Chapter 11 Tragedy and Other Serious Drama

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Chapter 11Tragedy and Other Serious Drama

• What characterizes serious drama?
• Thoughtful, sober attitude toward its subject
• Audience intended to consider the material
  carefully
• Emotional involvement in the passion and
  suffering of the characters
• Serious Dramatic Forms include
• Tragedy
• Heroic Drama
• Domestic Drama
• Melodrama

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Tragedy

• What are the basic questions of human existence?
• Tragedy attempts to place the
• ultimate highs and lows of humanity onstage.
• Tragedy assumes that the universe is indifferent
  to human concerns and is often cruel and
  malevolent.
• 2 Types of Tragedy
• Traditional Tragedy
• Periods of the past such as Ancient Greece and
  Renaissance England
• Modern Tragedy
• Late 19th century to present day

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Traditional Tragedy

• 3 Major periods of tragedy
• Greece, 5th century B.C.
• - Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides
• England, late 16th and early 17th centuries
• - Shakespeare, Marlowe, Kyd, Webster
• France, 17th century
• - Racine, Corneille

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Characteristics of Traditional Tragedy

• Tragic Heroes Heroines
• Extraordinary people kings, queens, nobles
• Suffer from a tragic flaw hubris (pride)
• Tragic Circumstances
• The idea of a fateful web a world outside the
  characters control
• Tragic Irretrievability
• The point at which there is no turning back the
  character must face his/her fate
• Acceptance of Responsibility
• The capacity and willingness to suffer for
  actions
• Tragic Verse
• High language to address lofty concerns
• Considered the only means by which such heights
  and depths of emotion can adequately be expressed

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The Effect of Tragedy

• The Contradictory
• Responses to Tragedy
• The cruelty and corruption of the world
• versus
• The dignity of life and the beauty of art
• Pessimism versus Optimism

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Modern Tragedy

• Characteristics
• Written in prose
• Dealing with the common man
• The new tragic view based on modern society
• Major Playwrights
• Ibsen, Chekhov, Strindberg
• Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Eugene ONeill
• But is this new approach still tragedy
• in the purest sense?

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Heroic Drama

• Serious drama with the characteristics of
  traditional tragedy with two exceptions
• A happy ending
• An optimistic world view
• Eastern traditions employ this style often.
• Sometimes known as romantic drama.
• Western Examples
• Cyrano de Bergerac (Edmond Rostand - 1897)
• Saint Joan (Bertolt Brecht 1929-32)

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Domestic Drama

• The replacement of heroic drama, domestic
  (bourgeois) drama reflects modern society.
• Domestic Indicates plays dealing with the
  family or the home
• Bourgeois Indicates plays dealing with
  characters of the middle or lower classes
• The power of domestic drama lies in its ability
  to present the audience with characters that are
  easily recognizable and identifiable.

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Melodrama

• 18th and 19th Century popular theater
• music drama or song drama
• Characteristics
• The audience is drawn into the action.
• The issues are clear-cut / strong delineation of
  right wrong
• The characters are clearly good or bad
• Exaggerated action Living in danger on the edge
  of calamity
• Strong emphasis on suspense

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Melodrama Today

• Connections to film and television genres
• Westerns
• Soap Operas
• Science Fiction
• Horror
• Melodrama can also reflect
• the moral or political base of society.