| Home | Menu | Poems | Poets | Reading | Theme | Biography | Articles | Photo | Dictionary | Chat | Video | Shop | Extra | Jokes | Games | Science | Bio | বাংলা

Adequacy [Elizabeth Barrett Browning] 1806-1861


Elizabeth Barrett Browning

NOW, by the verdure on thy thousand hills,
Beloved England, doth the earth appear
Quite good enough for men to overbear
The will of God in, with rebellious wills !
We cannot say the morning-sun fulfils
Ingloriously its course, nor that the clear
Strong stars without significance insphere
Our habitation: we, meantime, our ills
Heap up against this good and lift a cry
Against this work-day world, this ill-spread feast,
As if ourselves were better certainly
Than what we come to. Maker and High Priest,
I ask thee not my joys to multiply,--
Only to make me worthier of the least.

A Year's Spinning [Elizabeth Barrett Browning] 1806-1861


Elizabeth Barrett Browning

1
He listened at the porch that day,
To hear the wheel go on, and on;
And then it stopped, ran back away,
While through the door he brought the sun:
But now my spinning is all done.

2
He sat beside me, with an oath
That love ne'er ended, once begun;
I smiled--believing for us both,
What was the truth for only one:
And now my spinning is all done.

3
My mother cursed me that I heard
A young man's wooing as I spun:
Thanks, cruel mother, for that word--
For I have, since, a harder known!
And now my spinning is all done.

4
I thought--O God!--my first-born's cry
Both voices to mine ear would drown:
I listened in mine agony--
It was the silence made me groan!
And now my spinning is all done.

5
Bury me 'twixt my mother's grave,
(Who cursed me on her death-bed lone)
And my dead baby's (God it save!)
Who, not to bless me, would not moan.
And now my spinning is all done.

6
A stone upon my heart and head,
But no name written on the stone!
Sweet neighbours, whisper low instead,
"This sinner was a loving one--
And now her spinning is all done."

7
And let the door ajar remain,
In case he should pass by anon;
And leave the wheel out very plain,--
That HE, when passing in the sun,
May see the spinning is all done.

A Woman's Shortcomings (Elizabeth Barrett Browning)


Elizabeth Barrett Browning

She has laughed as softly as if she sighed,
She has counted six, and over,
Of a purse well filled, and a heart well tried -
Oh, each a worthy lover!
They "give her time"; for her soul must slip
Where the world has set the grooving;
She will lie to none with her fair red lip:
But love seeks truer loving.

She trembles her fan in a sweetness dumb,
As her thoughts were beyond recalling;
With a glance for one, and a glance for some,
From her eyelids rising and falling;
Speaks common words with a blushful air,
Hears bold words, unreproving;
But her silence says - what she never will swear -
And love seeks better loving.

Go, lady! lean to the night-guitar,
And drop a smile to the bringer;
Then smile as sweetly, when he is far,
At the voice of an in-door singer.
Bask tenderly beneath tender eyes;
Glance lightly, on their removing;
And join new vows to old perjuries -
But dare not call it loving!

Unless you can think, when the song is done,
No other is soft in the rhythm;
Unless you can feel, when left by One,
That all men else go with him;
Unless you can know, when unpraised by his breath,
That your beauty itself wants proving;
Unless you can swear "For life, for death!" -
Oh, fear to call it loving!

Unless you can muse in a crowd all day
On the absent face that fixed you;
Unless you can love, as the angels may,
With the breadth of heaven betwixt you;
Unless you can dream that his faith is fast,
Through behoving and unbehoving;
Unless you can die when the dream is past -
Oh, never call it loving!

A Thought For A Lonely Death-Bed [Elizabeth Barrett Browning]


Elizabeth Barrett Browning

IF God compel thee to this destiny,
To die alone, with none beside thy bed
To ruffle round with sobs thy last word said
And mark with tears the pulses ebb from thee,--
Pray then alone, ' O Christ, come tenderly !
By thy forsaken Sonship in the red
Drear wine-press,--by the wilderness out-spread,--
And the lone garden where thine agony
Fell bloody from thy brow,--by all of those
Permitted desolations, comfort mine !
No earthly friend being near me, interpose
No deathly angel 'twixt my face aud thine,
But stoop Thyself to gather my life's rose,
And smile away my mortal to Divine ! '

A Sea-Side Walk [Elizabeth Barrett Browning] 1806-1861


Elizabeth Barrett Browning

We walked beside the sea,
After a day which perished silently
Of its own glory---like the Princess weird
Who, combating the Genius, scorched and seared,
Uttered with burning breath, 'Ho! victory!'
And sank adown, an heap of ashes pale;
So runs the Arab tale.

The sky above us showed
An universal and unmoving cloud,
On which, the cliffs permitted us to see
Only the outline of their majesty,
As master-minds, when gazed at by the crowd!
And, shining with a gloom, the water grey
Swang in its moon-taught way.

Nor moon nor stars were out.
They did not dare to tread so soon about,
Though trembling, in the footsteps of the sun.
The light was neither night's nor day's, but one
Which, life-like, had a beauty in its doubt;
And Silence's impassioned breathings round
Seemed wandering into sound.

O solemn-beating heart
Of nature! I have knowledge that thou art
Bound unto man's by cords he cannot sever---
And, what time they are slackened by him ever,
So to attest his own supernal part,
Still runneth thy vibration fast and strong,
The slackened cord along.

For though we never spoke
Of the grey water anal the shaded rock,---
Dark wave and stone, unconsciously, were fused
Into the plaintive speaking that we used,
Of absent friends and memories unforsook;
And, had we seen each other's face, we had
Seen haply, each was sad.

A Musical Instrument [Elizabeth Barrett Browning]


Elizabeth Barrett Browning

What was he doing, the great god Pan,
Down in the reeds by the river?
Spreading ruin and scattering ban,
Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,
And breaking the golden lilies afloat
With the dragon-fly on the river.

He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,
From the deep cool bed of the river:
The limpid water turbidly ran,
And the broken lilies a-dying lay,
And the dragon-fly had fled away,
Ere he brought it out of the river.

High on the shore sat the great god Pan
While turbidly flowed the river;
And hacked and hewed as a great god can,
With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed,
Till there was not a sign of the leaf indeed
To prove it fresh from the river.

He cut it short, did the great god Pan,
(How tall it stood in the river!)
Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man,
Steadily from the outside ring,
And notched the poor dry empty thing
In holes, as he sat by the river.

'This is the way,' laughed the great god Pan
(Laughed while he sat by the river),
'The only way, since gods began
To make sweet music, they could succeed.'
Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed,
He blew in power by the river.

Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan!
Piercing sweet by the river!
Blinding sweet, O great god Pan!
The sun on the hill forgot to die,
And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly
Came back to dream on the river.

Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,
To laugh as he sits by the river,
Making a poet out of a man:
The true gods sigh for the cost and pain, --
For the reed which grows nevermore again
As a reed with the reeds in the river.

A Man's Requirements [Elizabeth Barrett Browning]


Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I

Love me Sweet, with all thou art,
Feeling, thinking, seeing;
Love me in the lightest part,
Love me in full being.

II

Love me with thine open youth
In its frank surrender;
With the vowing of thy mouth,
With its silence tender.

III

Love me with thine azure eyes,
Made for earnest grantings;
Taking colour from the skies,
Can Heaven's truth be wanting?

IV

Love me with their lids, that fall
Snow-like at first meeting;
Love me with thine heart, that all
Neighbours then see beating.

V

Love me with thine hand stretched out
Freely -- open-minded:
Love me with thy loitering foot, --
Hearing one behind it.

VI

Love me with thy voice, that turns
Sudden faint above me;
Love me with thy blush that burns
When I murmur 'Love me!'

VII

Love me with thy thinking soul,
Break it to love-sighing;
Love me with thy thoughts that roll
On through living -- dying.

VIII

Love me in thy gorgeous airs,
When the world has crowned thee;
Love me, kneeling at thy prayers,
With the angels round thee.

IX

Love me pure, as muses do,
Up the woodlands shady:
Love me gaily, fast and true,
As a winsome lady.

X

Through all hopes that keep us brave,
Farther off or nigher,
Love me for the house and grave,
And for something higher.

XI

Thus, if thou wilt prove me, Dear,
Woman's love no fable,
I will love thee -- half a year --
As a man is able.

Lost Time [Rabindranath Tagore] 1861 - 1941


Rabindranath Tagore

On many an idle day have I grieved over lost time.
But it is never lost, my lord.
Thou hast taken every moment of my life in thine own hands.

Hidden in the heart of things thou art nourishing seeds into sprouts,
buds into blossoms, and ripening flowers into fruitfulness.

I was tired and sleeping on my idle bed
and imagined all work had ceased.
In the morning I woke up
and found my garden full with wonders of flowers.

Lost Star [Rabindranath Tagore] 1861 - 1941


Rabindranath Tagore

When the creation was new and all the stars shone in their first
splendor, the gods held their assembly in the sky and sang
`Oh, the picture of perfection! the joy unalloyed!'

But one cried of a sudden
---`It seems that somewhere there is a break in the chain of light
and one of the stars has been lost.'

The golden string of their harp snapped,
their song stopped, and they cried in dismay
---`Yes, that lost star was the best,
she was the glory of all heavens!'

From that day the search is unceasing for her,
and the cry goes on from one to the other
that in her the world has lost its one joy!

Only in the deepest silence of night the stars smile
and whisper among themselves
---`Vain is this seeking! unbroken perfection is over all!'

Little Of Me [Rabindranath Tagore] 1861 - 1941


Rabindranath Tagore

Let only that little be left of me
whereby I may name thee my all.

Let only that little be left of my will
whereby I may feel thee on every side,
and come to thee in everything,
and offer to thee my love every moment.

Let only that little be left of me
whereby I may never hide thee.
Let only that little of my fetters be left
whereby I am bound with thy will,
and thy purpose is carried out in my life---and that is the fetter of thy love.

Little Flute [Rabindranath Tagore] 1861 - 1941


Rabindranath Tagore

Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure. This frail
vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with fresh life.

This little flute of a reed thou hast carried over hills and dales,
and hast breathed through it melodies eternally new.

At the immortal touch of thy hands my little heart loses its limits in
joy and gives birth to utterance ineffable.

Thy infinite gifts come to me only on these very small hands of mine.
Ages pass, and still thou pourest, and still there is room to fill.

Light [Rabindranath Tagore] 1861 - 1941


Rabindranath Tagore

Light, my light, the world-filling light,
the eye-kissing light,
heart-sweetening light!

Ah, the light dances, my darling, at the center of my life;
the light strikes, my darling, the chords of my love;
the sky opens, the wind runs wild, laughter passes over the earth.

The butterflies spread their sails on the sea of light.
Lilies and jasmines surge up on the crest of the waves of light.

The light is shattered into gold on every cloud, my darling,
and it scatters gems in profusion.

Mirth spreads from leaf to leaf, my darling,
and gladness without measure.
The heaven's river has drowned its banks
and the flood of joy is abroad.

Vernal Observations [Elizabeth Alexander]


Elizabeth Alexander

The forsythia cascades quiver

No breeze blowing any where else?

Gazing, again, ah the blossoms

A goldfinch constructing her nest!

