This document provides an overview of different forms and genres of drama. It discusses the origins and features of Greek tragedy, including the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. It also covers Senecan or revenge tragedy, which featured bloody revenge and supernatural elements. The document then discusses various types of comedy including romantic comedy, tragicomedy, and the works of Aristophanes. It provides examples of plays that exemplify different genres such as Shakespeare's tragedies and comedies.

1. DRAMA
Lt. Dr. B. Ajantha Parthasarathi,
Assistant Professor of English &
Associate NCC Officer,
Sri SRNM College, Sattur.

2. DRAMA
• A form of literature that has plot, characters,
dialogue and action
• To be performed on the stage
• Western Drama – ancient Greece
• A deep connection with religious
ceremonies
• Its origin in the festivals held in honour of
Dionysus (God of fertility, revelry and wine)
• Rome – part of religious ceremonies
• English Drama – origin in the church
• 2 categories – tragedy & comedy

3. TRAGEDY
• Dramatic representations of serious actions which
have a disastrous end for the protagonist (noble
birth/high rank)
• Greek tragedy – earliest forms of drama
• Aeschylus (circa 525 – 455 BCE)
• Sophocles (circa 497 – 405 BCE)
• Euripides (circa 4 BCE – 65 BCE)
• Elizabethan & Jacobean Periods
• Christopher Marlowe (1564 – 93)
• William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616)
• John Webster (circa 1580 – 1634)
• Aristotle’s Poetics (circa 335 BCE) – distinct features
of Greek plays
• 20th century – concentrating on the fate of ordinary
people

4. CLASSICAL GREEK TRAGEDY
•Flourished – 5th century BCE –
Golden Age of Greek literature
•Aeschylus, Sophocles & Euripides
– 3 great dramatists
•Plays performed – huge
amphitheatres (largest theatre –
15000 seating capacity)

5. CLASSICAL GREEK TRAGEDY
Features
• Stories – religious, Greek mythology
• Characters wore padded costumes, platform heels
and large masks
• Chorus – a group of men, wearing masks, sang
and performed dancelike movements –
commentators on the action and reflected the
moral, social and religious attitudes of the age
• Follow the 3 unities of time, place and action
• Dramatic irony – gap between the characters’
ignorance of future events and the audience’s
knowledge of the same

6. ARISTOTLE’S DEFINITION - TRAGEDY
‘the imitation of an action that is
serious and also, having
magnitude, complete in itself…
incorporating incidents arousing
pity and fear, wherewith to
accomplish the catharsis of such
emotions’.

7. GREEK TRAGEDY - TERMS
• Tragic Hero – noble birth/high rank – able to
evoke pity and fear
• Hamartia – a virtuous character, who makes an
error in judgment
• Peripeteia – responsible for a reversal in his
fortunes
• Anagnorisis – moment when a crucial truth is
discovered/ some insight is gained by the
protagonist
• Catharsis – purging of emotional tensions –
effect of the resolution of tragic drama on the
audience

8. GREEK TRAGEDY - EXAMPLES
•Aeschylus’ Agamemnon and The
Eumenides (458 BCE)
•Euripides’ Medea (431 BCE)
•Sophocles’ Oedipus the King (429
BCE)

9. SENECAN/REVENGE TRAGEDY
• A set of plays of the classical Roman
writer Seneca – a first century Stoic
Roman philosopher and dramatist
• Feature bloody revenge and
supernatural elements
• Greatly influenced Elizabethan
revenge tragedy & French
neoclassical tragedy
• Best example: Thomas Kyd’s The
Spanish Tragedy (circa 1587)

10. SENECAN/REVENGE TRAGEDY
Features
• Theme – revenge
• Declamatory & emotionally charged
speeches – soliloquies
• Stichomythia – the rapid exchange of
dialogue, giving a sense of argument
• Feature murder, torture & other
horrific incidents
• Elements – madness, murder, disguise
& ghosts of murder victims

