Drama and Dramatic Arts

Article Outline

Introduction; Characteristics of Drama; Kinds of Drama; Purposes of Drama; History of Western Drama

Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Restoration Drama in England

The Italian enthusiasm for imitating and reviving classical drama and for formulating elaborate rules for its creation gradually spread throughout Europe, but with very different results in different countries. English schools and universities embraced the new Italian ideas avidly in the mid-16th century. By the end of that century, however, classical dramatic practice had merged with medieval theater practices and various popular traditions to create a complex new kind of drama in England. This form culminated in the work of the most famous dramatist of all time, William Shakespeare.

In the 1580s a group of educated men, sometimes called the University Wits, prepared the way for Shakespeare. The best-known members of this group were playwright and poet Christopher Marlowe and dramatist Thomas Kyd. Marlowe’s The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus (1588?) strikingly combines medieval and Renaissance elements with the powerful poetic style for which Marlowe became famous. Kyd’s play The Spanish Tragedy (1589?) was the first great popular success of the English Renaissance and anticipated in its theme and structure later tragedies, most notably Shakespeare's Hamlet (1601?).

Toward the end of Queen Elizabeth’s long reign, which lasted from 1558 to 1603, a brilliant flowering of drama took place in England, which was one of the most important and productive in history. Today, Shakespeare seems to have dominated this period, but at the time some of his rivals enjoyed equal or greater reputations, particularly Ben Jonson, Francis Beaumont, and John Fletcher. Jonson, best known for his Volpone (1606; The Fox), was the most concerned with following classical models and elevating drama to a respectable art. In 1616 he became the first English dramatist to publish his plays, thereby encouraging the public to view them as literature, not simply temporary entertainment. Beaumont and Fletcher are best known for their collaborative works, such as The Maid's Tragedy (1611?), although they also worked alone and with other authors. Fletcher collaborated with Shakespeare on The Two Noble Kinsmen (1613?).

Following the death of Elizabeth in 1603, rising political and religious tensions steadily eroded the exuberance of the Elizabethan period. Dramatic works of the Jacobean period that followed were distinctly darker and more pessimistic in tone. This is the period of Shakespeare's great tragedies. They include Othello (1604?), about a husband who murders his wife in a fit of jealousy; King Lear (1605?), about an aging king who tragically misjudges the love of his daughters; and Macbeth (1606?), about an ambitious, amoral tyrant. Even dark comedy emerges in Measure for Measure (1604?), about a corrupt deputy. Works that represent both the powerful poetry and gloomy world view of this period particularly well are The Duchess of Malfi (1614?) by John Webster and ’Tis Pity She's a Whore (1633) by John Ford. In Webster’s play the title character is murdered by her evil brothers for marrying a commoner. Ford’s play revolves around the incestuous relationship between a brother and sister.

Spain’s Golden Age

Spain, England's political rival during the Elizabethan period, also rivaled England in the importance of its drama at this time. The great playwrights of Spain’s so-called Golden Age, which lasted from the early 16th century to the late 17th century, mixed classical, medieval, and popular forms to create a complex and powerful new drama. The theater became enormously popular in Renaissance Spain, and the leading dramatists wrote plays in astonishing numbers to answer this demand. The most successful of all was Lope de Vega. Of the more than 1800 plays he is thought to have written, some 470 survive. The best known today is Fuenteovejuna (1614?), about a village that revolts against a tyrannical overlord. Much more typical are his many so-called cape-and-sword plays, swashbuckling stories of conflicts between love and duty exemplified by El perro del hortelano (1613?; The Dog in the Manger).

The other leading dramatist of the Spanish Golden Age was Pedro Calderón de la Barca. Like Lope, Calderón wrote many cape-and-sword plays, but he also wrote philosophical dramas such as La vida es sueño (1635; Life is a Dream), which explores ambition and the forces of destiny. Spain’s tradition of religious drama continued during the Renaissance, and some of Calderón's most famous works were sacred plays (called autos sacramentales), such as El gran teatro del mundo (1649; The Great Theatre of the World). El burlador de Seville (1630; The Trickster of Seville) by Tirso de Molina was notable as the first literary treatment of one of the most often represented characters in Western drama, the legendary rake Don Juan. After Calderón's death in 1681, the Spanish drama declined in importance, only reemerging in modern times, but the works of its Golden Age dramatists continued to be admired in Europe from the Renaissance onward.

