Elements of Drama
Most simply a character is one of the persons who appears in the play, one of the dramatis personae (literally, the persons of the play). In another sense of the term, the treatment of the character is the basic part of the playwright's work. Conventions of the period and the author's personal vision will affect the treatment of character.
Most plays contain major characters and minor characters. The delineation and development of major characters is essential to the play; the conflict between Hamlet and Claudius depends upon the character of each. A minor character like Marcellus serves a specific function, to inform Hamlet of the appearance of his father's ghost. Once, that is done, he can depart in peace, for we need not know what sort of person he is or what happens to him. The distinction between major and minor characters is one of degree, as the character of Horatio might illustrate.
The distinction between heroes (or heroines) and villains, between good guys and bad guys, between virtue and vice is useful in dealing with certain types of plays, but in many modern plays (and some not so modern) it is difficult to make. Is Gregers Werle in The Wild Duck, for example, a hero or a villain?
Another common term in drama is protagonist. Etymologically, it means the first contestant. In the Greek drama, where the term arose, all the parts were played by one, two, or three actors (the more actors, the later the play), and the best actor, who got the principal part(s), was the protagonist. The second best actor was called the euteragonist. Ideally, the term "protagonist" should be used only for the principal character. Several other characters can be defined by their relation to the protagonist. The antagonist is his principal rival in the conflict set forth in the play. A foil is a character who defines certain characteristics in the protagonist by exhibiting opposite traits or the same traits in a greater or lesser degree. A confidant(e) provides a ready ear to which the protagonist can address certain remarks which should be heard by the audience but not by the other characters. In Hamlet, for example, Hamlet is the protagonist, Claudius the antagonist, Laertes and Fortinbras foils (observe the way in which each goes about avenging the death or loss of property of his father), and Horatio the confidant.
Certain writers-- for example, Moliere and Pirandello--use a character type called the raisonneur, whose comments express the voice of reason and also, presumably, of the author. Philinte and the Father are examples of the raisonneur.
Another type of character is the stereotype or stock character, a character who reappears in various forms in many plays. Comedy is particularly a fruitful source of such figures, including the miles gloriosus or boastful soldier (a man who claims great valor but proves to be a coward when tested), the irascible old man (the source of elements in the character of Polonius), the witty servant, the coquette, the prude, the fop, and others. A stock character from another genre is the revenger of Renaissance tragedy. The role of Hamlet demonstrates how such a stereotype is modified by an author to create a great role, combining the stock elements with individual ones.
Sometimes group of actors work together over a long period in relatively stable companies. In such a situation, individual members of the group develop expertise in roles of a certain type, such as leading man and leading lady (those who play the principal parts), juveniles or ingénues of both sexes (those who specialize as young people), character actors (those who perform mature or eccentric types), and heavies or villains.
The commedia dell'arte, a popular form of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, employed actors who had standard lines of business and improvised the particular action in terms of their established characters and a sketchy outline of a plot. Frequently, Pantalone, an older man, generally a physician, was married to a young woman named Columbine. Her lover, Harlequin, was not only younger and more handsome than her husband but also more vigorous sexually. Pantalone's servants, Brighella, Truffaldino, and others, were employed in frustrating or assisting either the lovers in their meetings or the husband in discovering them.
A group of actors who function as a unit, called a chorus, was a characteristic feature of the Greek tragedy. The members of the chorus shared a common identity, such as Asian Bacchantes or old men of Thebes. The choragos (leader of the chorus) sometimes spoke and acted separately. In some of the plays, the chorus participated directly in the action; in others they were restricted in observing the action and commenting on it. The chorus also separated the individual sins by singing and dancing choral odes, though just what the singing and dancing were like is uncertain. The odes were in strict metrical patterns; sometimes they were direct comments on the action and characters, and at other times they were more general statements and judgments. A chorus in Greek fashion is not common in later plays, although there are instances such as T.S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral, in which the Women of Canterbury serve as a chorus.
