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DRAMA

• Types of Drama
• Tragedy
• solemn, personal, religious Social Issues
• Tragic Flaw Catharsis

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Types of Drama

• Tragedy solemn, personal, religious social
  issues often ends in death
• Tragic Flaw our hero often suffers from great
  pride (hubris) and this leads to a grave mistake
  leading to tragedy
• Catharsis Pity Fear The audience pities the
  actors suffering on stage and fears they too
  might make a mistake and suffer a similar fate
• Comedy humorous/solving often ends in a
  marriage
• Farce Physical think three stooges
• Satire Morals/ Manners makes fun of society
  and its ways

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Analyzing Drama Setting

• Scenery illustrates location, time period,
  social class
• Lighting shows time, season, mood, action, and
  character
• Costumes reveal age, class, profession, and
  ethnicity
• Props have significance!

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Dramatic Structure similar to novels

• Exposition ( who, what, where, when)
• Conflict (Problem of main character)
• In Phaedrea, what is her main problem?
• Climax (Pivotal point in action)
• What happens when Phaedra is rejected by
  Hippolytus?
• Resolution ( How does it all work out?)
• What happens to Phaedra, Hippolytus and Theseus
  at the end?

Climax
Conflict
Resolution
Expo
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Characterization

• Types of Characters
• Protagonist vs. Antagonist
• Confidant (friend or servant)
• Stock characters comic, victim, braggart,
  pretender, fool
• How do characters reveal themselves?
• Externally Names, appearance, physique, speech,
  accent, dress, status, class, education, friends,
  family, interests.
• Internally thoughts, feelings, emotions.

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Theme Overall Message

• Theme main points of the play
• In Phaedra, love, revenge, suicide are some
  themes
• Overall message of the play
• In Phaedra, love can be terrible, revenge causes
  great pain, and suicide does not solve problems

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Irony

• Dramatic Irony Contrast between what the
  characters know and what the audience knows.

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Neo-ClassicismRacines Phaedra is a tributeto
classical plays of old and followsNeoclassic
conventions described below

• Neoclassic plays illustrated
• a regard for tradition and reverence for the
  classics, with an accompanying distrust of
  innovation
• a sense of literature as art--that is, as
  something "artificed" or "artificial," made by
  craft hence the value put on "rules,"
  conventions, "decorum," the properties of
  received genres.
• a concern for social reality tenets or rules of
  society.

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Neo-Classicism

• Also illustrated
• 4. a concern for "nature"--or the way things are
  (and should be). This relates back to the
  distrust of innovation and inherent conservatism
  of neoclassicism. The artistic rules of old, for
  instance, Pope describes as having been
  "discovered, not devised" and are "Nature
  methodized" so too, "Nature and Homer" are "the
  same" This belief in "nature" implies a
  conviction that there is a permanent, universal
  way things are (and should be), which obviously
  entails fundamental political and ethical
  commitments.
• 5. a concern with "pride" as the root of threats
  to the above. We might see pride as in part
  standing for individual self assertion against
  the status quo ("nature"). Pope
• Of all the causes which conspire to blind Man's
  erring judgment, and misguide the mind, What the
  weak head with strongest bias rules, Is pride,
  the never-failing vice of fools.

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Neoclassic plays followed the Three Unities

• The three unities or classical unities are rules
  for drama derived from Aristotle's Poetics. In
  their neoclassical form they are as follows
• The unity of action a play should have one main
  action that it follows, with no or few subplots.
• The unity of place a play should cover a single
  physical space and should not attempt to compress
  geography, nor should the stage represent more
  than one place.
• The unity of time a play should represent an
  action that takes approximately the same amount
  of time as the play years should not pass during
  the hours a play takes.
• Aristotle does not mention the unity of place. It
  should be noted that Aristotle was writing after
  the golden age of Greek drama, and many Greek
  playwrights, notably Aeschylus, wrote plays that
  do not fit within these conventions.
• However, 16th century Italian and 17th century
  French critics of the neoclassical movement
  expanded Aristotle's descriptions to make them
  into rules for how any play must be structured.