Drama is one of the three types of literature (along with the epic and the lyric). Drama belongs simultaneously to theater and literature: being the fundamental principle of the performance, it is also perceived in reading. It was formed on the basis of evolution theatrical performances: the prominence of actors who combine pantomime with the spoken word marked its emergence as a kind of literature. Intended for collective perception, the drama has always gravitated towards the most acute social problems and, in the most striking examples, has become popular; its basis is socio-historical contradictions or eternal, universal antinomies. It is dominated by drama - a property of the human spirit, awakened by situations when the cherished and vital for a person remains unfulfilled or is under threat. Most dramas are built on a single external action with its vicissitudes (which corresponds to the principle of the unity of action, which goes back to Aristotle). Dramatic action is associated, as a rule, with a direct confrontation between the characters. It is either traced from the plot to the denouement, capturing large periods of time (medieval and oriental drama, for example, Shakuntala by Kalidasa), or is taken only at its climax, close to the denouement (ancient tragedies or many dramas of modern times, for example, The Dowry, 1879, A.N. Ostrovsky).
Drama principles
Classical aesthetics of the 19th century absolutized these principles of drama construction. Considering the drama - following Hegel - as a reproduction of volitional impulses ("actions" and "reactions") colliding with each other, V. G. Belinsky believed that "there should not be a single person in the drama that would not be necessary in the mechanism of its course and development" and that "the decision in choosing the path depends on the hero of the drama, and not on the event." However, in the chronicles of W. Shakespeare and in the tragedy "Boris Godunov" by A. S. Pushkin, the unity of external action is weakened, and in A. P. Chekhov it is completely absent: here several equal storylines unfold simultaneously. Often the drama is dominated by an internal action, in which the characters do not so much do something as they experience stable conflict situations and think intensely. Internal action, elements of which are already present in the tragedies "Oedipus Rex" by Sophocles and "Hamlet" (1601) by Shakespeare, dominates in the drama of the late 19th - mid-20th centuries (G. Ibsen, M. Maeterlinck, Chekhov, M. Gorky, B. Shaw , B. Brecht, modern "intellectual" drama, for example: J. Anouil). The principle of internal action is polemically proclaimed in Shaw's The Quintessence of Ibsenism (1891).
The basis of the composition
The universal basis of the composition of the drama is the articulation of its text. on stage episodes, within which one moment closely adjoins another, neighboring one: the depicted, so-called real time unambiguously corresponds to the time of perception, artistic (see).
The division of the drama into episodes is carried out in different ways. In folk medieval and oriental drama, as well as in Shakespeare, in Pushkin's Boris Godunov, in Brecht's plays, the place and time of the action often change, which gives the image, as it were, epic freedom. The European drama of the 17th-19th centuries is based, as a rule, on a few and lengthy stage episodes that coincide with the acts of the performances, which gives the color of the life authenticity shown. The aesthetics of classicism insisted on the most compact mastery of space and time; the “three unities” proclaimed by N. Boileau survived until the 19th century (“Woe from Wit”, A.S. Griboedova).
Drama and character expression
In a drama, the characters' statements play a decisive role., which signify their volitional actions and active self-disclosure, while the narrative (the stories of the characters about what happened earlier, the messages of the messengers, the introduction of the author's voice into the play) is subordinate, if not completely absent; the words spoken by the characters form a solid, continuous line in the text. Theatrical-dramatic speech has a twofold kind of addressing: the character-actor enters into a dialogue with stage partners and appeals monologically to the audience (see). The monologic beginning of speech occurs in the drama, firstly, implicitly, in the form of replicas included in the dialogue to the side that do not receive a response (such are the statements of Chekhov's heroes, which signify a surge of emotions of disunited and lonely people); secondly, in the form of monologues proper, which reveal the hidden experiences of the characters and thereby enhance the drama of the action, expand the scope of what is depicted, and directly reveal its meaning. Combining dialogic colloquialism and monologue rhetoric, speech in drama concentrates the appellative-effective possibilities of language and acquires a special artistic energy.
In the historically early stages (from antiquity to F. Schiller and V. Hugo), D., predominantly poetic, widely relied on monologues (outpourings of the heroes’ souls in “scenes of pathos”, statements by messengers, remarks aside, direct appeals to the public), which brought her closer to oratory and lyric poetry. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the propensity of the heroes of the traditional poetic drama to “flourish until they are completely exhausted” (Yu.A. Strindberg) is often perceived aloofly and ironically, as a tribute to routine and falsehood. In the drama of the 19th century, marked by a close interest in private, family life, the conversational-dialogical principle dominates (Ostrovsky, Chekhov), monologue rhetoric is reduced to a minimum (Ibsen's late plays). In the 20th century, the monologue is again activated in the drama, which turned to the deepest socio-political conflicts of our time (Gorky, V.V. Mayakovsky, Brecht) and the universal antinomies of being (Anui, J.P. Sartre).