Haircut [Elizabeth Alexander]


Elizabeth Alexander

I get off the IRT in front of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture after riding an early
Amtrak from Philly to get a hair cut at what used to be the Harlem "Y" barbershop. It gets me in at ten to
ten. Waiting, I eat fish cakes at the Pam Pam and listen to the ladies call out orders: bacon-biscuit twice,
scrambled scrambled fried, over easy, grits, country sausage on the side. Hugh is late. He shampoos me,
says "I can't remember, Girlfriend, are you tender-headed?" From the chair I notice the mural behind me
in the mirror. I know those overlapped sepia shadows, a Renaissance rainforest, Aaron Douglas! Hugh tells
me he didn't use primer and the chlorine eats the colors every day. He clips and combs and I tell him how
my favorite Douglas is called "Building More Stately Mansions," and he tells me how fly I'd look in a Salt 'n'
Pepa 'do, how he trained in Japan.
Clip clip, clip clip. I imagine a whoosh each time my hair lands on the floor and the noises of small brown
mammals. I remember, my father! He used to get his hair cut here, learned to swim in the caustic water,
played pool and basketball. He cuts his own hair now. My grandfather worked seventy-five years in
Harlem building more stately mansions. I was born two blocks away and then we moved.
None of that seems to relate to today. This is not my turf, despite the other grandfather and great-aunt who
sewed hearts back into black chests after Saturday night stabbings on this exact corner, the great-uncle who
made a mosaic down the street, both grandmothers. What am I always listening for in Harlem? A voice
that says, "This is your place, too," as faintly as the shadows in the mural? The accents are unfamiliar; all
my New York kin are dead. I never knew Fats Waller but what do I do with knowing he used to play with a
ham and a bottle of gin atop his piano; never went to Olivia's House of Beauty but I know Olivia, who lives
in St. Thomas, now, and who exactly am I, anyway, finding myself in these ghostly, Douglas shadows while
real ghosts walk around me, talk about my stuff in the subway, yell at me not to butt the line, beg me, beg
me, for my money?
What is black culture? I read the writing on the wall on the side of the "Y" as I always have: "Harlem Plays
the Best Ball in the World." I look in the mirror and see my face in the mural with a new haircut. I am a
New York girl; I am a New York woman; I am a flygirl with a new hair cut in New York City in a mural
that is dying every day.

You Should at Times Go Out [Elizabeth Daryush]

Elizabeth Daryush

You should at times go out
from where the faithful kneel,
visit the slums of doubt
and feel what the lost feel;

you should at times walk on,
away from your friends' ways,
go where the scorned have gone,
pass beyond blame and praise;

and at times you should quit
(ah yes) your sunny home,
sadly awhile should sit,
even, in wrong's dark room,

or ever, suddenly,
by simple bliss betrayed,
you shall be forced to flee,
unloved, alone, afraid.

The Railroad [Elizabeth Daryush] 1887 - 1977

Elizabeth Daryush

Along the iron rails
Plod still with panting power,
Range still the empty trails
Hour after hour;

Stare still where looms ahead
Each signal-skeleton,
Whose jerking arms forbid
Or bid you on,

Whose grim lamps rule the glooms
With stringent red or green—
Forget your sunny home's
Wild-paths between

Primrose and violet,
Your breeze-lit fields of rye...
Your golden sheaves forget—
Forget, or die.

Still-life [Elizabeth Daryush] 1887 - 1977

Elizabeth Daryush

Through the open French window the warm sun
Lights up the polished breakfast-table, laid
Round a bowl of crimson roses, for one -
A service of Worcester porcelain, arrayed
Near it a melon, peaches, figs, small hot
Rolls in a napkin, fairy rack of toast,
Butter in ice, high silver coffee-pot,
And, heaped on a salver, the morning's post.

She comes over the lawn, the young heiress,
From her early walk in her garden-wood,
Feeling that life's a table set to bless
Her delicate desires with all that's good.

That even the unopened future lies
Like a love-letter, full of sweet surprise.

Invalid Dawn [Elizabeth Daryush] 1887 - 1977

Elizabeth Daryush

Above the grey down
Gather, wan, the glows;
Relieved by leaden
Gleams a star-gang goes;

In the dark valley
Here and there enters
A spark, laggardly,
For the faint watchers
That were there all night -
Factory,station
And hospital light ...
Tired of lamp,star,sun,

Bound to my strait bed
Uncurtained I see
Heaven itself law-led,
Earth in slavery.

Flanders Fields [Elizabeth Daryush] 1887 - 1977

Elizabeth Daryush

Here the scanted daisy glows
Glorious as the carmined rose;
Here the hill-top's verdure mean
Fair is with unfading green;
Here, where sorrow still must tread,
All her graves are garlanded.

And still, O glad passer-by
Of the fields of agony,
Lower laughter's voice, and bare
Thy head in the valley where
Poppies bright and rustling wheat
Are a desert to love's feet.

Children of Wealth in your Warm Nursery [Elizabeth Daryush]

Elizabeth Daryush

Children of wealth in your warm nursery,
Set in the cushioned window-seat to watch
The volleying snow, guarded invisibly
By the clear double pane through which no touch
Untimely penetrates, you cannot tell
What winter means; its cruel truths to you
Are only sound and sight; your citadel
Is safe from feeling, and from knowledge too.

Go down, go out to elemental wrong,
Waste your too round limbs, tan your skin too white;
The glass of comfort, ignorance, seems strong
To-day, and yet perhaps this very night
You'll wake to horror's wrecking fire­your home
Is wired within for this, in every room.

We Have Been Friends Together [Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton]


Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton

WE have been friends together,
In sunshine and in shade;
Since first beneath the chestnut-trees
In infancy we played.
But coldness dwells within thy heart,
A cloud is on thy brow;
We have been friends together—
Shall a light word part us now?

We have been gay together;
We have laugh’d at little jests;
For the fount of hope was gushing
Warm and joyous in our breasts.
But laughter now hath fled thy lip,
And sullen glooms thy brow;
We have been gay together—
Shall a light word part us now?

We have been sad together,
We have wept, with bitter tears,
O’er the grass-grown graves, where slumber’d
The hopes of early years.
The voices which are silent there
Would bid thee clear thy brow;
We have been sad together—
Oh! what shall part us now?

The King Of Denmark’s Ride [Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton]


Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton

WORD was brought to the Danish king
(Hurry!)
That the love of his heart lay suffering,
And pin’d for the comfort his voice would bring;
(Oh! ride as though you were flying!)
Better he loves each golden curl
On the brow of that Scandinavian girl
Than his rich crown jewels of ruby and pearl;
And his rose of the isles is dying!

Thirty nobles saddled with speed,
(Hurry!)
Each one mounting a gallant steed
Which he kept for battle and days of need;
(Oh! ride as though you were flying!)
Spurs were struck in the foaming flank;
Worn-out chargers stagger’d and sank;
Bridles were slacken’d, and girths were burst;
But ride as they would, the king rode first,
For his rose of the isles lay dying!

His nobles are beaten, one by one;
(Hurry!)
They have fainted, and falter’d, and homeward gone;
His little fair page now follows alone,
For strength and for courage trying.
The king look’d back at that faithful child;
Wan was the face that answering smil’d;
They passed the drawbridge with clattering din,
Then he dropp’d; and only the king rode in
Where his rose of the isles lay dying!

The king blew a blast on his bugle horn;
(Silence!)
No answer came; but faint and forlorn
An echo return’d on the cold gray morn,
Like the breath of a spirit sighing.
The castle portal stood grimly wide;
None welcom’d the king from that weary ride;
For dead, in the light of the dawning day,
The pale sweet form of the welcomer lay,
Who had yearn’d for his voice while dying!

The panting steed, with a drooping crest,
Stood weary.
The king return’d from her chamber of rest,
The thick sobs choking in his breast;
And, that dumb companion eyeing,
The tears gush’d forth which he strove to check;
He bowed his head on his charger’s neck:
“O steed—that every nerve didst strain,
Dear steed, our ride hath been in vain
To the halls where my love lay dying!”

Love Not [Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton] 1808 - 1877



Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton

LOVE not, love not! ye hapless sons of clay!
Hope’s gayest wreaths are made of earthly flowers—
Things that are made to fade and fall away
Ere they have blossom’d for a few short hours.
Love not!

Love not! the thing ye love may change:
The rosy lip may cease to smile on you,
The kindly-beaming eye grow cold and strange,
The heart still warmly beat, yet not be true.
Love not!

Love not! the thing you love may die,
May perish from the gay and gladsome earth;
The silent stars, the blue and smiling sky,
Beam o’er its grave, as once upon its birth.
Love not!

Love not! oh warning vainly said
In present hours as in the years gone by;
Love flings a halo round the dear ones’ head,
Faultless, immortal, till they change or die,
Love not!

Articles of Drama List














































Roman Drama (Article)

A succession of writers adapted Greek originals to the Roman taste for rhetoric, spectacle, and sensationalism, buffoonery, homely wit, and biting repartee. Comedy almost certainly arose from a blending of the bawdy extempore joking by clowns at harvest festivals and marriage ceremonies with the performances of masked dancers and musicians who came from Etruria. From Etruria also came such theatrical terms as histrio for actor and persona for the person indicated by the mask. By the 3rd century BC Roman audiences would have been familiar with the secular entertainments of other Italian peoples—the phlyax comedies of Tarentum, for instance, and the Oscan fabula atellana, which were not unlike the comedy of mainland Greece. Although mime may well have been international from its inception, it was not until the beginning of the 3rd century that the spread of Greek drama led to the emergence of an organized Roman theatre, particularly after 250 BC, when plays were produced at the public festivals as part of the general celebrations. The advance to true drama was made by Livius Andronicus who was the first to produce at a public festival a fabula palliata, or Greek play in translation. From then until the end of the Republic adaptations of Greek tragedies and comedies predominated in the Roman theatre, together with a very few examples of the fabula praetexta, on a historical Roman theme, and a considerable number of the new-style fabula togata, or play on everyday Roman life. Among Roman dramatists there was no invention of plot or character on a grand scale. They were mainly concerned with supplying a non-reading public with live entertainment which blended a well-known story with topical allusions and a plentiful supply of comic business. Only in Terence is it possible to discern a conscious artistic impulse to improve on his Greek model. Other dramatists following Andronicus, among them Plautus, were content to adapt what was offered by the Greeks to the demands of a Roman audience, with the proviso that since dramatic performances were provided free by the authorities nothing should be said or indicated which might reflect on them. With moral and religious matters the censorship was less concerned, though in general the extant Latin comedies are fairly free from indecency.

At first Rome had no permanent theatre. The simple wooden buildings required for a production could be put up as and when required. Interior scenes and changes of setting within a play were unknown, and the absence of a front curtain made it necessary for every play to begin and end with an empty stage. The characters in comedy were types rather than individuals—old gentlemen, usually miserly and domineering, young gentlemen, usually extravagant and spineless, jealous wives, treacherous pimps, intriguing slaves, boastful captains—and custom prescribed the appropriate costume, wig, and mask for each type. Since respectable women were not supposed to appear in public, the unmarried heroines of Greek New Comedy and its Latin derivatives were somewhat less than respectable—courtesans, or maidens separated by some mishap from their parents and brought up in humble circumstances. If marriage was to be the outcome of the hero's wooing, then it was necessary to show that the girl he wished to marry was not only chaste but the long-lost child of respectable parents. It is hardly surprising that in general the plots of Roman comedies turn on intrigues, attempts to raise money, and swindling and deception of many kinds.