Neoclassicism in France

The neoclassic ideals of drama that developed in Renaissance Italy had their greatest influence in France, so much so that in the 17th century France replaced Italy as the center of both neoclassic theory and practice. At the beginning of the century, French playwrights mixed classical, medieval, and popular elements much as their contemporaries in England and Spain. By 1636, however, when Le Cid by Pierre Corneille opened a golden age of French theater, France's leading dramatists and theorists generally agreed that drama should strictly follow what they felt were the rules of classical theater. Among these were the unities of time, place, and action and the strict separation of comedy and tragedy, rules generally ignored by the great Renaissance writers of England and Spain.

Although critics at times rebuked Corneille for not adhering strictly enough to these rules, Jean Baptiste Racine, the greatest of French tragic dramatists, showed that they need not be a hindrance, but could be utilized to concentrate and deepen a tragic play. Racine started his plays near the time of the catastrophe they revolved around, as Greek tragic authors had done, and emphasized inner, psychological action. His masterpiece, Phèdre (1677), clearly demonstrates Racine’s poetic genius and emphasis on internal conflict through its treatment of Phèdre’s guilt over her love for her stepson. It also ended this great period of French playwriting.

Between Corneille and Racine flourished France's greatest comic dramatist, Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, who took the stage name of Molière. Drawing upon Roman comedy, commedia dell'arte, and the long tradition of French farce, he created some of the most brilliant and beloved comedies in the Western tradition. Molière wrote in a variety of styles, from broad farces for a general audience, such as Les fourberies de Scapin (1671; The Cheats of Scapin), to comedies with ballet interludes to amuse the royal court. But his best-known works are his more thoughtful comedies of character, such as Tartuffe (1664; translated 1670), about a pious hypocrite, and L'avare (1668; The Miser, 1739). Such works have influenced the comic writing of every subsequent generation, most notably through their use of comedy as a forum for the discussion of serious issues.

18th-Century Drama

In the early 18th century French and English drama adopted a more emotional and moralistic tone, resulting in comedies often designated as sentimental. The most famous English example is The Conscious Lovers (1722) by Sir Richard Steele, which sought to involve audiences emotionally with its characters rather than to stimulate laughter. Some leading French dramatists carried emotion and sentiment so far that their plays were known as weeping comedies. An example is Pierre Claude Nivelle de La Chaussée in his La préjugé à la mode (The Fashionable Prejudice, 1735). The most enduring dramatist of the period, Pierre Carlet de Marivaux, successfully united sentimentality and wit in such comedies about young love as La jeu de l'amour et du hasard (1730; The Game of Love and Chance, 1923).

Although other types of comedy remained popular during the 18th century, sentimental comedy held a sufficiently prominent place to inspire a reaction and a return to so-called laughing comedy in the 1770s. In England Oliver Goldsmith specifically boasted of making this change in such plays as She Stoops to Conquer (1773), in which a well-born young woman must dress up as a servant to win the love of a shy young man. He was powerfully seconded by Richard Brinsley Sheridan in The School for Scandal (1777), a play about gossip, hypocrisy, and false sentimentality. In France, Pierre Beaumarchais similarly reinvigorated comedy with his popular Le barbier de Séville (1775; The Barber of Seville) and Le mariage de Figaro (1784; The Marriage of Figaro). Both pit clever servants against dull-witted aristocrats. This trend was reinforced by the international popularity of Italy's greatest comic dramatist, Carlo Goldoni, who established his reputation in Venice with such literate comedies as Mirandolina (1753; The Mistress of the Inn).

The 18th century’s major contribution to serious drama was the innovation of tragedies that depicted people in everyday life, a form pioneered in England with The London Merchant (1731) by George Lillo. Lillo in turn inspired Gotthold Ephraim Lessing to create the first classical work of the German stage in 1755, Miss Sara Sampson, and Denis Diderot in France to pioneer middle-class serious drama in his Le fils naturel (The Illegitimate Son, 1757). French tragic writing of this century was dominated by Voltaire, whose major tragedies continued firmly in the neoclassic style. He was more innovative in staging and introduced social and political commentary into such dramas as his Mahomet (1741).

19th-Century Drama