Speech in drama
Speech in a drama designed to be spoken in a wide space theater space, designed for a mass effect, potentially sonorous, full-voiced, that is, full of theatricality ("without eloquence there is no dramatic writer" - D. Diderot noted). Theater and drama need situations where the hero speaks out to the public (the culmination of The Inspector General, 1836, N.V. Gogol and Thunderstorms, 1859, A.N. Ostrovsky, key episodes of Mayakovsky’s comedies), as well as in theatrical hyperbole: a dramatic character needs more loud and distinctly pronounced words than the depicted positions require (a publicistically vivid monologue of Andrey rolling a baby carriage alone in the 4th act of The Three Sisters, 1901, Chekhov). Pushkin spoke about the inclination of drama to the conventionality of images (“Of all kinds of compositions, the most implausible are dramatic ones.” A.S. Pushkin. On Tragedy, 1825), E. Zola and L.N. Tolstoy. The readiness to recklessly indulge in passions, the tendency to sudden decisions, to sharp intellectual reactions, to the catchy expression of thoughts and feelings are inherent in the heroes of the drama much more than the characters of narrative works. The scene “connects in a cramped space, in an interval of some two hours, all the movements that even a passionate being can often only experience in a long period of life” (Talma F. About theatrics.). The main subject of the playwright's search is significant and vivid, completely filling the consciousness of spiritual movements, which are mainly reactions to what is happening at the moment: to the just spoken word, to someone's movement. Thoughts, feelings and intentions, vague and vague, are reproduced in dramatic speech with less concreteness and completeness than in narrative form. Such limitations of the drama are overcome by its stage reproduction: the intonations, gestures and facial expressions of the actors (sometimes recorded by writers in remarks) capture the shades of the characters' experiences.
Drama Appointment
The purpose of the drama, according to Pushkin, is “to act on the multitude, to occupy its curiosity” and for this to capture the “truth of passions”: “Laughter, pity and horror are the three strings of our imagination, shaken by dramatic art” (A.S. Pushkin. O folk drama and drama "Marfa Posadnitsa", 1830). Drama is especially closely connected with the sphere of laughter, because the theater was consolidated and developed within the framework of mass festivities, in an atmosphere of play and fun: the “comedian instinct” is “the fundamental basis of all dramatic skill” (Mann T.). In previous eras - from antiquity to the 19th century - the main properties of the drama corresponded to general literary and general artistic trends. The transforming (idealizing or grotesque) beginning in art dominated the reproducing one, and the depicted noticeably deviated from the forms. real life, so that the drama not only successfully competed with the epic genre, but was also perceived as the "crown of poetry" (Belinsky). In the 19th and 20th centuries, the desire of art for lifelikeness and naturalness, responding with the predominance of the novel and the decline in the role of drama (especially in the West in the first half of the 19th century), at the same time radically altered its structure: under the influence of the experience of novelists, the traditional conventionality and hyperbolism of dramatic representation began to reduce to a minimum (Ostrovsky, Chekhov, Gorky with their desire for everyday and psychological authenticity of images). However, the new drama also retains elements of "implausibility". Even in Chekhov's worldly authentic plays, some of the characters' statements are conventionally poetic.
Although drama invariably dominates in the figurative system speech characteristic, its text is focused on spectacular expressiveness and takes into account the possibilities of stage technique. Hence the most important requirement for a drama is its stage presence (conditioned, in the final analysis, by a sharp conflict). However, there are dramas meant only for reading. Such are many plays of the countries of the East, where the heyday of drama and theater sometimes did not coincide, the Spanish drama-novel "Celestina" (late 15th century), in the literature of the 19th century - the tragedy of J. Byron, "Faust" (1808-31) I.V. .Goethe. Problematic is Pushkin's attitude to the stage in Boris Godunov, and especially in small tragedies. The theater of the 20th century, successfully mastering almost any genre and generic forms of literature, erases the former boundary between drama proper and drama for reading.
On the stage
When staged, a drama (like other literary works) is not only performed, but translated by the actors and the director into the language of the theater: on the basis of the literary text, intonational-gestural drawings of roles are developed, scenery, sound effects and mise en scenes are created. Stage "completion" of the drama, in which its meaning is enriched and significantly modified, has an important artistic and cultural function. Thanks to him, the semantic re-accentuations of literature are carried out, which inevitably accompany its life in the minds of the public. The range of stage interpretations of the drama, as modern experience convinces, is very wide. When creating an updated stage text proper, both illustrativeness, literalism in reading the drama and reducing the performance to the role of its "interlinear", as well as arbitrary, modernizing reshaping of a previously created work - its transformation into an occasion for the director to express his own dramatic aspirations - are undesirable. The respectful and careful attitude of the actors and the director to the content concept, the features of the genre and style of the dramatic work, as well as to its text, becomes an imperative when referring to the classics.
as a kind of literature
Drama as a genre of literature includes many genres.. Tragedy and comedy exist throughout the history of drama; the Middle Ages are characterized by liturgical drama, mysteries, miracles, morality, school drama. In the 18th century, drama was formed as a genre that later prevailed in world dramaturgy (see). Melodramas, farces, vaudevilles are also widespread. In modern drama, tragicomedies and tragic farces, which prevail in the theater of the absurd, have acquired an important role.