The use of costumes and masks enabled small companies of five or six actors to perform almost any play by doubling of parts. The leading actor was probably also the director. Such actors, such as Roscius Gallus, could rise to fame and fortune, since the theatrical profession was not yet regarded as degrading in itself. There is no mention of slaves acting until Roscius, near the end of his career, trained a slave to appear on stage. Revivals of old plays were rare, since audiences would naturally be attracted to a new work. This would be bought from the author by a manager authorized by the festival authorities to hire the necessary actors and costumes and settle all business matters, his profit arising from what he could save on the fixed sum allotted to him.

Though tragedy seems to have attracted fewer writers than comedy, the popularity and influence of the leading tragic writers appear to have been great. In general they selected as models the more melodramatic of their Greek originals. Exciting plots, flamboyant characters, gruesome scenes, were apparently more attractive to Roman crowds than the poetic qualities for which Greek tragedies are admired today. In substance the plays underwent little alteration, the chief difference between the Greek original and its Latin adaptation being the development of rhetoric at the expense of truth and naturalness. In comedy, on the other hand, the free-and-easy methods of the early writers seem to have been succeeded by greater fidelity to the originals.

With the end of the 2nd century BC a fundamental change came over the Roman theatre. Few new plays were being written, and those mostly not for production. Theatres, which had for some time been permanent buildings, the first, in stone, dating from 55 BC, became more and more elaborate as the level of entertainment presented in them sank. Rustic farce (fabula atellana) and mime predominated. Such plays as were staged were marred by tasteless extravagance. The introduction of a curtain led to elaborate scenic effects and quick changes of settings, to the detriment of the spoken text. A divorce thus set in between the drama and the stage. It is true that under the Empire many plays were written, and many fine theatre buildings were erected in Europe, Asia, and Africa, the ruins of which still stand; but the plays and the theatres had very little to do with each other. Popular taste was all for mime and pantomime, and the stage was given over to these and other forms of light entertainment, while the writing of plays became the prerogative of educated literary men. The tragedies ascribed to Seneca and such works as the anonymous Octavia were closet dramas, intended to be read among friends. Though full of clever rhetoric, they were not written with the limitations of the stage in mind, and were probably never performed. Yet as the only examples of Latin tragedy to reach the modern world they were destined to exercise an immense influence on the playwrights of the Renaissance.

It was not only the degeneration of public taste which led to the disintegration of the serious theatre in Imperial Rome. There was the added problem of the constant hostility of the Christian Church. No Christian could be an actor, under pain of excommunication, and all priests and devout persons refrained from attendance at theatrical performances of any kind. In the 6th century the theatres in Europe finally closed, the much-harassed actors being forced to rely on private hospitality or take to the road. From then until the 10th century there was nothing but an undercurrent of itinerant entertainers—mimes, acrobats, jugglers, bear-leaders, jongleurs, and minstrels—who kept alive some of the traditions of the classical theatre, while the Church quietly absorbed such pagan rites as the folk play and the mumming play into its own ritual, unconsciously preparing the way for the revival of the theatre it had tried to suppress.

Equestrian Drama (Article)

Equestrian Drama, form of entertainment, popular in London in the first half of the 19th century, which evolved out of the feats of horsemanship shown at Astley's Amphitheatre. The first was The Blood-Red Knight; or, The Fatal Bridge (1810) by J. H. Amherst, who was also responsible for such later spectacular shows as The Battle of Waterloo (1824) and Buonaparte's Invasion of Russia; or, The Conflagration of Moscow (1825), in both of which horses and their riders figured largely. One of the most successful plays adapted for Astley's was Richard III, with the leading role allotted to Richard's horse White Surrey; but the most famous of all equestrian dramas was Mazeppa, based by H. M. Milner on Byron's poem and first seen in London in 1823. The part of Mazeppa was afterwards associated entirely with Adah Isaacs Menken, who first appeared in it in the United States in 1863. Although the fashion for equestrian drama soon died out, real horses were used on stage at Drury Lane as late as 1909.

Drama Criticism in America (Article)

All too little is known about early American drama critics. Newspapers of the 18th and even early 19th century were published as much for the convenience of classified advertisers as they were for the dissemination of other news, so there was little room for theatrical reviews, and these were often written to please advertisers. Most criticism was unsigned or at best given a fictitious byline. Eola Willis, in her history of the 18th‐century Charleston stage, records what she claims was “the first dramatic criticism given of an American performance,” but the unsigned excerpt she quotes from the Charleston Gazette of May 28, 1737, simply acknowledges that a performance of The Recruiting Officer had taken place and was well attended and passes no judgment on either the play or the mounting. It was typical of many later notices. Not until the early years of the 19th century did a few critics such as Stephen Cullen Carpenter of the Charleston Courier, J. W. S. Hows of the New York Albion, or, more importantly, Washington Irving begin to make names for themselves with what today would be perceived as proper criticism. Yet even here, they and others frequently published initially under pseudonyms (although cognoscenti undoubtedly were aware of the real authorship), and their work was often first given major recognition when republished in contemporary theatrical magazines or in book form. Indeed, much of the more interesting criticism of the period came not in newspapers but in the usually short‐lived theatrical journals that sprang up in larger theatrical centers. As a rule newspapers remained largely uninterested or blatantly partisan in favor of (or against) certain theatres or performers. Not until after the Civil War and the emergence of William Winter did American theatrical criticism come of age. His lead was followed by the appearance of such noted writers as T. Allston Brown, Henry Austin Clapp, E. A. Dithmar, William Dean Howells, James Huneker, Laurence Hutton, J. R. Towse, and A. C. Wheeler. Many, though not all, of these early critics were archly conservative, relating dramatic merit to moral standards and observance of traditional forms. The arrival on the scene of Ibsen and realism sharply divided critics into essentially an older, unyielding school and a newer, more open one. The controversy probably played a significant role in rushing American dramatic criticism into final maturity by broadening the scope of interest and knowledge required of critics, sharpening their reasoning and writing faculties, and attracting new readers. At about the same time, the flowering of American newspapers and the concurrent rivalries caused papers to seek better critics, thereby improving standards everywhere. Only Clapp, among the critics just named, was not based in New York, but the simultaneous proliferation of both theatres and newspapers led to the rise of any number of fine critics away from New York. As a rule, these men rarely achieved national celebrity, but they were known and respected in the trade. Cincinnati's Montgomery Phister is a typical example.

The list of great 20th‐century drama critics might include Brooks Atkinson, Robert Benchley, John Mason Brown, Claudia Cassidy, Percy Hammond, Walter Kerr, George Jean Nathan, Dorothy Parker, Henry Taylor Parker, Ashton Stevens, Alexander Woollcott, and Stark Young. Many of these critics departed from the Brahmin‐like aloofness and impersonal approach of their predecessors, giving their writings a fresh vigor and feistiness. However, not all newspapers maintained a totally impartial approach, and as late as the 1920s there were papers that refused to review plays if not advertised, and, in the same spirit, some papers bent over backwards to be kind to advertisers. In more recent years several problems have arisen. The marked shrinkage of theatrical production, especially on Broadway and in major road houses, has given critics fewer chances to hone their art. Moreover, in many cities newspaper competition has disappeared and the surviving paper has often viewed what is left of local theatre with indifference, even to occasionally appointing men or women with no real theatrical background as critics. The result has been a drastic falling off of the quality of dramatic criticism in several major cities, sometimes marked not only by ineptitude and ignorance but coupled with a monopolistic arrogance as well. Of course, some newspapers and national magazines have retained high standards. Television has attempted to take up some of the slack, but the brevity of the reviews and television's insistence on attractive, lively, and personable reviewers rather than knowledgeable ones does not bode well for the future. By the 1960s and the demise of several New York papers, the New York Times became the most powerful voice in theatre criticism; in consequence, the Times critic yielded more weight than any reviewer in the past. Walter Kerr was the best of the Times staff and, sensing the disproportionate clout he had, resigned from daily reviewing and concentrated on weekend features. Clive Barnes, a British journalist whose background was in dance criticism, was the most influential critic of the 1960s, his opinion alone determining the fate of many shows. In the 1980s the Times's Frank Rich dominated the theatre scene to the point that if Rich disliked a play in London, producers would not bother to bring it to New York. Since Rich left in 1993, the paper has seen a series of reviewers who have failed to carry the same amount of influence. Ben Brantley, for example, is much feared and remains an influential force, but many shows that he disapproved of have been supported by other critics and the public and have gone on to long runs. Although a few critics have been accorded biographies or other studies, the whole field of American dramatic criticism remains ripe for scholarship.

Pulitzer Prize for Drama (Article)

The most prestigious of all drama awards, it was created in 1917 by Joseph Pulitzer to honor “the original American play performed in New York which shall best represent the educational value and power of the stage in raising the standards of good morals and good manners.” The drama Pulitzer, given by the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, is a playwright's award, given to a script and not a production, and carries much weight since there is only one category. The winner cannot be based on a previous play (eliminating most musicals from winning), and the committee can withhold the award one year if it deems no works are worthy of it. Over the years the Pulitzer's decisions have often been criticized, and displeasure with them prompted the founding of the New York Drama Critics Circle and its awards. The script no longer need be produced in New York to win, allowing regional theatre premieres to be eligible. All of the Pulitzer winners have their own entry. They are: 1918: Why Marry?; 1920: Beyond the Horizon; 1921: Miss Lulu Bett; 1922: Anna Christie; 1923: Icebound; 1924: Hell‐Bent for Heaven; 1925: They Knew What They Wanted; 1926: Craig's Wife; 1927: In Abraham's Bosom; 1928: Strange Interlude; 1929: Street Scene; 1930: The Green Pastures; 1931: Alison's House; 1932: Of Thee I Sing; 1933: Both Your Houses; 1934: Men in White; 1935: The Old Maid; 1936: Idiot's Delight; 1937: You Can't Take It with You; 1938: Our Town; 1939: Abe Lincoln in Illinois; 1940: The Time of Your Life; 1941: There Shall Be No Night; 1943: The Skin of Our Teeth; 1945: Harvey; 1946: State of the Union; 1948: A Streetcar Named Desire; 1949: Death of a Salesman; 1950: South Pacific; 1952: The Shrike; 1953: Picnic; 1954: The Teahouse of the August Moon; 1955: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; 1956: The Diary of Anne Frank; 1957: Long Day's Journey into Night; 1958: Look Homeward, Angel; 1959: J. B.; 1960: Fiorello!; 1961: All the Way Home; 1962: How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying; 1965: The Subject Was Roses; 1967: A Delicate Balance; 1969: The Great White Hope; 1970: No Place to Be Somebody; 1971: The Effects of Gamma Rays on Man‐in‐the‐Moon Marigolds; 1973: That Championship Season; 1975: Seascape; 1976: A Chorus Line; 1977: The Shadow Box; 1978: The Gin Game; 1979: Buried Child; 1980: Talley's Folly; 1981: Crimes of the Heart; 1982: A Soldier's Play; 1983: 'night, Mother; 1984: Glengarry Glen Ross; 1985: Sunday in the Park with George; 1987: Fences; 1988: Driving Miss Daisy; 1989: The Heidi Chronicles; 1990: The Piano Lesson; 1991: Lost in Yonkers; 1992: The Kentucky Cycle; 1993: Angels in America, Part I: Millennium Approaches; 1994: Three Tall Women; 1995: The Young Man from Atlanta; 1996: Rent; 1998: How I Learned to Drive; 1999: Wit; 2000: Dinner with Friends; 2001: Proof; 2002: Topdog/Underdog; 2003: Anna in the Tropics; 2004: I Am My Own Wife; and 2005: Doubt, A Parable.

