• Drama

• Drama is different from other genres of literature. It has unique

characteristics that have come about in response to its peculiar
nature. Really, it is difficult to separate drama from performance
because during the stage performance of a play, drama brings life
experiences realistically to the audience.
• When you are reading a novel, you read a story as told by the
novelist. The poem’s message in most cases is not direct because it is
presented in a compact form or in a condensed language. The
playwright does not tell the story instead you get the story as the
characters interact and live out their experiences on stage. In drama,
the characters/actors talk to themselves and react to issues
according to the impulse of the moment. Drama is therefore
presented in dialogue.
• You can see that as a genre of literature, drama occupies a unique
position. It is also the most active of other genres of literature
because of the immediate impact it has on the audience. It is used to
inform, to educate to entertain and in some cases to mobilize the
audience.
• Drama is an imitation of an action. It is a branch of literature which is
both literary art and representational art. As a literary art, it deals
with fiction or an imaginary story that is presented through
characters and dialogue. However, it is a special kind of fiction
because it is designed to be acted out rather than narrated.
• What is a definition of Drama?
• A literary work written to be acted on the stage before the audience
by a group of characters (tragedy – comedy – farce – melodrama)
• What are the elements of drama?
• Aristotle considered these six things to be essential to good drama:
• • Plot: This is what happens in the play. Plot refers to the action; the
basic storyline of the play.
• • Theme: While plot refers to the action of the play, theme refers to
the meaning of the play. Theme is the main idea or lesson to be
learned from the play. In some cases, the theme of a play is obvious;
other times it is quite subtle.
•
• • Characters: Characters are the people (sometimes animals or
ideas) portrayed by the actors in the play. It is the characters who
move the action, or plot, of the play forward.
• • Dialogue: This refers to the words written by the playwright and
spoken by the characters in the play. The dialogue helps move the
action of the play along.
• • Music/Rhythm (song): While music is often featured in drama, in
this case Aristotle was referring to the rhythm of the actors' voices as
they speak.
• • Spectacle: This refers to the visual elements of a play: sets,
costumes, special effects, etc. Spectacle is everything that the
audience sees as they watch the play.

• Literary Terms:
• Absurd: Absurd means utterly opposed to truth or reason, or the
unintellectual and unreasonable thing.
• Angry Young Man: it apples to British young generation who was in
revolt against the social systems in the 1950s.
• Blank Verse
• Blank verse is poetry written with regular metrical but unrhymed
lines, almost always in iambic pentameter.
• Catharsis: Greek meaning "purification" or "cleansing") is the
purification and purgation of emotions—particularly pity and fear—
through art
• Chorus: means:-
• 1- a company of singers and dancers in Athenian drama participating
in or commenting on the action
• 2- a character in Elizabethan drama who speaks the prologue.
• 3- an organized company of singers who sing in concert.
• 4- a group of dancers and singers supporting the featured players in a
musical comedy.
• Comedy:
• Comedy is a broad genre of film, television, and literature in which
the goal is to make an audience laugh.
• Tragedy
• A serious drama typically describing a conflict between the
protagonist and a superior force (such as destiny) and having a
sorrowful or disastrous conclusion that elicits pity or terror.
• Farce:
• A farce is a comedy in which everything is absolutely absurd. Or a
comedy in which laugh comes from situations rather than
characterization.
• Melodrama:
• A melodrama is a story or play in which there are a lot of exciting or
sad events and in which people's emotions are very exaggerated.
• Miracle Plays:
• OR Medieval mystery plays focused on the representation of Bible
stories as the Creation, Adam and Eve, the murder of Abel, and the
Last Judgment.
• Morality Plays:
• 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.
• Restoration Comedy: Comedy of manners
• Revenge Tragedy:
• Drama in which the dominant motive is revenge for a real or
imagined injury; it was a favourite form of English tragedy in the
Elizabethan and Jacobean eras and found its highest expression in
William Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
• Setting:
• The time and place of a literary work. The background to a story; the
physical location of a play, story, or novel.
• Soliloquy:
• A speech in a play that the character speaks to himself or herself or
to the people watching rather than to the other characters.