On occasion a single actor may perform the function of a chorus, as do the aptly named Chorus in Shakespeare's Henry V and the Stage Manager in Thornton Wilder's Our Town. Alfieri in the View from the Bridge functions both as a chorus and a minor character in the action of the play.
Reference:
The Norton Introduction to Literature (Combined Shorter Edition) Edited by Carl E. Bain, Jerome Beaty & J. Paul Hunter Copyright 1973 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. and published simultaneously in Canada by Goerge J. McLeod Limited, Toronto
by: Eduardo M. Tajonera Jr.
The interest generated by the plot varies for different kinds of plays. (See fiction elements on plot for more information regarding plot.) The plot is usually structured with acts and scenes.
Open conflict plays: rely on the suspense of a struggle in which the hero, through perhaps fight against all odds, is not doomed. Dramatic thesis: foreshadowing, in the form of ominous hints or symbolic incidents, conditions the audience to expect certain logical developments. Coincidence: sudden reversal of fortune plays depict climatic ironies or misunderstandings. Dramatic irony: the fulfillment of a plan, action, or expectation in a surprising way, often opposite of what was intended.
Reference:
Encarta Encyclopedia
Theme
The plot has been called the body of a play and the theme has been called its soul. Most plays have a conflict of some kind between individuals, between man and society, man and some superior force or man and h imself. The events that this conflict provokes make up the plot. One of the first items of interest is the playwright\rquote s treatment of the plot and what them he would draw from it. The same plots have been and will be used many times; it is the treatment that supplies each effort with originality or artistic worth. Shakespeare is said to have borrowed all but one of his stories, but he presented them so much better than any of the previous authors that he is not seriously criticized for the borrowing. Th e treatment of theme is equally varied.
The same theme or story may be given a very serious or a very light touch. It may be a severe indictment or a tongue-in- cheek attack. It could point up a great lesson or show the same situation as a handicap to progress. The personality, background an d social or artistic temperament of the playwright are responsible for the treatment that he gives to his story or theme. We must, therefore, both understand and evaluate these factors.
To endure, a play should have a theme. It is sometimes suggested in the title as in Loyalties, Justice, or Strife, You can't Take It With You, or The Physician in Spite of Himself. At other times it is found in the play itself, as in Craig's Wife when the aunt says to Mrs. Craig, "People who live to themselves are often left to themselves." Sometimes theme is less obvious, necessitating closer study.
If a play has a theme, we should be able to state it in general terms and in a single sentence, even at the risk of oversimplification. The theme of Hamlet is usually stated as the failure of a youth of poetic temperament to cope with circumstances that demand action. The theme of Macbeth is that too much ambition leads to destruction; a Streetcar Named Desire, that he who strives hardes t to find happiness oftentimes finds the least; and of Green pastures, that even God must change with the universe.
Of course the theme, no matter how fully stated, is not the equivalent of the play. The play is a complex experience, and one must remain open to its manifold suggestions.
As indicated above, the statement of the play in specific terms is the plot presented. Plot and theme should go hand in hand. If the theme is one of nobility, or dignity, the plot must concern events and characters that measure up to that theme. As we a nalyze many plays, we find that some posses an excellent theme, but are supported by an inconsequential plot. One famous play of this nature, Abie's Irish Rose, held the stage for many years. The theme said: Difference of r eligion need not hinder a happy marriage. The plot was so thin and both characters and situation so stereotyped, that justice was not done to the theme. This weakness was most obvious in the play's revival after twenty years.
Examples of the frequent fault of superior plot and little or no theme come to us in much of the work of our current playwrights. Known for their cleverness in phrasing and timing, and their original extremely witty conceptions, these plays are often ver y successful. More often than not, however, they are utterly lacking in a theme or truth that will withstand more than momentary analysis. They are delightful but ephemeral. An audience believes them only while watching in the theatre. Consequently, the author, although now among ou r most popular, will not endure as artists, nor are their plays likely to be revived a hundred years hence. They but emphasize more strongly the axiom that a good plot or conflict is needed for transitory success, but a great theme is more likely to assu re a play a long life.