Drama of Elizabethan, Jesuit, Dog

Elizabethan drama Drama staged in England during the reign of Elizabeth I (1558–1603). Drawing on classical and medieval thought, as well as folk drama, Elizabethan drama is characterized by a spiritual vitality and creativity. Masters of the period include Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Jonson.

Dog Drama, type of spectacular entertainment which probably had its origin in the performing dog troupes of the circuses. It became extremely popular in Europe in the 19th century, the immediate cause of the craze for dogs on stage in London being a little after-piece at Drury Lane in which a real dog, Carlos, rescued a child from a tank of real water—an echo of the equally fashionable aquatic drama. The most famous dog drama was Pixérécourt's Le Chien de Montargis; ou, La Fôret de Bondy, first seen in Paris at the Théâtre de la Gaîté in 1814, and in an English adaptation as The Dog of Montargis; or, The Forest of Bondy, by William Barrymore, at Covent Garden in the same year.

Jesuit Drama, term used to describe a wide variety of plays, mainly in Latin, written to be acted by pupils in Jesuit colleges. Originally, as in other Renaissance forms of school drama, these were simply scholastic exercises, but over the years, particularly in Vienna under the influence of opera and ballet, they became full-scale productions involving elaborate scenery, machinery, costumes, music, and dancing, as well as an almost professional technique in acting and diction.

The earliest mention of a play produced in a Jesuit college dates from 1551, when an unspecified tragedy was performed at the Collegio Mamertino in Messina. In 1555 the first Jesuit play was seen in Vienna, Euripus sive de inanitate verum by Levinus Brechtanus ( Lewin Brecht), a Franciscan from Antwerp. This was followed by productions at Cordoba in 1556, at Ingoldstadt in 1558, and in Munich in 1560. There were already 33 Jesuit colleges in Europe when Ignatius de Loyola, the founder of the Order, died in 1556: by 1587 there were 150 and by the early 17th century about 300. For over two centuries at least one play a year was performed in each college. The total of plays specially written for these performances was enormous. Only the best were published, but recent researches have brought to light a great many manuscripts. The early plays were based mainly on classical or biblical subjects—Theseus, Hercules, David, Saul, Absalom—but later, stories of saints and martyrs—Theodoric, Hermenegildus—were also used, as well as personifications of abstract characters—Fides (Faith), Pax (Peace), Ecclesia (the Church). The popularity of plays based on the stories of women—Judith, Esther, St Catharine, St Elizabeth of Hungary—led to the early abolition of the rule against the portrayal on stage by the boy pupils of female personages. The use of Latin was less easily disregarded, bound up as it was with its use in class and in daily conversation between masters and pupils. The vernacular seems first to have been used, in conjunction with Latin, in Spain, but the Christus Judex (1569) of Stefano Tuccio (1540–97) was translated into Italian in 1584 and into German in 1603. During the 17th century many plays appeared in French or in Italian, and by the beginning of the 18th century most Jesuit plays were written in the language of the country in which they were to be produced. Parallel with the increased use of the vernacular went the introduction of operatic arias, interludes, and ballets. Of all the splendid productions given in Vienna the most memorable appears to have been the Pietas Victrix (1659) of Nikolaus Avancini (1611–86) which had 46 speaking characters as well as crowds of senators, soldiers, sailors, citizens, naiads, Tritons, and angels. The technical development reached by Jesuit stagecraft can be studied in the illustrations to the published text of the play, which was acted on a large stage equipped with seven transformation scenes. Lighting effects became increasingly elaborate; though the plays often began in daylight, which came through large windows on each side of the stage, they usually ended by torchlight, while in the course of the action sun, moon, and stars, comets, fireworks, and conflagrations were regularly required. All this, added to the splendour of the costumes and the large choruses and orchestras—often employing as many as 40 singers and 32 instrumentalists—made the Jesuit drama a serious rival to the public theatres. In Paris in the 17th century the three theatres in the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, where Louis XIV and his Court often watched the productions, were better equipped than the Comédie-Française and almost on a par with the Paris Opéra. Jesuit drama continued to flourish in such conditions all over Catholic Europe until the Order was suppressed in 1773. It left its mark on the developing theatres wherever it was played, notably through the works of such authors as Avancini in Austria, Bidermann in Germany, and Tuccio in Italy, and through its influence on pupils who were to become playwrights, among them Calderón, Corneille, Goldoni, Lesage, Molière, and Voltaire.

Satyr-Drama An Article

Satyr-Drama, in ancient Athens, burlesque plays which followed, and served as ribald comments on, the statutory tragic trilogy (see TETRALOGY) in the annual dramatic contest in connection with the Dionysia. In the satyr-plays a heroic figure, sometimes the chief character of the preceding trilogy but very often Hercules, was shown in a farcical situation, always with a chorus of Sileni, or satyrs. These were the legendary companions of Dionysus, and were portrayed as being half-human, half-animal, with the ears and tail of a horse. The characteristics of satyr-drama were swift action, vigorous dancing, boisterous fun, and much indecency in speech and gesture. Although Aristotle said that Greek tragedy ‘developed from the satyr-play’, the connection between them is not clear and must date from long before the time of the first official festival in 534 BC. Only one satyr-play has survived in its entirety, the Cyclops of Euripides, though there are also fragments of an Ichneutae by Sophocles. The popularity of the satyr-play declined during the second half of the 5th century.

There is no connection between satyr-drama and modern satire, or between satyr-drama and any form of Greek comedy.

An Article of Closet drama

Closet drama a play that is meant to be read rather than performed. Precursors of the form existed in classical times. Plato's Apology is often regarded as tragic drama rather than philosophic dialogue. The dialogues of Cicero, Strabo, and Seneca were probably declaimed rather than acted, since only the comic theater survived transplantation from Greece to Rome. Closet dramas were particularly popular in the early 19th cent. when melodrama and burlesque dominated the theater, and poets attempted to raise dramatic standards by reviving past traditions. Byron's Manfred (1817) and Shelley's The Cenci (1819) imitate Shakespeare, and Goethe's Faust (Part I, 1808; Part II, 1832) draws in part on the Elizabethan tradition. Milton's Samson Agonistes (1671) and Shelley's Prometheus Unbound (1819) are based on Greek tragedies. Notable among other closet dramas are Robert Browning's Strafford (1837) and Pippa Passes (1841).

Folk drama (Article)

Folk drama noncommercial, generally rural theater and pageantry based on folk traditions and local history. This form of drama, common throughout the world, declined in popularity in the West (although not in Asia) with the advent of printing, general literacy, and the increasing emphasis on the individual contribution to the drama of playwright, director, and actors. The mid-19th cent. witnessed a revival of folk drama in the United States and parts of Western Europe. Some of the major figures responsible for this resurgent interest were the Americans Percy McKaye and Paul Green, the Englishman Louis N. Parker, and the French actor-manager and poet Maurice Pottecher. American universities, including North Dakota Agricultural College (now North Dakota State Univ.) and the universities of North Carolina and Wisconsin, sponsored much experimental work in producing regional history plays. One yearly drama presented outside the university environment is the Trail of Tears history play performed by Native North Americans of Cherokee, N.C.

Jewish Drama (Article)

Unlike other dramas, that of the Jewish communities had originally no territorial limits. Its boundaries were linguistic, comprising Hebrew, the religious and historical language which never ceased to be written and has now been reborn as a living tongue in Israel; Yiddish, the vernacular of the vast Jewish communities which lay between the Baltic and the Black Seas, spread by emigrants all over the world; and Ladino (Judaeo-Spanish), the speech of the Sephardic Jews of the Middle East, who never achieved a permanent stage, their plays being for reading only.

Drama was not indigenous to the Jew. Deuteronomy 22: 5 expressly forbade the wearing of women's clothes by men, and the connection between early drama and the idol-worship of alien religions was a strong argument against the theatre as late as the 19th century. Yet the classical theatre exercised a strong attraction, and Jewish actors were found in Imperial Rome, while Ezekiel of Alexandria wrote a Greek tragedy on the Exodus. From the Jewish itinerant musicians and professional jesters, and from the questions and responses in the synagogue services, the Jewish theatre slowly evolved, the Purim plays being an important influence. Yet the establishment of a truly Hebrew theatre did not come until well into the 20th century, with the founding of the state of Israel, and the Yiddish theatre was destined to go ahead first, mainly in an attempt to check the growing vulgarity of the Purim plays.

In 1876 Abraham Goldfaden founded the first permanent Yiddish theatre, and others followed. This activity was however brought to a sudden stop by the anti-semitic measures following the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881. All plays in Yiddish were forbidden, and the Yiddish theatre existed precariously in Russia until the Revolution of 1917. Most of the actors and dramatists left the country for Britain and America, and New York, where a Yiddish theatre had been founded in 1883, became the new centre of Yiddish drama. But the stock themes of old Jewish life in Europe, which had been acceptable to the first bewildered and largely illiterate immigrant audiences, together with the broad farce and sentimental melodrama which had provided the only alternatives, became increasingly outmoded as Americanization proceeded; even Goldfaden, when he first visited New York in 1887, found himself out of touch with the new audiences. It was left to Jacob Gordin to revitalize the American Yiddish theatre. He was followed by other writers such as Halper Leivick [ Leivick Halpern] (1888–1962), considered by many critics the best Yiddish writer of his time. A number of companies were founded under the influence of Schwartz, among them Artef, the workmen's studio theatre, which adopted the methods of the Moscow State Jewish Theatre and staged works by Soviet-Jewish authors. The widespread adoption of English in Yiddish-speaking homes, and the slackening in immigration, were potent factors in the continued decline of the Yiddish theatre, which was not arrested by Schwartz's efforts to enlarge the repertory by playing European classic in Yiddish and Yiddish plays in English.

Nevertheless the period between the two world wars was a flourishing time for the Yiddish theatre. The Argentine, home of a large Jewish community, had two permanent Yiddish theatres; London, which had its first Yiddish theatre in Whitechapel in 1888, had two in the 1930s, both in the East End and both playing Yiddish classics. Paris, where Goldfaden founded a company in 1890, also had a company which played the more popular operettas from the New York Yiddish stage. Vienna had several Yiddish theatres, and in the 1920s New York alone had 12 and there were others scattered throughout the country. The Nazi holocaust of Jews on the European continent, and the progress of assimilation in Western countries not so affected, led inevitably after 1946 to the decline of the Yiddish theatre, and though isolated pockets may have lingered on it finally disappeared from the international scene. Yiddish actors migrated to the national stage of the country in which they found themselves, or went into films; most theatres were closed, one of the last being the Polish State Jewish Theatre.

Greek Drama (An Article)

The classical Greek drama which reached its maturity in the 5th and 4th centuries BC was in fact Athenian drama: for although every Greek city and many a large city elsewhere came to have its own theatre, and although some dramatic forms, such as mime, originated and flourished elsewhere, Athens established and maintained a complete pre-eminence among the Greek states, and all the Greek drama that we possess was written by Athenians for Athens. Both tragedy and comedy were part of the religious celebrations in honour of Dionysus and addressed to a whole community, which came to the theatre as a community, not as individuals; a community which was its own political master and its own government. In both forms of drama the chorus, the communal element, was originally very prominent.

