Classification: Drama in Simple Words Can Be

Classification: Drama

Drama in simple words can be defined as role-playing. For a more comprehensive definition, we turn to experts. Courtney (1980) defines Drama as, "the human process whereby imaginative thought becomes action, drama is based on internal empathy and identification, and leads to external impersonation (both overt and covert). It is this act of impersonation that creates meaning through interaction with the external world, specially other people. In education such spontaneous dramatic action takes the form of children's play, improvisation and role-play." (Courtney, 1980 p. vii)

Drama and theatre have been an important part of literature and entertainment. The plays can range from one to ten acts but the main elements will always be the same, depending on the classification. A play can either be a tragedy or comedy. These are two broad classifications of drama and while they differ in the techniques they use, the fact remains that drama is all about language and dialogue. In Donohoe's edition of Essays on Modern Quebec Theatre, one essayist writes that "drama is defined as language in action. Contrary to the novel, in which the story is told directly through narration, drama must communicate indirectly via dialogue. Therefore, to find speech to be precisely the object of the subject's quest is not surprising. Form reflects content, and most plays can be read in part as metaphors of the playwright's struggle with his own language." (p. 127)

Since it is the form that dictates the content, it is time we understand the two broad classifications of drama. Tragedy and Comedy have by far been the only two most easily recognized forms of drama. Tragedy typically is a play that ends unhappily and comedies usually have a pleasant ending. However some experts believe that comedies and tragedies should not be judged by the ending alone. The content of the play reveals exactly what form of play it is. But for a novice, it is easier to classify drama on the basis of ending.

Tragedy deals with adversity or it is believed to deal with unhappiness. Comedy on the other hand deals primarily with joy and laughter. These are the main points of distinction and goes back to the time of Aristotle and Dante. Dante in the 14th century had called his epic "divine comedy" (La Divina Commedia) simply on the basis of this distinction. He believed that comedy is something that "begins adversely and terribly, but closes on a note of happiness, delight, and charm," being expressed in a style "mild and humble."

Daniello (1536) identified some typical characterizes of comedies and tragedies and found that that content of comedies was based on "familiar and domestic occurrences, not to say base and even vicious, while the tragic poets treat of the deaths of high kings and the ruins of great empires." Minturno (1559) also came up with some features that would set comedies and tragedies apart. He thought that tragedies often deal with "serious and grave happenings" and that it concerned "those of high rank," while comedy dealt with "the middle sections of society -- common people of the city or the country."

Around the same time, Scaliger agreed with these typical characteristics and wrote that: "Comedy introduces characters from rustic, or low city life.... Tragedy, on the contrary, introduces kings and princes.... A tragedy begins more tranquilly than a comedy, but the ending is full of horror."

Castelvetro also supported these conceptions saying, "the common action of a private citizen is the subject of comedy, while the actions of kings are the subject of tragedy." 5

And it seems that things hadn't changed even a full century later when Chapelain declared that "in Tragedy, which is the noblest form of drama, the poet imitates the actions of the great; in Comedy, those of people in middle or low condition. The ending of Comedy is happy."

But this distinction was not necessarily the right compass to use for identification. If this method was used then any play ending in disaster was a tragedy and any that introduced middle-classes was a comedy. By the 17th century, critics began noticing some other points of distinction and raised their voice against the commonly held belief that tragedy dealt with royal class and comedy with the masses. So in 1660, Pierre Corneille wrote:

when one puts on the stage a simple love intrigue between persons of royal birth, and when these run no risk either of their lives or of their states, I do not think that, even though the characters are illustrious, the action is of such a sort as to raise the play to tragic levels.

A in the 18th century, drama had come to adopt a more sophisticated form and was now more critically judged than before. Thus Johnson found errors with the earlier theories of drama and wrote: "They seem to have thought," he muses, that as the meanest of personages constituted comedy, their greatness was sufficient to form a tragedy; and that nothing was necessary but that they should crowd the scene with monarchs, and generals, and guards; and to make them talk, at certain intervals, of the downfall of kingdoms, and the rout of armies.