Reference:
Wright, E.A. (1969). A PRIMER FOR PLAYGOERS. Englewood Cliffs; PRENTICE-HALL, INC., pp.156-158
Dialogue provides the substance of a play. Each word uttered by the character furthers the business of the play, contributes to its effect as a whole. Therefore, a sense of DECORUM must be established by the characters, ie., what is said is appropriate to the role and situation of a character. Also the exposition of the play often falls on the dialogue of the characters. Remember exposition establishes the relationships, tensions or conflicts from which later plot developments derive.
Any artificial picture of life must start from the detail of actuality. An audience must be able to recognize it; however changed; we want to check it against experience. Death for exampl e, is something we cannot know. In every man it is represented as an embodying some of our feelings about it. So Death is partly humanized, enough, anyway, for us to be able to explore what the dramatist thinks about it.
Conversely, the detail of actuality in realistic drama can be chosen and presented in such a way as to suggest that it stands for more on the stage than it would in life. The Cherry Orchard family, in the excitement of their departure, overlook s their old servant Firs. Placed with striking force at the end of the play, this trivial accident becomes an incisive and major comment on everything the family has done.
So it is dramatic speech. A snatch of phase caught in everyday conversation may mean little, Used by an actor on a stage, it can assume general and typical qualities. The context into which it is put can make it pull more than its conversation al weight, no matter how simple words. Consider Othello\rquote s bare repetition: 'Put out the light, end then put out the light.' In its context the repetition prefigures precisely the comparison Shakespeare is about to make between the lam Othello is holding and Desdemona's life and being. Its heavy rhythm suggests the strained tone and obsessed mood of the man, and an almost priestlike attitude behind the twin motions. We begin to see the murder of Desdemona in the larger general terms of a ritualistic sacrifice. Poetry is made of words, which can be in use in more prosaic ways; dramatic speech, with its basis in ordinary co nversation, is speech that has had a specific pressure put on it.
Why do words begin to assume general qualities, and why do they become dramatic? Here are two problems on either side of the same coin. The words in both cases depend upon the kind of attention we give them. The artist using them, whether aut hor or actors, force them upon us, and in a variety of ways try to fix the quality of our attention.
If dialogue carefully follows the way we speak in life, as it is likely to go i n a naturalistic play, the first step towards understanding how it departs from actuality can be awkward. It is helpful to cease to submit the pretence for the moment. An apparent reproduction of ordinary conversation will be, in good drama, a constructio n of word setup to do many jobs that are not immediately obvious. Professor Erick Bently has written of Ibsen's 'opaque, uninviting sentences' :
An ibsenite sentence often performs four or five function at once. It shed light on the character spo ken about, it furthers the plot; it functions ironically is conveying to the audience a meaning different from that conveyed to the characters.
It is true that conversation itself can sometimes be taken to do this thing. 'Whatever you think. I'm going to tell him what you said.' is a remark which in its context can shed light on the speaker, the person spoken to and the spoken about. For a fourth person listening, as spectator witnesses a play, there may also be an element of that mean something only to himself as observer. In the play the difference lies first in an insistence that the words go somewhere, move towards a predetermined end. It lies in a charge of meaning that will advance the action.
This is argued in a statement in Strindberg's manifesto for the naturalistic theatre. He says of his characters that he has 'permitted he minds to work irregularly as they do in reality, where, during conversation, the cogs of mind seem more or less haphazardly to engage those of another one, an where no topic is fully exhausted.' But he adds that. While the dialogue seems to stray a good deal in the opening scenes, \lquote it acquires a material that later on is worked over, picked up again repeated, expounded, and built up the theme in a musical composition.'