Preparations for drama were in the hands of the state. Plays were given only at the city festivals, the Dionysia and the Lenaea, and early in the official year, which in Athens began at midsummer, officials in charge of the festivities would choose from among the many applicants three poets whose works would be performed in the festival. It is surmised that the lesser known were asked for a complete script, established writers for a synopsis only. The chosen three were then assigned a choregus, who became responsible for all the expenses in connection with the production except for the chorus and the three statutory actors paid by the state. The poet not only wrote the play but also composed the music and arranged the dances. In earlier times he trained the chorus and acted the chief part himself, but later these functions were handed over to a specialists, and in the 5th century individual actors seem to have been associated closely with particular poets. When later the importance of the actor increased it was thought fairer, at least in the case of the Protagonist, to assign them, like the choregus, by lot.

Very little is known about individual Greek actors, but with the decline of tragedy in the 4th century they became more prominent. Actors known by name include, in the 4th century, Polus, said to have taught Demosthenes elocution, Theodorus, who had a reputation for adapting plays to suit his own personality, and Aristodemos, known to have been sent as an envoy from Athens to the Court of Macedonia. Actors, who were usually men of good repute and members of guilds such as the Artists of Dionysus, were often employed on secret missions, since their semi-religious function gave them a degree of diplomatic immunity. From the 5th century have survived the names of Nicostratos, famous for his delivery of messenger speeches, and Callipides, often the butt of comic writers because of his high-flown style.

Playgoing in Greece was a civic duty, and still retained traces of its religious origins, as did the theatres. These were all open-air, cut into the side of a hill (see THEATRE BUILDINGS), and had to be big enough to contain a vast number of spectators during a day-long session—Epidauros could seat 14,000—while seats had to be provided for distinguished visitors and officials, the seat of honour in the centre of the front row being reserved for the priest of Dionysus. Originally all other seats were free; later a charge of 2 obols (about 4p or 8 cents) was made. Those citizens too poor to pay were given a grant. The acting area, with its stage-wall and vast circular orchestra, probably duplicated the original playing-place in front of a temple wall, and the orchestra still retained its thymele or altar to Dionysus. When the importance of the chorus diminished and a raised stage or logeion was placed against the back wall for the actors, that too had its altar, which could also be used if necessary as a tomb or other holy shrine.

There was no scenery in the early Greek theatres, colour and splendour being supplied by the rich robes of the actors, who all wore masks, and the multifarious costumes of the chorus, particularly in comedy. Later, easily changed backcloths helped to diversify the permanent set, and periaktoi, or movable screens, indicated a change of scene. There were also mechanical devices, such as the mechane, or crane, and the ekkyklema, or wheeled platform. (See also OLD, MIDDLE, and NEW COMEDY.)

Wars in American Drama (Article)

Given its basic importance in establishing this country, the Revolutionary War has inspired few plays of merit and most of these have found but small acceptance from playgoers. Because of the scant opportunities for production, including the fact that British troops held several of the major theatre centers, contemporary dramas such as The Adulateur, The Fall of British Tyranny, or The Group have been classified as “pamphlet plays,” read rather than performed, although several of them seem to have had some circulation and helped steel patriotic resolve. As the war receded in history certain figures found special appeal for dramatists, among them Ethan Allen, Benjamin Franklin, Nathan Hale, Francis Marion, and Israel Putnam. But by far the most popular figures were George Washington and two men associated with treasonous behavior, Benedict Arnold and Major André. As a rule, Washington figured primarily in spectacles and other plays designed to reinforce patriotic sentiment. On the other hand, the real drama, even tragedy, of André's story gave rise early on to Dunlap's André (1798). The Widow's Son (1825) focused on war‐bred hatred and hysteria. Between the turn of the century and the coming of the Civil War dozens of dramas, comedies, and spectacles treating the Revolution were mounted. In his History of the American Drama, Quinn offers a partial list of more than fifty plays mounted between 1826 and 1860, most of which have not survived. Among the most interesting are Briar Cliff (1828), Putnam, the Iron Son of '76 (1844), Love in '76 (1857), and Horseshoe Robinson (1858). Generally, the more famous, successful works did not deal directly with the ramifications of the Revolution nor its more celebrated incidents, which were usually left to spectacles. Indeed, the most popular of such plays tended to be lighthearted pieces merely set against the background of the war. In later years interest in the war waned. Later 19th‐ and early 20th‐century examples include James A. Herne's The Minute Men of 1774–75 (1886) and two Clyde Fitch efforts, Nathan Hale (1898) and Major André (1903). Subsequently, the Revolutionary War was dealt with in such scattered plays as Maxwell Anderson's serious but failed Valley Forge (1934) and the popular comedy The Pursuit of Happiness (1933). Significantly the most successful modern treatments have been on the musical stage, notably the fluffy but melodic Dearest Enemy (1925) and the more purposeful 1776 (1969). The War of 1812 suggested little to dramatists, the most notable works being Robert Penn Smith's two offerings, The Eighth of January (1829) and The Triumph at Plattsburg (1830), while the Mexican‐American War produced nothing of interest, unless the plays about Davy Crockett, who figured in the Texas battles that led up to the war, are considered.

By its very nature, the Civil War long remained of supreme interest to American playwrights. Although both Northern and Southern dramatists were prolific during the war, their immediate response produced nothing of such lasting value or contemporary popularity as the novel and its dramatization that many felt were major factors in polarizing opinions before the war, Uncle Tom's Cabin. Most plays of the moment were flag‐waving affairs. The works that came directly after the conflict and reflected the continuing interest in the battles were of no lasting significance either. Probably the first important Civil War drama was Dion Boucicault's commercially unsuccessful Belle Lamar (1874). Its story (a Southern lady—married to a Union officer—who chooses regional loyalty over personal affection) established a pattern for the basic dilemma to be portrayed in many of the dramas that followed, as did its use of a spy as a pivotal figure. In short, slavery, slave economics, and secession (the issues fundamental to the war) were passed over in favor of romantic and melodramatic themes that employed the war itself largely as background. Belasco's May Blossom (1884) was a further harbinger of the outpouring of Civil War themes that began with Held by the Enemy (1886) and continued through the era of the Spanish‐American War up to the time of World War I, with such works as Shenandoah (1889), Secret Service (1895), The Heart of Maryland (1895), The Reverend Griffith Davenport (1899), Barbara Frietchie (1899), the musical When Johnny Comes Marching Home (1902), The Warrens of Virginia (1907), and The Copperhead (1918). If the fundamental issues behind the war were taken for granted or glossed over in most of these plays, they did receive a somewhat more probing examination in plays dealing with Reconstruction, such as Alabama (1891) and The New South (1893). The most notable of later plays to employ the war was Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra (1931), which used the conflict as a background for the retelling of the Greek legends. Much of the later theatrical employment of the war was in musicals, including My Maryland (1927), which was based on Barbara Frietchie; Shenandoah (1975), which was not based on the earlier play of the same name; and The Civil War (1999).

During U.S. involvement in World War I, American dramatists produced nothing of enduring merit. The initial response appears to have been confined largely to patriotic tableaux in the extravagant revues of the era and in such entertainments as Irving Berlin's all‐soldier revue, Yip Yap Yaphank (1918). One of the most popular plays about the war, Friendly Enemies (1918), appeared several months after the armistice and dealt not with the battlefield but with divisions on the home front. However, most agree the best American play about the Great War was Maxwell Anderson and Laurence Stallings's salty, cynical comedy What Price Glory? (1924). In the 1920s and 1930s the war served as the setting for such pacifist pleas as The Enemy (1925) and Johnny Johnson (1936). These plays signaled the unromantic, basically antiwar stance that would underlie much subsequent writing about that war. The Petrified Forest (1935), for example, looked at the world‐weariness that grew out of the war and the Depression.

The approach of World War II inspired such interesting plays as Idiot's Delight (1936), There Shall Be No Night (1940), Hemingway's The Fifth Column (1940), and Watch on the Rhine (1941), but during the war itself most serious drama, such as The Eve of St. Mark (1942) and A Bell for Adano (1944), was solid but unexceptional. Tomorrow the World (1943) looked at the difficulties of eradicating Nazi ideology, while The Searching Wind (1944) was more concerned with prewar diplomatic bungling. The most successful wartime works were such fluffy comedies as The Doughgirls (1942) and Dear Ruth (1944). Possibly the best American play about the war, A Sound of Hunting (1945), appeared shortly after the war and failed. Another late, worthy, but unsuccessful play was Arthur Laurents's Home of the Brave (1945). By far the most successful plays about the war came years afterwards and lightened their undercurrents of seriousness with comedy or romance. Most notable were Mister Roberts (1948) and the musical South Pacific (1949). Other memorable plays about the Second World War were Command Decision (1947), The Caine Mutiny Court‐Martial (1954), and A Soldier's Play (1982).

If the Korean War promoted nothing of real note, the Vietnam War, the first war in our history actively opposed by a substantial number of thoughtful citizens, called forth a wealth of provocative theatre. The war coincided with what many saw as breakdowns in our society, with massive protests, with widespread rioting and looting as protests against racism, and by the beginnings of the worst inflation in American history. Dramas relating to the war reflected the turmoil. One of the most successful was the musical Hair (1968), which featured nudity and a variety of protest songs and unpleasant themes, such as drug addiction, racism, and sexual promiscuity, in its portrayal of a young man who must decide whether to serve in the war. The savagely satiric MacBird! (1967) was another interesting work. Probably the most important dramatist to deal with the war was David Rabe, who began writing about it while the conflict continued and followed with more material after the war. His plays included The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel (1971), Sticks and Bones (1971), and Streamers (1976). Although often not as craftily plotted as earlier war stories, they portrayed in superb theatrical terms the chaos, rage, and disintegration generated by the war. Dramas about veterans suffering from psychological effects of the Vietnam War also found fertile ground. The most memorable were The Speed of Darkness (1991) and Redwood Curtain (1993), though neither was a hit.

