TYPES OF THE DRAMA

CHAPTER III
 Types of Comedy Drama
• Romantic Comedy Drama
• Satiric Comedy Drama
• Comedy of Manners Drama
• Farce Drama
• Comedy of Humors Drama
• Melodrama
 Romantic Comedy
• A pair of lovers and their struggle to come
altogether is usually at the centre of this type.
• Some extraordinary circumstances
E.g. magic, dreams, fairy-world, etc.
E.g. A midsummer Nights' dream
As You Like It
Romantic Comedy Examples
 Satiric Comedy Drama
• Has critical purpose
• Usually attacks philosophical notions
• Or political practices as well as general
deviations from social norms by ridiculing
characters.
• Early writer is Aristophanes (450-385) The
Acharnians, The knights, The Clouds etc.
• Ben Jonson’s Volpone and The Alchemist
Satiric Comedy Drama Examples
 Comedy of Manners Drama
• Artificial and sophisticated behavior of the
higher social classes under closer scrutiny.
• Usually about love, or sort of amorous intrigue
and the language is marked by witty
repartees and cynicism.
• Playwrights such as Terence and Plautus,
William Wycherley and William Congreve
Comedy of Manners Drama Examples
 Farce Drama
• Provokes viewers to hearty laughter verbal
humor an physical comedy
• Such as Italian Comedy Dell’arte
• Shakespeare’s The Taming of The Shrew
Farce Drama Examples
 Comedy of Humors Drama
• Person’s character is determined by
predominance of four humors they are:
– Body liquids
• Blood sanguine (optimistic)
• Phlegm /phlegmatic (calm)
• Yellow bile (choleric)
• Black bile (melancholic)
– Eccentricity or distorted personality
– E.g. Ben Jonson’s Every man in His Humor
Comedy of Humors Drama Example
 Melodrama
• Mixes romantic or sensational plots with
musical elements.
• Emotions and usually has a happy ending
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Pygmalion
Melodrama Example
 Types of Tragedy Drama
• Senecan Tragedy
• Revenge Tragedy/ Tragedy of Blood
• Tragicomedy Shakespeare’s The Merchant of
Venice
 Senecan Tragedy
• By Roman Poet Seneca (4BC- 65 AD)
• Recited than staged
• Five-act structure
• A complex plot
• Elevated style of dialogue
• e.g. Gorboduc (1561), by Thomas Sackville and
Thomas Norton.
Senecan Tragedy Example
 Revenge Tragedy/ Tragedy of Blood
• In Elizabethan Age
• Murder, revenge, and ghost
• Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus and Hamlet
• Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta
• Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy
Revenge Tragedy/ Tragedy of Blood
Examples
 Tragicomedy
• Mixed of tragedy and comedy
• Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice
• Fletcher’s The Faithful Shepherdess
• Middleton’s and Rowley’s The Changeling
• Tourneur’s The Revenger's Tragedy
Tragicomedy Examples
THE END