At the origins of European drama are the works of the ancient Greek tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and the comedian Aristophanes. Focusing on the forms of mass festivities that had ritual and cult origins, following the traditions of choral lyrics and oratory, they created an original drama in which the characters communicated not only with each other, but also with the choir, expressing the mood of the author and the audience. Ancient Roman drama is represented by Plautus, Terence, Seneca. Antique drama was entrusted with the role of a public educator; it is inherent in philosophy, the grandeur of tragic images, the brightness of the carnival-satirical play in comedy. The theory of drama (especially the tragic genre) since the time of Aristotle appeared in European culture simultaneously as a theory of verbal art in general, which testified to the special significance of the dramatic kind of literature.
In the East
The heyday of drama in the East refers to a later time: in India - from the middle of the 1st millennium AD (Kalidasa, Bhasa, Shudraka); ancient Indian drama relied extensively on epic plots, Vedic motifs and song-lyrical forms. The largest playwrights in Japan are Zeami (early 15th century), in whose work the drama first received a complete literary form (yokyoku genre), and Monzaemon Chikamatsu (late 17th - early 18th century). In the 13th and 14th centuries secular drama took shape in China.
European drama of modern times
The European drama of modern times, based on the principles of ancient art (mainly in tragedies), at the same time inherited the traditions of medieval folk theater, mainly comedy-farce. Her "golden age" - English and Spanish Renaissance and Baroque drama The titanism and duality of the Renaissance personality, its freedom from the gods and at the same time dependence on the passions and power of money, the integrity and contradictory nature of the historical flow were embodied in Shakespeare in a truly folk dramatic form, synthesizing the tragic and the comic , real and fantastic, possessing compositional freedom, plot diversity, combining subtle intellect and poetry with rough farce. Calderon de la Barca embodied the baroque ideas: the duality of the world (the antinomy of the earthly and the spiritual), the inevitability of suffering on earth and the stoic self-liberation of man. The drama of French classicism has also become a classic; the tragedies of P. Corneille and J. Racine psychologically deeply unfolded the conflict of personal feelings and duty to the nation and the state. Molière's "High Comedy" combined the traditions of folk spectacle with the principles of classicism, and satire on social vices with folk cheerfulness.
The ideas and conflicts of the Enlightenment were reflected in the dramas of G. Lessing, Diderot, P. Beaumarchais, K. Goldoni; in the genre of petty-bourgeois drama, the universality of the norms of classicism was questioned, and the democratization of drama and its language took place. At the beginning of the 19th century, the romantics (G. Kleist, Byron, P. Shelley, V. Hugo) created the most meaningful dramaturgy. The pathos of individual freedom and protest against bourgeoisness were conveyed through bright events, legendary or historical, clothed in monologues full of lyricism.
A new rise in Western European drama dates back to the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries: Ibsen, G. Hauptman, Strindberg, Shaw focus on acute social and moral conflicts. In the 20th century, the traditions of the drama of this era were inherited by R. Rolland, J. Priestley, S. O'Casey, Y. O'Neill, L. Pirandello, K. Chapek, A. Miller, E. de Filippo, F. Durrenmatt, E. .Albee, T.Williams. A prominent place in foreign art is occupied by the so-called intellectual drama associated with existentialism (Sartre, Anouilh); in the second half of the 20th century, the drama of the absurd developed (E. Ionesco, S. Beckett, G. Pinter, etc.). Acute socio-political collisions of the 1920s-40s were reflected in Brecht's work; his theater is emphatically rationalistic, intellectually intense, frankly conditional, oratorical and meeting.
Russian drama
Russian drama acquired the status of high classics starting from the 1820s and 30s.(Griboyedov, Pushkin, Gogol). Ostrovsky's multi-genre dramaturgy, with its cross-cutting conflict of human dignity and the power of money, with the forefront of a way of life marked by despotism, with its sympathy and respect for the "little man" and the predominance of "life-like" forms, became decisive in the formation of the national repertoire of the 19th century. Psychological dramas filled with sober realism were created by L.N. Tolstoy. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the drama underwent a radical shift in the work of Chekhov, who, having comprehended the spiritual drama of the intelligentsia of his time, clothed deep drama in the form of mournful-ironic lyricism. The replicas and episodes of his plays are associated associatively, according to the principle of "counterpoint", states of mind heroes are revealed against the background of the usual course of life with the help of subtext developed by Chekhov in parallel with the symbolist Maeterlinck, who was interested in the "mysteries of the spirit" and the hidden "tragedy Everyday life».
