedy was purgation of the feelings through the arousing of pity and terror.
Greek vs Shakespearian Tragedy • Greek tragedy: no free will, the gods are in control of a man's destiny. • Shakespearian hero: has free will. Example : Othello &Hamlet. • Greek tragedies have so little influence on English drama because of the immense difference bet. the Greek view of life and the Christian one: fate VS free will.
Comedy A comedyis a play that ends happily. The plot usually centers on a romantic conflict. boy wins girl boy loses girl boy meets girl • Comedy comes from the Greek komos, meaning a revel, the sort of rough country party which honored the god Dionysus(god of vegetation).
Roman drama assumed more influence on English drama, particularly Seneca: the gods may have the monopoly of power but not of virtue. • Greek and Roman comedies: • The main purpose of classical comedy is to make us laugh at the follies of mankind and correct those follies in ourselves.
Dramatic unities: • One admirable thing about the Greek tragic dramatists is their sense of form. • The traditional unities of Greek drama-one plot(action), one day(time).Renaissance dramatists Added a third unity , that of place. Shakespeare emerged to violate all these unities.