Religious Drama in America (An Article)

Perhaps because significant religious bodies had early on succeeded in preventing the opening of theatres in colonial America and later, after playhouses had begun to appear, remained a potent source of possible repression, the separation of church and theatre was long a part of the American scene, much the same as the separation of church and state. Very little of what might be termed “religious drama” was offered to playgoers until late in the 19th century. Dramatizations of Biblical stories were virtually unheard of in the professional theatre, and even the portrayal of such figures as ministers was generally restrained and infrequent. Non‐Protestant clerics were sometimes characters in tales of Renaissance Italy, but these figures often seemed to derive more from Elizabethan and Jacobean traditions than from genuine observation. (For further material on religious groups see “Jews in American Theatre and Drama” and “Mormons in American Theatre and Drama.”) It may be telling that the first 19th‐century success centering on a major religious figure was Bulwer‐Lytton's English drama Richelieu (1839), which dealt not directly with religious matters but rather with the Cardinal's attempts to influence affairs of state and of the heart. Depicting such meddlesomeness may have appealed to the strong anti‐Catholic sentiments of many playgoers, although the real reason for the play's long popularity was undoubtedly the performances of Edwin Forrest, Charles Macready, and Edwin Booth in the title role. One of the first important American religious plays of national interest was a version of the classic passion play, known either as The Passion Play (1879) or as The Passion. However, this dramatization of the New Testament story by a Jewish playwright offended many Christian clergy, who lobbied for its suppression. The later arrival of such English plays as Henry Arthur Jones's Saints and Sinners (1895) and Jerome K. Jerome's The Passing of the Third Floor Back (1909) further increased acceptance of religiously oriented works. At the same time native drama began to employ religious and Biblical figures and themes with increasing success. The most notable from a commercial standpoint was the dramatization of Lew Wallace's famous novel, Ben‐Hur (1899), which attracted huge audiences as much by its spectacle, including a celebrated chariot race, as by its religious message. Charles Rann Kennedy's simple and more thoughtful The Servant in the House (1908) met with great critical acclaim but found only small audiences. The disillusionment and cynicism that followed World War I led to few religious works being attempted during the 1920s. Given the tenor of the age, it may be significant that Eugene O'Neill's Dionysian study of a Biblical story in Lazarus Laughed (1927) was the playwright's only major effort not to be given a Broadway hearing. Other examples of the period were the 1924 presentation of Max Reinhardt's decade‐old pageant The Miracle, Shaw's St. Joan (1923), and The Ladder (1926), the curious play that attempted to promote the Eastern idea of reincarnation.

If the hedonism and cynicism of the 1920s offered relatively infertile fields for the growth of commercial religious drama, the political and economic preoccupations of the 1930s proved equally discouraging, especially since the theatre and other arts were dominated by the often‐irreligious left. Such major playwrights as O'Neill and Philip Barry were given short shrift when they presented their religious questions in theatrical terms: O'Neill in Days Without End (1934) and Barry in Bright Star (1935) and Here Come the Clowns (1938). Yet the most successful and memorable of all American Biblical plays was a product of this era, The Green Pastures (1930). It was also in this period that T. S. Eliot wrote the first of his religious dramas, Murder in the Cathedral (1936), followed later by A Family Reunion (1947) and The Cocktail Party (1950). By contrast with the bitter, disbelieving response to the failure of “the war to end all wars” to achieve its aim, the prosperous decades that followed World War II and that encompassed the Cold War, the McCarthy era, and several dismaying, brutal hot wars, saw a variety of responses, including a reexamination of religious values and the importance of religion in private lives, and an ill‐defined, sometimes wavering fascination with mysticism. The shock of the Nazi extermination of European Jewry brought forth a number of intriguing works dealing with the subject. The Diary of Anne Frank (1955), the importation The Deputy (1964), and Arthur Miller's Incident at Vichy (1964) were among the more interesting of such plays. Works treating Biblical subjects directly included Robinson Jeffers's curious, failed Dear Judas (1947), which attempted to argue that Judas betrayed Jesus in order to ensure Jesus' immortality; Archibald MacLeish's J. B. (1958), which recounted the Job legend in modern terms; Clifford Odets's The Flowering Peach (1954) about Biblical Noah; and Paddy Chayefsky's The Tenth Man (1959) and Gideon (1961). The musical stage turned to religious themes of one sort or another with great success in the 1960s and 1970s, with such works as Fiddler on the Roof (1964), Salvation (1969), Godspell (1971), Your Arms Too Short to Box with God (1976), and the English products Jesus Christ Superstar (1971) and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (1982). English and French dramas concerning religious ideas included Becket (1960), A Man for All Seasons (1961), Luther (1963), Amadeus (1980), and Racing Demon (1995), while native plays, such as The Runner Stumbles (1976), Mass Appeal (1981), Agnes of God (1982), Handy Dandy (1990), and Sacrilege (1995), also dealt with religion. Ironically, the most popular pieces were the ones that looked back on a religious upbringing and laughed nostalgically at it: Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Reflect Up? (1981), Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You (1981), Nunsense (1985), and Late Nite Catechism (1996).

Theater and Drama (Article)

It is no surprise that dramatists throughout history have drawn such creative inspiration from the subject of death and dying. Because of the difficulty of confronting this topic on a personal level, death as portrayed on the stage remains a powerful magnet for theater audiences. Aesthetic theory suggests that art is a major tool in humanity's quest for self-understanding. Humankind's perennial preoccupation with its mortality and identification with the characters who are metaphorically standing in for us in this once-removed space of the stage allow for the collective exploration of this most difficult of subjects.

Since Aristotle, the motif of death has permeated drama. The life and death of the hero of Greek drama was inextricably bound up with his or her sense of honor. This concept of dying for one's honor was carried through the Renaissance, particularly in Spain. In early medieval drama, liturgical plays ritualized death and dying with elaborate sets that depicted versions of the afterlife and the fires of hell. In these dramas, death was often seen as the great equalizer. In Greek and Elizabethan tragedies, the tragic flaw leading to the eventual demise of the hero was eagerly anticipated by audiences. There were the murders in Oresteia or Oedipus, and violent clashes in all of William Shakespeare's history plays.

In modern theater, there has often been a psychological as well as a real violence explored in dramatic literature. To Antonin Artaud, for instance, desire and death were a form of cruelty. His play The Cenci is about a girl who murdered her father to avenge her rape by him. Hélène Cixous claimed that "with even more violence than fiction, theater, which is built according to the dictates of male fantasy, repeats and intensifies the horror of the murder scene which is at the origin of all cultural productions" (1969, p.133). Modern drama has undoubtedly sustained this fascination with representations of death and dying on stage, where it exploits the components of both narrative and symbol.

Some scholars have suggested that death depicted on the modern stage was an attempt to transcend the fear of death and deny its finality by experiencing it fully or empathetically in the safety of the once-removed. The symbolic death in the theater acts as a double of our real lives and thus provides a cathartic experience. Even in some modern theatrical styles that seek to distance the audience from conventional identification with characters, there may be, nonetheless, a purgative experience for audiences. The plays and productions of Bertolt Brecht, for example, attempted to distance the audience from the narrative to enable viewers to maintain a critical perspective on the action on stage. But even in these distancing traditions, the audience is, in the end, at a sufficiently safe distance from the fiction of the play so that their actual lives triumph over the compressed and finite fiction of the stage. There may, therefore, still be a symbolic immortality possible through the semiotics of the stage.

Some suggest that the representations of death on stage offer one a kind of practice for one's own death, while others hold that the persistent theme of death on stage is a form of denial or avoidance. In her study of seventeenth-century drama, theater scholar Deborah Dogherty found that heroic characters enabled audiences to envision their own quest for immortality. Dramas of the Golden Age often involved a quest to overcome death a means of symbolic immortality, even if physical death was not overcome. This theatric development appears to be predicated upon Plato's insistence on a system of immortality wherein the soul exists before the body is born and is not, therefore, subject to death. Dogherty concludes, "As characters lived out their brief dramatic roles, the audience was reminded of the brevity of each individual's appearance in the ongoing drama of life, yet envisioned their own lives as somehow eternal" (1999, p. 2). In modern times, too, the conception of the immutability of the soul has persisted.

Although a character's death in theater may leave a void in the world, that absence is sometimes represented by a presence on stage. Since the ghost of Hamlet's father appeared to him, many plays have represented death with such ghostly apparitions. Isobel, in Judith Thompson's Lion in the Streets (1992), appears throughout the play and is visible to the audience although she is often invisible to other characters on stage. Raped and murdered before the story of the play begins, the prepubescent Isobel finally understands that she has died and become a ghost.

Even in children's theater, the convention of the ghostly apparition is common. Stage adaptations of Dickens's A Christmas Carol have featured characters from traditional white, ethereal garments to vaporous projections on a scrim. Ghost Train, written by Betty Quan and based on the book by Paul Yee, recognizes the hundreds of Chinese workers who died building the Canadian Pacific Railway; the play presents a fourteen-year-old peasant girl who gives an account of her own father's death. After the father is killed, he returns to his daughter Choon-Yi as a ghost. Theatrically, the father is realized by a shadow/silhouette projected onto the scrim upstage:

CHOON-YI: What magic is this?FATHER: The magic is yours.CHOON-YI: (running forward ) It is you!FATHER holds his hands up, shakes his head, stopping CHOON-YI.FATHER: No. You mustn't come closer.CHOON-YI: What is it? Are you ill? Where have you been? I searched all over Salt Lake City, looking for you.FATHER: I have left your world. I am no longer flesh and blood, but spirit.CHOON-YI: No. It can't be. Nooooo. (2000, p. 38)
Disease and dying have also become topics of contemporary theater, given the pandemic of modern diseases such as AIDS and cancer. Tony Kushner's Angels in America is one example of the terror of AIDS realized theatrically. Margaret Edson's award-winning Wit explores the complex of emotions yielded by a diagnosis of inoperable cancer. In this play, Vivian Bearing's journey is a redemptive one. Her experience of cancer and death leads her, paradoxically, to the light.

War and death in drama remain intricately entwined as well. Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children is an example of life imitating art. This play about a canteen-woman serving with the Swedish Army during the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) was written in 1939 but was not performed until 1949 because of Nazi suppression and thus came too late to serve as the warning Brecht had intended: In the course of the play, Mother Courage witnesses the deaths of all three of her children. Howard Barker's play The Europeans, another example of a war drama, is set in the aftermath of the climactic struggle between Christianity and Islam in the seventeenth century.

Many contemporary playwrights have explored the great massacres of the twentieth century. John McGrath's Events While Guarding the Bofors Gun concludes with a scene that has a soldier, caught in the futility of war, falling upon his own rifle and bayonet. John Murrell's Waiting for the Parade explores the lives of five women who attempt to survive World War II at home. Death is omnipresent.

Drama critic Martin Esslin asserts that drama has become one of the principal vehicles of information, one of the prevailing methods of thinking about life and its quandaries. He maintains that drama is a mirror of real life: "The theater is a simulacrum—at its highest level, ordered and elevated to the status of art—of the real world and real life" (1987, p. 176). If, as Esslin believes, humans crave the collective artistic experience that theater can provide, these works also compel one to face the inescapable certainty of his or her own mortality. Paradoxically, of course, theater also reminds people of their great potential as living, sentient beings.

Western drama (Article)

Western drama plays produced in the Western world. This article discusses the development of Western drama in general; for further information see the various national literature articles.

Greek Drama

The Western dramatic tradition has its origins in ancient Greece. The precise evolution of its main divisions— tragedy , comedy , and satire —is not definitely known. According to Aristotle, Greek drama, or, more explicitly, Greek tragedy, originated in the dithyramb . This was a choral hymn to the god Dionysus and involved exchanges between a lead singer and the chorus. It is thought that the dithyramb was sung at the Dionysia, an annual festival honoring Dionysus.

Tradition has it that at the Dionysia of 534 BC, during the reign of Pisistratus, the lead singer of the dithyramb, a man named Thespis , added to the chorus an actor with whom he carried on a dialogue, thus initiating the possibility of dramatic action. Thespis is credited with the invention of tragedy. Eventually, Aeschylus introduced a second actor to the drama and Sophocles a third, Sophocles' format being continued by Euripides , the last of the great classical Greek dramatists.