At the origins of domestic drama Soviet period- Gorky's work, continued by historical and revolutionary plays (N.F. Pogodin, B.A. Lavrenev, V.V. Vishnevsky, K.A. Trenev). Vivid examples of satirical drama were created by Mayakovsky, M.A. Bulgakov, N.R. Erdman. The genre of the fairy tale play, combining light lyricism, heroism and satire, was developed by E.L. Schwartz. The socio-psychological drama is represented by the works of A.N. Afinogenov, L.M. Leonov, A.E. Korneichuk, A.N. Arbuzov, and later - V.S. Rozov, A.M. Volodin. L.G.Zorina, R.Ibragimbekova, I.P.Druta, L.S.Petrushevskaya, V.I.Slavkina, A.M.Galina. The production theme formed the basis of the socially acute plays by I.M. Dvoretsky and A.I. Gelman. A kind of "drama of morals", combining socio-psychological analysis with a grotesque vaudeville stream, was created by A.V. Vampilov. Over the past decade, the plays of N.V. Kolyada have been successful. The drama of the 20th century sometimes includes a lyrical beginning (“lyrical dramas” by Maeterlinck and A.A. Blok) or narrative (Brecht called his plays “epic”). The use of narrative fragments and active montage of stage episodes often gives the work of playwrights a flavor of documentary. And at the same time, it is precisely in these dramas that the illusion of the authenticity of what is depicted is frankly destroyed and tribute is paid to demonstrating convention (direct appeals of characters to the public; reproduction of the hero’s memories or dreams on stage; song-lyrical fragments invading the action). In the middle of the 20th century, a docudrama is circulating, reproducing real events, historical documents, memoirs ("Dear Liar", 1963, J. Kilty, "Sixth of July", 1962, and "Revolutionary Study", 1978, M.F. Shatrova).
The word drama comes from Greek drama, which means action.
- ▲ kind of fiction genres of literature. epic genre. epic. prose is an artistic story about what l. events. prosaic (# works). fiction. lyrics. drama... Ideographic Dictionary of the Russian Language
This term has other meanings, see Drama. Not to be confused with Drama (a type of literature). Drama is a literary (dramatic), stage and cinematic genre. Received special distribution in the literature of the XVIII XXI centuries, ... ... Wikipedia
In art: Drama is a kind of literature (along with epic and lyrics); Drama is a kind of stage cinematic action; a genre that includes various subgenres, modifications (such as petty-bourgeois drama, drama of the absurd, etc.); Toponym(s): ... ... Wikipedia
D. as a poetic genus Origin D. Eastern D. Antique D. Medieval D. D. Renaissance From Renaissance to Classicism Elizabethan D. Spanish D. Classical D. Bourgeois D. Ro ... Literary Encyclopedia
Epos, poetry, drama. It is determined according to various criteria: from the point of view of ways of imitation of reality (Aristotle), types of content (F. Schiller, F. Schelling), categories of epistemology (objective subjective in G. W. F. Hegel), formal ... ... encyclopedic Dictionary
Drama (Greek dráma, literally - action), 1) one of the three types of literature (along with epic and lyrics; see Literary type). D. belongs simultaneously to the theater and literature: being the fundamental principle of the performance, it is also perceived in ... ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia
Modern Encyclopedia
Genus literary- GENUS LITERARY, one of the three groups of works of fiction epos, lyrics, drama. The tradition of generic division of literature was founded by Aristotle. Despite the fragility of the boundaries between genera and the abundance of intermediate forms (lyroepic ... ... Illustrated encyclopedic Dictionary
Epos, poetry, drama. It is determined according to various criteria: from the point of view of ways of imitating reality (Aristotle), types of content (F. Schiller, F. Schelling), categories of epistemology (objective subjective in G. Hegel), formal features ... ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary
GENUS, a (y), prev. about (in) kind and in (on) kind, pl. s, ov, husband. 1. The main social organization of the primitive communal system, united by blood relationship. Elder of the family. 2. A number of generations descending from one ancestor, as well as a generation in general ... Explanatory dictionary of Ozhegov
Books
- Pushkin, Tynyanov Yuri Nikolaevich. Yuri Nikolayevich Tynyanov (1894-1943) - an outstanding prose writer and literary critic - outwardly looked like Pushkin, as he was told from his student years. Who knows, maybe it was this similarity that helped ...
The dramatic genre of literature has three main genres: tragedy, comedy and drama in the narrow sense of the word, but it also has such genres as vaudeville, melodrama, tragicomedy.
Tragedy (gr.
Tragoidia, lit. - goat song) - "a dramatic genre based on the tragic collision of heroic characters, its tragic outcome and full of pathos ..."266.
The tragedy depicts reality as a bunch of internal contradictions; it reveals the conflicts of reality in an extremely intense form. This is a dramatic work, which is based on an irreconcilable life conflict, leading to the suffering and death of the hero. Thus, in a collision with the world of crimes, lies and hypocrisy, the bearer of advanced humanistic ideals perishes tragically. Danish prince Hamlet, the hero of the tragedy of the same name by W. Shakespeare.
In the struggle waged by tragic heroes, the heroic traits of human character are revealed with great fullness.
