Drama and Dramatic Arts

Article Outline

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

Romanticism

As the 19th century began, a new literary movement emerged in Germany. Called romanticism, it emphasized individualism, subjective expression, and imagination. In theater the romantics rejected neoclassic strictures, especially those of French drama, including the three unities, the strict separation of genres, and conventional motivation by reason and ethics. Writers generally regarded Voltaire and Racine as leading examples of the neoclassic approach, and they looked to Shakespeare’s work as a model of an alternative approach. By the 1830s, romantic ideas dominated the literary drama of Europe. The leading German dramatists of the early 19th century, Friedrich von Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, had helped lay the groundwork for romanticism in the late 18th century with dramas that highlighted emotion and personal liberty. Although those dramatists eventually distanced themselves from their romantic contemporaries, romantic influence is clearly present in many of their best-known works. Schiller's Maria Stuart (1800) features two solitary heroines—Queen Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots—in a hostile world. Goethe's masterpiece Faust (1808, 1832) emphasizes the right of the individual to inquire freely and work out a personal destiny. The complex psychological tragedies of Heinrich von Kleist, including Prinz Friedrich von Homburg (1811; The Prince of Homburg), also show the impact of romanticism.

The leading dramatist of early 19th-century Britain, Joanna Baillie, also incorporated some romantic qualities into her historical tragedies, such as De Monfort (1800), by emphasizing the emotions of the characters. Most of the major romantic poets also wrote dramas, but only one poet’s work appeared on stage during his lifetime: Marino Faliero (1821) by Lord Byron.

French writers strongly resisted romanticism until the success in 1830 of Hernani (translated 1830) by Victor Hugo. Soon after this, romantic dramas achieved prominence, including Antony (1831) by Alexandre Dumas and Chatterton (1835; translated 1847) by Alfred de Vigny. Although the dramas of Hugo, Dumas, and Vigny dominated this period, it was the delicate comedies of love by Alfred de Musset, such as Les caprices de Marianne (1851; Marianne, 1905), at first ignored, that ultimately proved the most popular plays of this movement.

Melodrama

In theaters patronized by the people (rather than the nobility), the most popular form of drama in the early 19th century featured elements of romanticism, including an interest in emotion and spectacle and a disregard for the rules of neoclassicism. This form was the melodrama, in which authors manipulated events and emotions with little regard for logic or character. The first fully developed melodrama was René Guilbert de Pixérécourt's Victor ou l'enfant du forêt (Victor, or the Child of the Forest, 1798). For many years Pixérécourt and his rival Victor Ducange dominated this popular genre in France with such plays as the latter’s Trente ans ou la vie d'un joueur (1827; The Gambler's Fate).

The Well-Made Play

Even as romanticism achieved its greatest successes in the French theater, prolific playwright Eugène Scribe was developing another type of drama that ultimately proved more influential. Scribe, the author of more than 300 plays, perfected what came to be called the well-made play. In it, Scribe carefully prepared the audience for the emotions he sought to elicit, arranged incidents in a cause-and-effect sequence, built in suspense and surprising reversals, and structured climaxes precisely. Although later critics dismissed Scribe’s successes, such as Le verre d'eau (1840; A Glass of Water), as hollow machines deficient in thought and character, the form he developed later won favor from highly respected dramatists in France and elsewhere.

The most direct heir of Scribe was Victorien Sardou, one of the most popular dramatists of the late 19th century. He created plays for some of the leading actors of the period, including La Tosca (1887) for Sarah Bernhardt. Writers of farce also favored the careful construction and elaborate intrigue of the well-made play. The French brought the farce to one of its greatest periods in such complex intrigues as Le chapeau de paille d'Italie (1851; A Leghorn Hat, 1917) by Eugène Labiche and Hôtel du Libre-Échange (1894; Hotel Paradiso, 1957) by Georges Feydeau.

Realism and Social Drama

Around the middle of the 19th century, European dramatists developed an interest in depicting contemporary life more truthfully and accurately, often with a direct or implied social message. This so-called social drama or drama of realism was pioneered in France by Émile Augier and by Alexandre Dumas fils (junior). Dumas fils' La dame aux camélias (1852; The Lady of the Camellias, 1897) won great international success. However, its sentimental depiction of a woman of questionable morals inspired Augier to present a much darker reply in Le mariage d'Olympe (1855; The Marriage of Olympe), a more realistic portrait of a prostitute. In Germany, Friedrich Hebbel, though he began as a romantic, turned in the direction of realism for his most famous work, the tragedy Maria Magdalena (1844), which reflected on middle-class attitudes toward marriage and morality. Although English popular melodrama generally became more realistic during the 19th century, the English dramatist who most resembled the continental realists was Tom Robertson. In Society (1864) and other plays, he paid such close attention to everyday language and small social customs that they became known as cup and saucer dramas.

Aleksandr Ostrovsky, the first professional playwright in Russia, established realism as a major dramatic mode in that country, both in comedies (Les, 1871; The Forest) and in tragedies (Groza, 1860; The Thunderstorm). Another important contributor to Russian realistic drama was Ivan Turgenev, whose works include Mesiats v derevne (1850; A Month in the Country), a perceptive study of the aristocracy.