Generally, the earlier Greek tragedies place more emphasis on the chorus than the later ones. In the majestic plays of Aeschylus, the chorus serves to underscore the personalities and situations of the characters and to provide ethical comment on the action. Much of Aeschylus' most beautiful poetry is contained in the choruses of his plays. The increase in the number of actors resulted in less concern with communal problems and beliefs and more with dramatic conflict between individuals.

Accompanying this emphasis on individuals' interaction, from the time of Aeschylus to that of Euripides, there was a marked tendency toward realism. Euripides' characters are ordinary, not godlike, and the gods themselves are introduced more as devices of plot manipulation (as in the use of the deus ex machina in Medea, 431 BC) than as strongly felt representations of transcendent power. Utilizing three actors, Sophocles developed dramatic action beyond anything Aeschylus had achieved with only two and also introduced more natural speech. However, he did not lose a sense of the godlike in man and man's affairs, as Euripides often did. Thus, it is Sophocles who best represents the classical balance between the human and divine, the realistic and the symbolic.

Greek comedy is divided by scholars into Old Comedy (5th cent. BC), Middle Comedy (c.404-c.321 BC), and New Comedy (c.320-c.264 BC). The sole literary remains of Old Comedy are the plays of Aristophanes , characterized by obscenity, political satire, fantasy, and strong moral overtones. While there are no extant examples of Middle Comedy, it is conjectured that the satire, obscenity, and fantasy of the earlier plays were much mitigated during this transitional period. Most extant examples of New Comedy are from the works of Menander ; these comedies are realistic and elegantly written, often revolving around a love-interest.

Roman Drama

The Roman theater never approached the heights of the Greek, and the Romans themselves had little interest in serious dramatic endeavors, being drawn toward sensationalism and spectacle. The earliest Roman dramatic attempts were simply translations from the Greek. Gnaeus Naevius (c.270-c.199 BC) and his successors imitated Greek models in tragedies that never transcended the level of violent melodrama. Even the nine tragedies of the philosopher and statesman Seneca are gloomy and lurid, emphasizing the sensational aspects of Greek myth; they are noted primarily for their inflated rhetoric. Seneca became an important influence on Renaissance tragedy, but it is unlikely that his plays were intended for more than private readings.

Although Roman tragedy produced little of worth, a better judgment may be passed on the comedies of Plautus and Terence . Plautus incorporated native Roman elements into the plots and themes of Menander, producing plays characterized by farce, intrigue, romance, and sentiment. Terence was a more polished stylist who wrote for and about the upper classes and dispensed with the element of farce.

The Roman preference for spectacle and the Christian suppression of drama led to a virtual cessation of dramatic production during the decline of the Roman Empire. Pantomimes accompanied by a chorus developed out of tragedy, and comic mimes were popular until the 4th cent. AD (see pantomime ). It is this mime tradition, carried on by traveling performers, that provided the theatrical continuity between the ancient world and the medieval. The Roman mime tradition has been suggested as the origin of the commedia dell'arte of the Italian Renaissance, but this conjecture has never been proved.

Medieval Drama

While the Christian church did much to suppress the performance of plays, paradoxically it is in the church that medieval drama began. The first record of this beginning is the trope in the Easter service known as the Quem quaeritis [whom you seek]. Tropes, originally musical elaborations of the church service, gradually evolved into drama; eventually the Latin lines telling of the Resurrection were spoken, rather than sung, by priests who represented the angels and the two Marys at the tomb of Jesus. Thus, simple interpolations developed into grandiose cycles of mystery plays, depicting biblical episodes from the Creation to Judgment Day. The most famous of these plays is the Second Shepherds' Play .

Another important type that developed from church liturgy was the miracle play, based on the lives of saints rather than on scripture. The miracle play reached its peak in France and the mystery play in England. Both types gradually became secularized, passing into the hands of trade guilds or professional actors. The Second Shepherds' Play, for all its religious seriousness, is most noteworthy for its elements of realism and farce, while the miracle plays in France often emphasized comedy and adventure (see miracle play ).

The morality play , a third type of religious drama, appeared early in the 15th cent. Morality plays were religious allegories, the most famous being Everyman . Another type of drama popular in medieval times was the interlude , which can be generally defined as a dramatic work with characteristics of the morality play that is primarily intended for entertainment.

Renaissance Drama

By the advent of the Renaissance in the 15th and 16th cent., most European countries had established native traditions of religious drama and farce that contended with the impact of the newly discovered Greek and Roman plays. Little had been known of classical drama during the Middle Ages, and evidently the only classical imitations during that period were the Christian imitations of Terence by the Saxon nun Hrotswitha in the 10th cent.

Italy

The translation and imitation of the classics occurred first in Italy, with Terence, Plautus, and Seneca as the models. The Italians strictly applied their interpretation of Aristotle 's rules for the drama, and this rigidity was primarily responsible for the failure of Italian Renaissance drama. Some liveliness appeared in the comic sphere, particularly in the works of Ariosto and in Machiavelli 's satiric masterpiece, La Mandragola (1524). The pastoral drama—set in the country and depicting the romantic affairs of rustic people, usually shepherds and shepherdesses—was more successful than either comedy or tragedy. Notable Italian practitioners of the genre were Giovanni Battista Guarini (1537-1612) and Torquato Tasso .

The true direction of the Italian stage was toward the spectacular and the musical. A popular Italian Renaissance form was the intermezzo , which presented music and lively entertainment between the acts of classical imitations. The native taste for music and theatricality led to the emergence of the opera in the 16th cent. and the triumph of this form on the Italian stage in the 17th cent. Similarly, the commedia dell'arte, emphasizing comedy and improvisation and featuring character types familiar to a contemporary audience, was more popular than academic imitations of classical comedy.

France

Renaissance drama appeared somewhat later in France than in Italy. Estienne Jodelle 's Senecan tragedy Cleopatre captive (1553) marks the beginning of classical imitation in France. The French drama initially suffered from the same rigidity as the Italian, basing itself on Roman models and Italian imitations. However, in the late 16th cent. in France there was a romantic reaction to classical dullness, led by Alexandre Hardy , France's first professional playwright.

This romantic trend was stopped in the 17th cent. by Cardinal Richelieu, who insisted on a return to classic forms. Richelieu's judgment, however, bore fruit in the triumphs of the French neoclassical tragedies of Jean Racine and the comedies of Molière . The great tragedies of Pierre Corneille , although classical in their grandeur and in their concern with noble characters, are decidedly of the Renaissance in their exaltation of man's ability, by force of will, to transcend adverse circumstances.

Spain

Renaissance drama in Spain and England was more successful than in France and Italy because the two former nations were able to transform classical models with infusions of native characteristics. In Spain the two leading Renaissance playwrights were Lope de Vega and Pedro Calderón de la Barca . Earlier, Lope de Rueda had set the tone for future Spanish drama with plays that are romantic, lyrical, and generally in the mixed tragicomic form. Lope de Vega wrote an enormous number of plays of many types, emphasizing plot, character, and romantic action. Best known for his La vida es sueño [life is a dream], a play that questions the nature of reality, Calderón was a more controlled and philosophical writer than Lope.

England

The English drama of the 16th cent. showed from the beginning that it would not be bound by classical rules. Elements of farce, morality, and a disregard for the unities of time, place, and action inform the early comedies Gammer Gurton's Needle and Ralph Roister Doister (both c.1553) and the Senecan tragedy Gorboduc (1562). William Shakespeare 's great work was foreshadowed by early essays in the historical chronicle play, by elements of romance found in the works of John Lyly , by revenge plays such as Thomas Kyd 's Spanish Tragedy (c.1586)—again inspired by the works of Seneca—and by Christopher Marlowe 's development of blank verse and his deepening of the tragic perception.

Shakespeare, of course, stands as the supreme dramatist of the Renaissance period, equally adept at writing tragedies, comedies, or chronicle plays. His great achievements include the perfection of a verse form and language that capture the spirit of ordinary speech and yet stand above it to give a special dignity to his characters and situations; an unrivaled subtlety of characterization; and a marvelous ability to unify plot, character, imagery, and verse movement.

With the reign of James I the English drama began to decline until the closing of the theaters by the Puritans in 1642. This period is marked by sensationalism and rhetoric in tragedy, as in the works of John Webster and Thomas Middleton , spectacle in the form of the masque , and a gradual turn to polished wit in comedy, begun by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher and furthered by James Shirley . The best plays of the Jacobean period are the comedies of Ben Jonson , in which he satirized contemporary life by means of his own invention, the comedy of humours.

Drama from 1750 to 1800

The second half of the 17th cent. was distinguished by the achievements of the French neoclassicists and the Restoration playwrights in England. Jean Racine brought clarity of perception and simplicity of language to his love tragedies, which emphasize women characters and psychological motivation. Molière produced brilliant social comedies that are neoclassical in their ridicule of any sort of excess.

In England, Restoration tragedy degenerated into bombastic heroic dramas by such authors as John Dryden and Thomas Otway . Often written in rhymed heroic couplets, these plays are replete with sensational incidents and epic personages. But Restoration comedy, particularly the brilliant comedies of manners by George Etherege and William Congreve , achieved a perfection of style and cynical upper-class wit that is still appreciated. The works of William Wycherley , while similar in type, are more savage and deeply cynical. George Farquhar was a later and gentler master of Restoration comedy.

Eighteenth-Century Drama

The influence of Restoration comedy can be seen in the 18th cent. in the plays of Oliver Goldsmith and Richard Brinsley Sheridan . This century also ushered in the middle-class or domestic drama, which treated the problems of ordinary people. George Lillo's London Merchant; or, The History of George Barnwell (1731), is an important example of this type of play because it brought the bourgeois tragic hero to the English stage.

Such playwrights as Sir Richard Steele and Colley Cibber in England and Marivaux in France contributed to the development of the genteel, sentimental comedy. While the political satire in the plays of Henry Fielding and in John Gay 's Beggar's Opera (1728) seemed to offer a more interesting potential than the sentiment of Cibber, this line of development was cut off by the Licensing Act of 1737, which required government approval before a play could be produced. The Italian Carlo Goldoni , who wrote realistic comedies with fairly sophisticated characterizations, also tended toward middle-class moralizing. His contemporary, Count Carlo Gozzi , was more ironic and remained faithful to the spirit of the commedia dell'arte.

Prior to the surge of German romanticism in the late 18th cent., two playwrights stood apart from the trend toward sentimental bourgeois realism. Voltaire tried to revive classical models and introduced exotic Eastern settings, although his tragedies tend to be more philosophical than dramatic. Similarly, the Italian Count Vittorio Alfieri sought to restore the spirit of the ancients to his drama, but the attempt was vitiated by his chauvinism.

The Sturm und Drang in Germany represented a romantic reaction against French neoclassicism and was supported by an upsurge of German interest in Shakespeare, who was viewed at the time as the greatest of the romantics. Gotthold Lessing , Friedrich von Schiller , and Goethe were the principal figures of this movement, but the plays produced by the three are frequently marred by sentimentality and too heavy a burden of philosophical ideas.

Nineteenth-Century Drama

The romantic movement did not blossom in French drama until the 1820s, and then primarily in the work of Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas père, while in England the great Romantic poets did not produce important drama, although both Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley were practitioners of the closet drama . Burlesque and mediocre melodrama reigned supreme on the English stage.

Although melodrama was aimed solely at producing superficial excitement, its development, coupled with the emergence of realism in the 19th cent., resulted in more serious drama. Initially, the melodrama dealt in such superficially exciting materials as the gothic castle with its mysterious lord for a villain, but gradually the characters and settings moved closer to the realities of contemporary life.