The genre of tragedy is long history. It arose from religious cult rites, was a stage performance of a myth. With the advent of the theater, tragedy emerged as an independent genre of dramatic art. The creators of tragedies were the ancient Greek playwrights of the 5th century. BC e. Sophocles, Euripides, Aeschylus, who left her perfect samples. They reflected the tragic collision of the traditions of the tribal system with the new social order. These conflicts were perceived and portrayed by playwrights mainly on mythological material. The hero of an ancient tragedy was drawn into an irresolvable conflict either by the will of an imperious fate (fate) or by the will of the gods. So, the hero of the tragedy of Aeschylus "Prometheus Chained" suffers because he violated the will of Zeus when he gave fire to people and taught them crafts. In the tragedy of Sophocles "Oedipus Rex" the hero is doomed to be a parricide, to marry his own mother. The ancient tragedy usually included five acts and was built in compliance with the "three unities" - place, time, action. Tragedies were written in verse and distinguished by loftiness of speech; its hero was a "high hero."
The great English playwright William Shakespeare is considered to be the founder of modern tragedy. At the heart of his tragedies "Romeo and Juliet", "Hamlet", "Othello", "King Lear", "Macbeth" are acute conflicts. Shakespeare's characters are no longer heroes of myths, but real people, struggling with real, not mythical forces and circumstances. Striving for maximum truthfulness and completeness in reproducing life, Shakespeare developed all the best aspects of ancient tragedy, at the same time freeing this genre from those conventions that had lost their meaning in his era (mythological plot, observance of the rule of "three unities"). The characters in Shakespeare's tragedies amaze with their vital persuasiveness. Formally, Shakespearean tragedy is far from antiquity. The tragedy of Shakespeare covers all aspects of reality. The personality of the hero of his tragedies is open, not fully defined, capable of change.
The next stage in the development of the tragedy genre is associated with the work of the French playwrights P. Corneille (Medea, Horace, The Death of Pompey, Oedipus, etc.) and J. Racine (Andromache, Iphigenia, Fed - ra" etc.) * They created brilliant samples of the tragedy of classicism - the tragedy of "high style" with the obligatory observance of the rule of "three unities".
At the turn of the XVIII-XIX centuries. F. Schiller updated the "classic" style of tragedy, creating the tragedies "Don Carlos", "Mary Stuart", "The Maid of Orleans".
In the era of romanticism, the content of the tragedy becomes the life of a person with his spiritual quest. Tragic dramas were created by V. Hugo (Ernani, Lucrezia Borgia, Ruy Blas, The King Amuses himself, etc.), J. Byron (Two Fascari), M. Lermontov (Masquerade).
In Russia, the first tragedies within the framework of the poetics of classicism were created in the 18th century. A. Sumarokov (“Khorev”), M. Kheraskov (“Flames”), V. Ozerov (“Polyxena”), Y. Knyazhnin (“Dido”).
In the 19th century Russian realism also provided convincing examples of tragedy. The creator of the tragedy of a new type was A.
C. Pushkin. The main character of his tragedy "Boris Godunov", in which all the requirements of classicism were violated, was the people, shown as the driving force of history. Comprehension of the tragic conflicts of reality was continued by A.N. Ostrovsky (“Guilty Without Guilt”, etc.) and L.N. Tolstoy ("The Power of Darkness").
At the end of XIX - beginning of XX century. the tragedy “in high style” is being revived: in Russia - in the works of L. Andreev (“The Life of a Man”, “Tsar-Hunger”), Vyach. Ivanov ("Prometheus"), in the West - in the work of T.-S. Elliot ("Murder in the Cathedral"), P. Claudel ("Annunciation"), G. Hauptmann ("Rats"). Later, in the 20th century, in the work of J.-P. Sartre ("Flies"), J. Anouilh ("Antigone").
Tragic conflicts in Russian literature of the XX century. were reflected in the dramaturgy of M. Bulgakov (“Days of the Turbins”, “Running”). In the literature of socialist realism, they acquired a peculiar interpretation, since the conflict based on the irreconcilable clash of class enemies became dominant in them, and the main character died in the name of the idea (“Optimistic Tragedy” by Vs. Vishnevsky, “Storm” by B.
N. Bill-Belotserkovsky, "Invasion" by L. Leonov, "Eagle on his shoulder" by I. Selvinsky, etc.). On the present stage development of Russian dramaturgy, the genre of tragedy is almost forgotten, but tragic conflicts are comprehended in many plays.
Comedy (lat. sotoesIa, Greek kotosIa, from kotoe - a merry procession and 6s1yo - a song) is a type of drama in which characters, situations and actions are presented in funny forms or are imbued with the comic1.
Comedy, like tragedy, originated in ancient Greece. The "father" of comedy is the ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes (V-IV centuries BC). In his works, he ridiculed the greed, bloodthirstiness and immorality of the Athenian aristocracy, stood up for a peaceful patriarchal life ("Horsemen", "Clouds", "Lysistrata", "Frogs").
In European literature of modern times, comedy continued the traditions of ancient literature, enriching them. In European literature, stable types of comedies stand out. For example, the comedy of masks, the commedia dell'arte (commedia dell'arte), which appeared in Italy in the 16th century. Its characters were typical masks (Harlequin, Pulcinella, etc.). This genre influenced the work of J.-B. Molière, K Goldoni, C. Gozzi.