It is a question of economy. The desultory and clumsy talk of real life, with its interruptions, overlapping, in decisions and repetitions, talk without direction, wastes our interest\emdash unless, like the chatter given to Jane Austen\rquote s Miss Bates, it hides relevance in irrelevance. It follows the dialogue which the wit and vitality in Shaw's dialogue yet ignore the question of its relevance to the action.
When the actor examines the text to prepare his part, he looks for what makes the words different from conversation, that is he looks for the structural elements of the building, for links of characteristic thought in the character, and so on . He persists till he has shaped in his mind a firm and workable pattern of his part. Now the clues sought by the actor hidden beneath the surface of the dialogue are the playgoer's guides too. The actor and producer Stanislavsky have called these clues the 'subtext' of a play.
The subtext is a web of innumerable, varied inner patterns inside a play and a part, woven from 'magic ifs' , given circumstances, all sorts of figments of the imagination, inner movements, objects of attention, smaller and greater truths and a belief in them, adaptations, adjustmen ts and other similar elements. It is subtext that makes us say the words we do in a play.
And in another place he says that 'the whole text of the play will be accompanied by a sub textual stream of images, like a moving picture constantly thrown on the screen of our inner vision, to guide us as we speak and act on the stage.' Once we admit that the words must propose and substantiate the play\rquote s meaning, we shall find in them more and more of the author's wishes.
For dramat ic dialogue has other work to do before it provides a table of words to be spoken. In the absence of the author it must provide a set of unwritten working directives to the actor on how to speak its speeches. And before that, it has to teach him how to think and feel them: the particularly of a play requires this if is not to be animated by a series of cardboard stereotypes.
Dramatic dialogue works by a number of instinctively agreed codes. Some tell the producer how to arrange the figures on the stage. Others tell him what he should hear as the pattern of sound echoing and contradicting, changing tone, rising and falling. These are directives strongly compelling him to hear the key in which a scene should be played, and the tone and temp of the melody. Others oblige him to start particular rhythmic movements of emotion flowing between the stage and the audience. He is th en left to marry the colour and shape of the stage picture with the music he finds recorded in the text.
Good dialogue works like this and throws out a 'substextual stream of images'; Even if the limits within which these effects work are narrow, even if the effect lies in the barest or simplest of speeches, we may expect to hear the text humming the tune as it cannot in real life. Dialogue should be read and heard as a dramatic score.
Reference:
The Elements of Drama by J.L. Styan
Cambridge University Press 1960
The means the playwright employs are determined at least in part by dramatic convention. Greek: Playwrights of this era often worked with familiar story material, legend about gods and famous families that the audience was familiar with. Since the audience was familiar with certain aspects of these, the playwrights used allusion rather than explicit exposition. In representing action, they often relied on messengers to report off-stage action. For interpretation the Greeks relied on the CHORUS, a body of onlookers, usually citizens or elders, whose comments on the play reflected reactions common to the community. These plays were written in metered verse arranged in elaborate stanzas. This required intense attention from the audience. English Drama: Minor chara cters play an important role in providing information and guiding interpretation. The confidant, a friend or servant, listens to the complaints, plans and reminiscences of a major character. Minor characters casually comment among themselves on major characters and plot development. Extended SOLILOQUY enables a major character to reveal his thoughts in much greater detail than in natural dialogue. ASIDES, remarks made to the audience but not heard by those on the stage, are common. Realism: Toward the end of the nineteenth century, realistic depiction of everyday life entered the genre of drama, whereas the characters may be unconventional and their thoughts turbulent and fantasy-ridden. Contemporary: Experimentation seems to be the key word here. A NARRATOR replaces the messenger, the chorus and the confidant. FLASHBACKS often substitute for narration. Many contemporary playwrights have abandoned recognizable setting, chronological sequence and characterization through dialogue.
Reference :
Encarta Encyclopedia
