Guide to the
Lighthouse Keeper’s
Wife
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Wyatt’s Words
,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,
A drama or play is a form of storytelling in which actors make the characters come alive
through speech (dialogue) and action (stage directions).
Every performance of a play is different, even if the same actors perform the same play
many times.
Performances are influenced by the audience. To be a part of an audience is different than
reading a play alone. The response of the audience will also affect our own response. For
example, we laugh louder when the rest of the audience is laughing, too.
History:
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 was first performed for religious reasons:
1. Egyptian: role playing at base of pyramids to honor pharaohs who saw themselves
as gods
2. Greeks/Romans: held spring festivals to honor Dionysus, the god of drama,
creativity, wine, fertility. Each March, the government of Athens would sponsor a
playwriting contest and have the contestants perform their play during this festival.
The plays, held from dawn to dusk, would be performed only once. Grecians would
sing, dance, and drink wine along the procession to the theaters.
• Theaters would seat between 17,000-50,000
• The theaters would have an altar in the center of the orchestra would they
would burn incense in honor of Dionysus.
• The Chorus, a group of men, would sing and dance on stage prior to the play
and would then retreat to the parados (passageway) during the acting.
• If the play was a tragedy, the people would sacrifice a goat. Tragos=tragedy
3. Middle Ages:
• Mystery plays were religious plays usually representing biblical subjects,
developed from plays presented in Latin by churchmen on church premises
and depicted such subjects as the Creation, Adam and Eve, the murder of
Abel, and the Last Judgment.
• Miracle plays present a real or fictitious account of the life, miracles, or
martyrdom of a saint. The genre evolved from liturgical offices developed
during the 10th and 11th centuries to enhance calendar festivals.
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Wyatt’s Words
, • Morality plays were an allegorical drama popular in Europe especially during
the 15th and 16th centuries, 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 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.
4. 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.
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.
In 1642, the Puritans closed the theatre. The Puritans had been the source of many
problems within the early English theater. The Puritans gained additional power and
support during the early 1600s. In 1642, under the force of the Puritans, the English
Parliament issued an ordinance suppressing all stage plays in the theatres. The strict
religious views of the Puritans spread to encompass many social activities within English,
including the Globe Theatre, which is destroyed by the Puritans in 1644. It is not until 1660,
the Restoration Period in England, sees the opening of the theatres.
By the twentieth century, we saw the themes of play reflect the social, economic, political
issues that were once considered taboo, like alcoholism, drug addiction, adultery.
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Wyatt’s Words
, Elements
Since every drama is a well-knit story, every scene in it forms an organic part of the whole.
No irrelevant or superfluous details can be introduced in a play as they will distract the
reader’s attention.
In other words, every scene in a play must have an importance of its own. It must be closely
connected with the main theme of the drama and should thus form an indispensable part of
the main framework.
It is therefore very essential that every scene should be studied critically so as to estimate
its importance. Thus the dramatic significance of a scene may be based on any of the
following elements:
1. Characterization
2. Plot-interest
3. Style or language
4. Any other aspect of dramatic significance
Drama is the act of portraying a story in front of an audience. It involves the characters and
events of the story being brought to life on a stage by actors and their interactions (verbal
and non-verbal) through its events.
Of various forms of drama, plays are the most popular. Some other formats are dance
performances, radio shows, puppet shows, etc. The history of drama goes back to Aristotle
and his treatise ‘Poetics’ which gives a critical analysis of Sophocles’ Greek play, ‘Oedipus
Rex’.
Plays aim to show through action and dialogues what the written text of the story
delineates. It has a written blueprint called the script which has all the information
regarding the characters, their dialogues, and the stage setting like mise-en-scene, etc.
The various characteristics of drama are:
Themes in Drama
It represents the basic idea of the text. It can be as direct as the title of the drama to very
obscure and needs careful thought and analysis. The action and its plot makes the audiences
immerse in the drama and try to extract the theme behind it.
Plot in Drama
The sequence of events or actions in a play is called its plot. It represents what happens in
the drama. The clarity and coherence of the plot are essential to give the drama a logical
and undisturbed flow.
The various characters follow a pattern of interactions and movements through various
stages of the plot. These stages are initial disturbance or conflict, rising action, climax, falling
action and finally the resolution of the conflict.
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Wyatt’s Words