The concern for generating excitement led to a more careful consideration of plot construction, reflected in the smoothly contrived climaxes of the "well-made" plays of Eugène Scribe and Victorien Sardou of France and Arthur Wing Pinero of England. The work of Émile Augier and Alexandre Dumas fils combined the drama of ideas with the "well-made" play. Realism had perhaps its most profound expression in the works of the great 19th-century Russian dramatists: Nikolai Gogol , A. N. Ostrovsky , Ivan Turgenev , Leo Tolstoy , Anton Chekhov , and Maxim Gorky . Many of the Russian dramatists emphasized character and satire rather than plot in their works.

Related to realism is naturalism , which can be defined as a selective realism emphasizing the more sordid and pessimistic aspects of life. An early forerunner of this style in the drama is Georg Büchner 's powerful tragedy Danton's Death (1835), and an even earlier suggestion may be seen in the pessimistic romantic tragedies of Heinrich von Kleist . Friedrich Hebbel wrote grimly naturalistic drama in the middle of the 19th cent., but the naturalistic movement is most commonly identified with the "slice-of-life" theory of Émile Zola , which had a profound effect on 20th-century playwrights.

Henrik Ibsen of Norway brought to a climax the realistic movement of the 19th cent. and also served as a bridge to 20th-century symbolism. His realistic dramas of ideas surpass other such works because they blend a complex plot, a detailed setting, and middle-class yet extraordinary characters in an organic whole. Ibsen's later plays, such as The Master Builder (1892), are symbolic, marking a trend away from realism that was continued by August Strindberg 's dream plays, with their emphasis on the spiritual, and by the plays of the Belgian Maurice Maeterlinck , who incorporated into drama the theories of the symbolist poets (see symbolists ).

While these antirealistic developments took place on the Continent, two playwrights were making unique contributions to English theater. Oscar Wilde produced comedies of manners that compare favorably with the works of Congreve, and George Bernard Shaw brought the play of ideas to fruition with penetrating intelligence and singular wit.

Twentieth-Century Drama

During the 20th cent., especially after World War I, Western drama became more internationally unified and less the product of separate national literary traditions. Throughout the century realism, naturalism, and symbolism (and various combinations of these) continued to inform important plays. Among the many 20th-century playwrights who have written what can be broadly termed naturalist dramas are Gerhart Hauptmann (German), John Galsworthy (English), John Millington Synge and Sean O'Casey (Irish), and Eugene O'Neill , Clifford Odets , and Lillian Hellman (American).

An important movement in early 20th-century drama was expressionism . Expressionist playwrights tried to convey the dehumanizing aspects of 20th-century technological society through such devices as minimal scenery, telegraphic dialogue, talking machines, and characters portrayed as types rather than individuals. Notable playwrights who wrote expressionist dramas include Ernst Toller and Georg Kaiser (German), Karel Čapek (Czech), and Elmer Rice and Eugene O'Neill (American). The 20th cent. also saw the attempted revival of drama in verse, but although such writers as William Butler Yeats , W. H. Auden , T. S. Eliot , Christopher Fry , and Maxwell Anderson produced effective results, verse drama was no longer an important form in English. In Spanish, however, the poetic dramas of Federico García Lorca are placed among the great works of Spanish literature.

Three vital figures of 20th-century drama are the American Eugene O'Neill, the German Bertolt Brecht, and the Italian Luigi Pirandello . O'Neill's body of plays in many forms—naturalistic, expressionist, symbolic, psychological—won him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1936 and indicated the coming-of-age of American drama. Brecht wrote dramas of ideas, usually promulgating socialist or Marxist theory. In order to make his audience more intellectually receptive to his theses, he endeavored—by using expressionist techniques—to make them continually aware that they were watching a play, not vicariously experiencing reality. For Pirandello, too, it was paramount to fix an awareness of his plays as theater; indeed, the major philosophical concern of his dramas is the difficulty of differentiating between illusion and reality.

World War II and its attendant horrors produced a widespread sense of the utter meaninglessness of human existence. This sense is brilliantly expressed in the body of plays that have come to be known collectively as the theater of the absurd. By abandoning traditional devices of the drama, including logical plot development, meaningful dialogue, and intelligible characters, absurdist playwrights sought to convey modern humanity's feelings of bewilderment, alienation, and despair—the sense that reality is itself unreal. In their plays human beings often portrayed as dupes, clowns who, although not without dignity, are at the mercy of forces that are inscrutable.

Probably the most famous plays of the theater of the absurd are Eugene Ionesco 's Bald Soprano (1950) and Samuel Beckett 's Waiting for Godot (1953). The sources of the theater of the absurd are diverse; they can be found in the tenets of surrealism , Dadaism (see Dada ), and existentialism ; in the traditions of the music hall, vaudeville , and burlesque ; and in the films of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton . Playwrights whose works can be roughly classed as belonging to the theater of the absurd are Jean Genet (French), Max Frisch and Friedrich Dürrenmatt (Swiss), Fernando Arrabal (Spanish), and the early plays of Edward Albee (American). The pessimism and despair of the 20th cent. also found expression in the existentialist dramas of Jean-Paul Sartre , in the realistic and symbolic dramas of Arthur Miller , Tennessee Williams , and Jean Anouilh , and in the surrealist plays of Jean Cocteau .

Somewhat similar to the theater of the absurd is the so-called theater of cruelty, derived from the ideas of Antonin Artaud , who, writing in the 1930s, foresaw a drama that would assault its audience with movement and sound, producing a visceral rather than an intellectual reaction. After the violence of World War II and the subsequent threat of the atomic bomb, his approach seemed particularly appropriate to many playwrights. Elements of the theater of cruelty can be found in the brilliantly abusive language of John Osborne 's Look Back in Anger (1956) and Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), in the ritualistic aspects of some of Genet's plays, in the masked utterances and enigmatic silences of Harold Pinter 's "comedies of menace," and in the orgiastic abandon of Julian Beck 's Paradise Now! (1968); it was fully expressed in Peter Brooks's production of Peter Weiss 's Marat/Sade (1964).

During the last third of the 20th cent. a few continental European dramatists, such as Dario Fo in Italy and Heiner Müller in Germany, stand out in the theater world. However, for the most part, the countries of the continent saw an emphasis on creative trends in directing rather than a flowering of new plays. In the United States and England, however, many dramatists old and new continued to flourish, with numerous plays of the later decades of the 20th cent. (and the early 21st cent.) echoing the trends of the years preceding them.

Realism in a number of guises—psychological, social, and political—continued to be a force in such British works as David Storey 's Home (1971), Sir Alan Ayckbourn 's Norman Conquests trilogy (1974), and David Hare 's Amy's View (1998); in such Irish dramas as Brian Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa (1990) and Martin McDonagh's 1990s Leenane trilogy; and in such American plays as Jason Miller's That Championship Season (1972), Lanford Wilson 's Talley's Folly (1979), and John Guare 's Six Degrees of Separation (1990). In keeping with the tenor of the times, many of these and other works of the period were marked by elements of wit, irony, and satire.

A witty surrealism also characterized some of the late 20th cent.'s theater, particularly the brilliant wordplay and startling juxtapositions of the many plays of England's Tom Stoppard . In addition, two of late-20th-century America's most important dramatists, Sam Shepard and David Mamet (as well as their followers and imitators), explored American culture with a kind of hyper-realism mingled with echoes of the theater of cruelty in the former's Buried Child (1978), the latter's Glengarry Glen Ross (1983), and other works. While each exhibited his own very distinctive voice and vision, both playwrights achieved many of their effects through stark settings, austere language in spare dialog, meaningful silences, the projection of a powerful streak of menace, and outbursts of real or implied violence.

The late decades of the 20th century were also a time of considerable experiment and iconoclasm. Experimental dramas of the 1960s and 70s by such groups as Beck's Living Theater and Jerzy Grotowski 's Polish Laboratory Theatre were followed by a mixing and merging of various kinds of media with aspects of postmodernism , improvisational techniques, performance art , and other kinds of avant-garde theater. Some of the era's more innovative efforts included productions by theater groups such as New York's La MaMa (1961-) and Mabou Mines (1970-) and Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Co. (1976-); the Canadian writer-director Robert Lepage's intricate, sometimes multilingual works, e.g. Tectonic Plates (1988); the inventive one-man shows of such monologuists as Eric Bogosian, Spalding Gray, and John Leguizamo; the transgressive drag dramas of Charles Ludlam's Ridiculous Theater, e.g., The Mystery of Irma Vep (1984); and the operatic multimedia extravaganzas of Robert Wilson , e.g. White Raven (1999).

Thematically, the social upheavals of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s—particularly the civil rights and women's movements, gay liberation, and the AIDS crisis—provided impetus for new plays that explored the lives of minorities and women. Beginning with Lorraine Hansberry 's A Raisin in the Sun (1959), drama by and about African Americans emerged as a significant theatrical trend. In the 1960s plays such as James Baldwin 's Blues for Mr. Charley (1964), Amiri Baraka 's searing Dutchman (1964), and Charles Gordone's No Place to Be Somebody (1967) explored black American life; writers including Ed Bullins (e.g., The Taking of Miss Janie, 1975), Ntozake Shange (e.g., For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf, 1976) and Charles Fuller (e.g., A Soldier's Play, 1981) carried these themes into later decades. One of the most distinctive and prolific of the century's African-American playwrights, August Wilson , debuted on Broadway in 1984 with Ma Rainey's Black Bottom and continued to define the black American experience in his ongoing dramatic cycle into the next century.

Feminist and other women-centered themes dramatized by contemporary female playwrights were plentiful in the 1970s and extended in the following decades. Significant figures included England's Caryl Churchill (e.g., the witty Top Girls, 1982), the Cuban-American experimentalist Maria Irene Forńes (e.g., Fefu and Her Friends, 1977) and American realists including Beth Henley (e.g., Crimes of the Heart, 1978), Marsha Norman (e.g., 'Night Mother, 1982), and Wendy Wasserstein (e.g., The Heidi Chronicles, 1988). Skilled monologuists also provided provocative female-themed one-women shows such as Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues (1996) and various solo theatrical performances by Lily Tomlin, Karen Finley, Anna Deveare Smith, Sarah Jones, and others.

Gay themes (often in works by gay playwrights) also marked the later decades of the 20th cent. Homosexual characters had been treated sympathetically but in the context of pathology in such earlier 20th-century works as Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour (1934) and Robert Anderson's Tea and Sympathy (1953). Gay subjects were presented more explicitly during the 1960s, notably in the English farces of Joe Orton and Matt Crowley's witty but grim portrait of pre-Stonewall American gay life, The Boys in the Band (1968). In later years gay experience was explored more frequently and with greater variety and openness, notably in Britain in Martin Sherman's Bent (1979) and Peter Gill's Mean Tears (1987) and in the United States in Jane Chambers' Last Summer at Bluefish Cove (1980), Harvey Fierstein's Torch Song Trilogy (1981), Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart (1986), David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly (1988), which also dealt with Asian identity, and Paul Rudnick's Jeffrey (1993). Tony Kushner 's acclaimed two-part Angels in America (1991-92) is generally considered the century's most brilliant and innovative theatrical treatment of the contemporary gay world.