In Spain, the comedy “cloak and sword” was popular in the works of Lope de Vega (“Sheep Spring”), Tirso de Molina (“Don Gil Green Pants”), Calderon (“No Joking With Love”).
Art theorists have solved the issue of the social purpose of comedy in different ways. During the Renaissance, her role was limited to correcting morals. In the 19th century V. Belinsky noted that comedy not only denies, but also affirms: “True indignation at the contradictions and vulgarity of society is an illness of a deep and noble soul that stands above its own society and carries the ideal of another, better society.” First of all, comedy was supposed to be aimed at ridiculing the ugly. But, along with laughter, the invisible “honest face” of the comedy (according to N.V. Gogol, the only honest face of his comedy “The Inspector General” was laughter), it could have a “noble comedy”, symbolizing a positive principle, represented, for example, in the image of Chatsky in Griboyedov, Figaro in Beaumarchais, Falstaff in Shakespeare.
The art of comedy achieved significant success in the work of W. Shakespeare (“Twelfth Night”, “The Taming of the Shrew”, etc.). The playwright expressed in them the Renaissance idea of the irresistible power of nature over the human heart. The ugliness in his comedies was funny, fun reigned in them, they had solid characters of strong people who know how to love. Shakespeare's comedies still do not leave the theater stages of the world.
Brilliant success was achieved by the French comedian of the 17th century. Molière is the author of the world-famous "Tartuffe", "The Tradesman in the Nobility", "The Miser". Beaumarchais became a famous comedian (The Barber of Seville, The Marriage of Figaro).
Folk comedy has existed in Russia for a long time. An outstanding comedian of the Russian Enlightenment was D.N. Fonvizin. His comedy "Undergrowth" mercilessly ridiculed the "wild nobility" reigning in the Prostakov family. Wrote comedies I.A. Krylov (“Lesson to daughters”, “Fashion shop”), ridiculing admiration for foreigners.
In the 19th century examples of satirical, social realistic comedy are created by A.S. Griboyedov ("Woe from Wit"), N.V. Gogol ("Inspector"), A.N. Ostrovsky (“Profitable place”, “Our people - we will get along”, etc.). Continuing the traditions of N. Gogol, A. Sukhovo-Kobylin in his trilogy (“Krechinsky’s Wedding”, “Deed”, “Tarelkin’s Death”) showed how the bureaucracy “embraced” the whole of Russia, bringing it troubles comparable to the damage caused by the Tatars. the Mongol yoke and the invasion of Napoleon. Famous comedies by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin (“The Death of Pazukhin”) and A.N. Tolstoy ("The Fruits of Enlightenment"), which in some way approached tragedy (they contain elements of tragicomedy).
Comedy has spawned different genre varieties. There are comedy of situations, comedy of intrigue, comedy of characters, comedy of manners ( household comedy), buffoonery comedy. There is no clear boundary between these genres. Most comedies combine elements of different genres, which deepens the comedic characters, diversifies and expands the very palette of the comic image. This is clearly demonstrated by Gogol in The Government Inspector. On the one hand, he created a “comedy of situations” based on a chain of ridiculous misunderstandings, of which the main one was the ridiculous mistake of six county officials who mistook Khlestakov’s “Elistratishka”, “Kestrel” for a powerful auditor, which was the source of many comic situations. On the other hand, the comic effect aroused by various absurd situations in life far from exhausts the content of The Inspector General. After all, the reason for the mistake of county officials lies in their personal qualities? - in their cowardice, spiritual rudeness, mental limitations - and in the essence of Khlestakov's character, who, while living in St. Petersburg, learned the behavior of officials. Before us is a bright "comedy of characters", more precisely, a comedy of realistically written social types presented in typical circumstances.
In terms of genre, there are also satirical comedies (“Undergrowth” by Fonvizin, “Inspector General” by Gogol) and high comedies close to drama. The action of these comedies does not contain funny situations. In Russian dramaturgy, this is primarily "Woe from Wit" by A. Griboyedov. There is nothing comical in Chatsky's unrequited love for Sophia, but the situation in which the romantic young man put himself is comical. The position of the educated and progressive-minded Chatsky in the society of the Famusovs and the Silent Ones is dramatic. There are also lyrical comedies, an example of which is "The Cherry Orchard" by A.P. Chekhov.
At the end of XIX - beginning of XX century. comedies appear, characterized by increased psychologism, installation on the image of complicated characters. These include “comedies of ideas” by B. Shaw (“Pygmalion”, “Millionairess”, etc.), “comedies of moods” by A.P. Chekhov (“The Cherry Orchard”), tragicomedies by L. Pirandello (“Six characters in search of an author ”), J. Anuya (“Wild Woman”).
In the XX century. Russian avant-gardism declares itself, including in the field of dramaturgy, the roots of which undoubtedly go back to folklore. However, the folklore beginning is found already in the plays of V. Kapnist, D. Fonvizin, in the satire of I. Krylov, N. Gogol, M. Saltykov-Shchedrin, whose traditions in the 20th century continued M. Bulgakov ("Crimson Island", "Zoyka's apartment", "Adam and Eve"), N. Erdman ("Suicide", "Mandate"), A. Platonov ("Bar-organ").