Naturalism, Symbolism, and Other Late 19th-Century Innovations

By the beginning of the 1870s the realist drama introduced in the 1850s had begun to seem dated and somewhat artificial. A new generation of dramatists and theorists sought a drama that would even more closely represent the texture of everyday life. Realism gave way to naturalism, whose chief spokesman was French writer Émile Zola. In plays and theoretical essays, Zola called for a drama that would apply the methods of science to playwriting, observing and recording human behavior as objectively and scrupulously as a scientist in a laboratory. A play that exemplifies Zola’s approach is Thérèse Raquin (1873), which was adapted from his 1867 novel of the same title.

Simultaneously with Zola's writings, Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen began a series of plays that would mark the emergence of the modern theater. Most of Ibsen's early works looked back to romanticism, his Peer Gynt (1867; translated 1892) for example, strongly suggesting Goethe's Faust. In the late 1870s, however, his work took a sharp turn with Et dukkehjem (1879; A Doll's House, 1889) and Gengangere (1881; Ghosts, 1888). These plays resembled those of the naturalists in their willingness to deal with shocking material formerly thought unsuitable for the theater—women’s equality in A Doll’s House and sexually transmitted disease in Ghosts. In form they owed much to Scribe and the well-made play, while in their general style and concern with social problems they carried forward the concerns of the early realists.

Ibsen’s realistic works were read, produced (despite many problems with censors), and imitated throughout Europe, and in their wake a major new generation of dramatists emerged. In Germany, Gerhart Hauptmann created powerful studies of contemporary society, such as Die Weber (1892; The Weavers), which chronicles the fate of a group of peasants. In Sweden, August Strindberg established his reputation with the realistic dramas Fadren (1887; The Father) and Fröken Julie (1888; Miss Julie). In Spain, José Echegaray modeled his El hijo de Don Juan (1892; The Son of Don Juan, 1895) on Ibsen's Ghosts. James A. Herne brought new realism and psychological depth to the American drama with his Margaret Fleming (1890), about an unfaithful husband’s relationship with his wife. In England a new school of serious social drama appeared, inspired in large part by Ibsen. The leaders of this group included Henry Arthur Jones, with such plays as The Liars (1897), and Arthur Wing Pinero, whose The Second Mrs. Tanqueray (1893) portrays a woman who is unable to escape her tarnished past. George Bernard Shaw also began his playwriting career much under Ibsen's influence, with Widowers’ Houses (1892), a play that attacked capitalism.

Shaw considered Eugène Brieux of France the greatest playwright in Europe after Ibsen; and Brieux's rather shocking studies of social problems certainly suggest Ibsen, especially Brieux's Les avariés (1902; Damaged Goods, 1912), which discussed sexually transmitted disease. But the more purely naturalistic drama also received a powerful boost from another Frenchman, Henri Becque, in plays such as Les corbeaux (1882; The Vultures, 1913). Another major contribution to naturalism was Vlast’ tmy (1888; The Power of Darkness), a tragedy about peasants by Leo Tolstoy of Russia, although the major Russian dramatist of this period was Anton Chekhov. Chekhov’s delicate studies of life in provincial Russia, such as Chaika (1896; The Sea Gull, 1912), owed something to the tradition of realism developed in Russia by Ostrovsky and Turgenev, though they created a tone unique to their author.

Although realism remained a dominant style through most of the 20th century, individual authors and movements regularly arose to challenge it. A number of authors near the end of the 19th century sought to return to the poetic language and visual spectacle of the romantic theater, but only Edmond Rostand gained lasting success, with Cyrano de Bergerac (1897; translated 1898). A much more important challenge to realism was mounted by symbolism, which developed in response to the objectivity and scientific rationality that naturalism had encouraged (see Symbolist Movement). Symbolists, by contrast, proclaimed that the imagination was the true interpreter of reality. Ibsen began to turn in a more symbolic, even mystic direction in his later plays, beginning with Bygmester solness (1892; The Master Builder, 1893), as did Hauptmann, beginning with Hanneles Himmelfahrt (1893; Hannele, 1894). In Germany Frank Wedekind mixed realism and symbolism in his first important play, Frühlings erwachen (1891; The Awakening of Spring, 1909). Dramatists associated entirely with symbolism also emerged, led by Maurice Maeterlinck of Belgium, whose medieval and mystic Pelléas et Mélisande (1892; translated 1892) became a kind of model for the new movement. Much less typical was the grotesque satire Ubu Roi (1896; translated 1951) by Alfred Jarry, whose violent subversion of traditional theatrical modes anticipated features of later surrealist, dadaist, and absurdist drama in France (for more information, see the Reactions Against Realism and Theater of the Absurd sections of this article). In Italy, Gabriele D'Annunzio was influenced by Maeterlinck to create a series of symbolist dramas, including La città morta (1898; The Dead City, 1900), many of them for the great Italian actor Eleonora Duse.

William Butler Yeats became acquainted with many of the symbolists in Paris, France, and took their ideas back to his native Ireland, where they exercised an important influence on his work, particularly in his early plays such as The Shadowy Waters (1900). In the closing years of the 19th century he was deeply involved in the development of an Irish national stage, which contributed significantly to the drama of the opening years of the next century. Oscar Wilde provided a rare example of an English play influenced by symbolism in his Salomé (1893), but he is much better known for reviving the wit and style of the traditional English comedy of manners, most notably in The Importance of Being Earnest (1895).

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Drama and Dramatic Arts

Romanticism

Melodrama

The Well-Made Play

Realism and Social Drama

Naturalism, Symbolism, and Other Late 19th-Century Innovations