11. EXAMPLES
English dramas influenced by Senecan
revenge tradition
• Thomas Norton & Thomas Sackville –
Gorboduc (1561) – 1st English tragedy
• Thomas Kyd – The Spanish Tragedy
• William Shakespeare – Hamlet (1603)
• John Webster – The White Devil
(1612) & The Duchess of Malfi (1612-
13)

12. ROMANTIC TRAGEDY
•An interdependent type of drama
– free from the influence of
Seneca & neoclassicism –
Romantic Drama
Examples:
Shakespeare’s Othello (circa 1603)

13. ROMANTIC TRAGEDY - FEATURES
• Men of high birth/rank – interact with and
move amidst common characters of lower
social rank
• Dialogue – poetical, colloquial & familiar –
combines the idealistic with the realistic
• Unities of time & place – totally abandoned
• Main plot & one or more subplots – unity of
action – clever interweaving of all the plots
• Humorous scenes – to relieve the intensity of
the tragic scenes & provide a sharp ironical
contrast

14. COMEDY
• Greek word ‘komos’ – ‘revel’ /
‘merrymaking’
• Aristotle - comedy deals with the everyday
activities of ordinary people
• No serious/dangerous action – the story
concludes happily for the protagonists
• Deals with some defect/ugliness – not
serious/destructive
• Nicholas Udall’s Ralph Roister Doister – 1st
English comedy
• Classical Greek Comedy – old, middle and
new++

15. COMEDY
• Old period – Aristophanes (circa 446 – 386
BCE) – comedies were marked by
buffoonery, satire & social commentaries
• Middle period – Antiphanes (circa 408 – 334
BCE) – comedies were noted for burlesque
• New period – Menander (circa 341 – 290
BCE) – most influential of the Greek comedy
writers – focused on the amorous intrigues
of young lovers & not bother with social
issues

16. ROMANTIC COMEDY
• Lighthearted plays – deal with the
follies of young lovers/ the
misunderstanding between them
Examples:
Shakespeare –
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (circa
1596)
As You Like It (circa 1600)
Twelfth Night (circa 1602)

17. ROMANTIC COMEDY
Features
• Young lovers who are kept apart by some obstacles
to their union
• The course of the love affair is not smooth
• The couple eventually overcome all obstacles and
the play ends happily
• Stock characters – witty fool, the drunk, the
beautiful heroine, the clever servant
• Heroine – beautiful, witty, resourceful – sometimes
forced by circumstances to disguise himself as a
man (Eg: Rosalind in As You Like It & Viola in
Twelfth Night)
• Plot elements – cross-dressing & mistaken
identities – feature wordplay, puns and bawdy
jokes

18. TRAGICOMEDY
•Tragedy & comedy mingled
harmoniously together
•Not to evoke pure laughter but to
add to the intensity of the tragic
tone of the plays
Examples:
Porter’s scene – Macbeth
Gravedigger’s scene – Hamlet

19. TRAGICOMEDY
Features
• Blends the plot elements, character types &
subject matter of tragedy & comedy
• Protagonist – under the threat of some
impending disaster (danger – suddenly averted &
the play ends happily)
• Mingling of upper & lower class characters
Examples:
William Shakespeare – The Merchant of Venice
(circa 1597) & The Winter’s Tale (circa 1611)
Francis Beaumont & John Fletcher’s Philaster (circa
1610)

20. DRAMA
• Tragedy
 Greek Tragedy
 Senecan or Revenge
Tragedy
 Neoclassical Tragedy
 Romantic Tragedy
 Heroic Tragedy
 Domestic Tragedy
 Melodrama
• Comedy
 Romantic Comedy
 Tragicomedy
 Comedy of Humours
 Comedy of Manners
 Genteel Comedy
 Sentimental Comedy
 Farce
• Chronicle Plays
• Masque
• Closet Drama
• Cup-and-Saucer Drama
• Problem Play
• Well-made Play
• Expressionist Drama
• Epic Theatre
• Theatre of Cruelty
• Absurd Drama
• Kitchen Sink Drama
• Poor Theatre
• Bread and Puppet Theatre
• One-Act Play