In the Russian avant-garde of the XX century. three stages are conditionally distinguished: futuristic (“Zangezi” by V. Khlebnikov, “Victory over the Sun” by A. Kruchenykh, “Mystery-buff” by V. Mayakovsky), post-futuristic (Oberiut theater of absurdity: “Elizabeth to you” by D. Kharms, Ivanovs' Christmas Tree by A. Vvedensky) and contemporary avant-garde dramaturgy (A. Artaud, N. Sadur, A. Shipenko, A. Slapovsky, A. Zheleztsov, I. Savelyev, L. Petrushevskaya, E. Gremina and others. ).
Avant-garde tendencies in modern drama are the subject of literary studies. For example, M.I. Gromova, sees the origins of this phenomenon in the fact that in the 20s of the XX century. Attempts to create "alternative" art (Oberiut theater) were suppressed, which went underground for many years, giving rise to "samizdat" and "dissidence", and in the 70s (years of stagnation) was formed on the stages of numerous "underground" studios, which received the right to work legally in the 90s (the years of perestroika), when it became possible to get acquainted with Western European avant-garde dramaturgy of all types: “the theater of the absurd”, “theater of cruelty”, “theater of paradox”, “happening”, etc. On the stage of the studio "Laboratory" was staged a play by V. Denisov "Six Ghosts on the Piano" (its content was inspired by a painting by Salvador Dali). Critics were struck by the cruel absurd reality of the plays by A. Galin (“Stars in the Morning Sky”, “Sorry”, “Titul”), A. Dudarev (“Dump”), E. Radzinsky (“Sports Games of 1981”, “Our Decameron", "I'm standing at the restaurant"), N. Sadur ("Luna Wolves"),
A. Kazantsev ("Dreams of Evgenia"), A. Zheleztsov ("Askold's Grave", "Nail"), A. Buravsky ("Russian Teacher"). Plays of this kind gave reason to critic E. Sokolyansky to conclude: “It seems that the only thing that a dramatic writer can convey in the current conditions is a certain madness of the moment. That is, the feeling of a turning point in history with the triumph of chaos. All of these plays have elements of tragicomedy. Tragicomedy is a type of dramatic works (drama as a kind), which has the features of both tragedy and comedy, which distinguishes tragicomedy from forms intermediate between tragedy and comedy, that is, from drama as a species.
Tragicomedy renounces the moral absolute of comedy and tragedy. The attitude underlying it is associated with a sense of the relativity of the existing criteria of life. Overestimation of moral principles leads to uncertainty and even rejection of them; subjective and objective beginnings are blurred; an unclear understanding of reality can cause interest in it or complete indifference and even recognition of the illogicality of the world. The tragicomic worldview dominates in them at turning points in history, although the tragicomic beginning was already present in the dramaturgy of Euripides (Alcestis, Ion).
The "pure" type of tragicomedy became characteristic of the drama of the Baroque and Mannerism (F. Beaumont, J. Fletcher). Its signs are a combination of funny and serious episodes, a mixture of sublime and comic characters, the presence of pastoral motives, the idealization of friendship and love, intricate action with unexpected situations, the predominant role of chance in the fate of the characters, the characters are not endowed with constancy of character, but their images often emphasize one trait that turns a character into a type.
Dramaturgy at the end of the 19th century. in the works of G. Ibsen, Yu.A. Strindberg, G. Hauptmann, A. Chekhov, L. Pirandello, in the XX century. - G. Lorca, J. Giraudoux, J. Anouilh, E. Ionesco, S. Beckett, the tragicomic element is intensified, as in Russian avant-garde dramaturgy of the 20th century.
Modern tragicomedy does not have clear genre features and is characterized by a “tragicomic effect”, which is created by showing reality both in tragic and comic coverage, the discrepancy between the hero and the situation (the tragic situation is a comic hero, or vice versa, as in Griboyedov’s comedy “Woe from Wit”); the insolubility of the internal conflict (the plot presupposes the continuation of the action; the author refrains from a final assessment), a sense of the absurdity of being.
A special type of entertaining comedy is vaudeville (fr. vaudeville from Vau de Vire - the name of the valley in Normandy, where this genre of theatrical art appeared at the beginning of the 15th century) - a play of everyday content with an entertaining development of the action, in which witty dialogue alternates with dances and songs. - senks-couplets.
In France, vaudeville was written by E. Labiche, O. Scribe. In Russia, vaudeville appeared at the beginning of the 19th century. He inherited from the comic opera of the XVIII century. interest in national subjects. Vaudeville wrote to A.S. Griboedov ("Feigned infidelity"), D.T. Lensky ("Lev Gurych Sinichkin"), V.A. Sollogub (“Coachman, or the Prank of a Hussar Officer”), P.A. Karatygin (“Borrowed wives”, “The eccentric dead man”), N.A. Nekrasov ("Petersburg usurer"), A.P. Chekhov ("Bear", "Proposal", "Wedding", "On the dangers of tobacco"). In the second half of the XIX century.
Vaudeville was supplanted by operetta. Interest in it returned at the end of the 20th century.
In theatrical art of the XIX-XX centuries. comedy-in-deville light content with external comic techniques they began to call farces. Farce (French farce, from Latin farcio - I start: middle-century mysteries “began” with comedy inserts) - a type of folk theater and literature of Western European countries of the XIV-XVI centuries, primarily France . Distinguished by the comic, often satirical, realistic concreteness, free-thinking; full of buffoonery. Its heroes were the townspeople. Farce mask images were devoid of an individual beginning (farce is close to the comedy of masks), although they were the first attempt to create social types268.
The means of creating a comic (satirical) effect are speech comics - alogism, incongruity of situations, parody, playing with paradoxes, irony, in the latest comedy - humor, irony, sarcasm, grotesque, wit, wit, pun.
Wit is based on a sense of humor (in fact, this is one and the same) - a special associative ability, the ability to critically approach the subject, notice the absurdity, quickly respond to it269. The paradox "expresses an idea that at first glance is absurd, but, as it turns out later, to a certain extent fair"1. For example, in Gogol's "Marriage" after the shameful flight Podkolesina Arina Panteleymonovna reprimands Kochkarev: Yes, I live in my sixth decade, but I have not yet made such a fear. Yes, I am for that, father, I will spit in your face if you are an honest person. Yes, after that you are a scoundrel, if you are an honest person. Shame the girl in front of the whole world!
Features of the grotesque style are characteristic of many comedies created in Russian literature of the 20th century. (“Suicide” by N. Erdman, “Zoyka’s apartment” by M. Bulgakov, “The house that Swift built” by G. Gorin). E. Schwartz (“Dragon”, “Shadow”) used comic allegory and a satirical symbol in his fairy tale plays.
Drama as a genre appeared later than tragedy and comedy. Like tragedy, it tends to recreate sharp contradictions. As a kind of dramatic genre, it became widespread in Europe during the Enlightenment and at the same time was comprehended as a genre. Drama became an independent genre in the second half of the 18th century. among the enlighteners (petty-bourgeois drama appeared in France and Germany). It indicated an interest in the social way of life, in the moral ideals of a democratic environment, in the psychology of the “average person”.
During this period, tragic thinking is in crisis, replaced by a different view of the world, affirming the social activity of the individual. In the process of drama development, its inner drama thickens, a successful outcome is less and less common, the hero is at odds with society and with himself (for example, the plays of G. Ibsen, B. Shaw, M. Gorky, A. Chekhov).
Drama is a play with a sharp conflict, which, unlike the tragic, is not so sublime, more mundane, ordinary and somehow resolved. The specificity of the drama lies, firstly, in the fact that it is built on modern, and not on ancient material, and secondly, the drama establishes a new hero who rebelled against his fate and circumstances. The difference between drama and tragedy lies in the essence of the conflict: tragic conflicts are insoluble, because their resolution does not depend on the personal will of the person. tragic hero finds himself in a tragic situation unwittingly, and not because of a mistake he made. Dramatic conflicts, unlike tragic ones, are not insurmountable. They are based on the clash of characters with such forces, principles, traditions that oppose them from the outside. If the hero of a drama dies, then his death is in many ways an act of a voluntary decision, and not the result of a tragically hopeless situation. So, Katerina in A. Ostrovsky's "Thunderstorm", acutely worried that she had violated religious and moral norms, not being able to live in the oppressive atmosphere of the Kabanovs' house, rushes into the Volga. Such a decoupling was not mandatory; the obstacles to the rapprochement between Katerina and Boris cannot be considered insurmountable: the heroine's rebellion could have ended differently.
Drama flourished in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In the era of romanticism, tragedy reigned in drama. The birth of drama is associated with the writers' appeal to contemporary social topics. Tragedy, as a rule, was created on historical material. The role of the protagonist was played by a major historical figure, leading the struggle in extremely unfavorable circumstances for himself. The emergence of the dramatic genre characterized the increased interest in the knowledge of modern public life, the dramatic fate of a "private" person.
The range of drama is extraordinarily wide. The playwright depicts the everyday private life of people, their relationships, clashes caused by estate, property, class differences. In the realistic drama of the XIX century. predominantly psychological drama developed (dramas by A.N. Ostrovsky, G. Ibsen, and others). At the turn of the century, drama changed in the work of A.P. Chekhov ("Ivanov", "Three Sisters") with his mournfully ironic lyricism, using subtext. Similar trends are observed in the work of M. Maeterlinck with his hidden "tragedy of everyday life" ("The Blind", "Monna Witta").
In the literature of the XX century. the horizons of the drama have expanded significantly, its conflicts have become more complicated. In the dramaturgy of M. Gorky (Petty Bourgeois, Enemies, Children of the Sun, Barbarians) the problem of the responsibility of the intelligentsia for the fate of the people is posed, but it is considered mainly on the basis of family and everyday material.
In the West, dramas were created by R. Rolland, J. Priestley, Y. O "Neill, A. Miller, F. Durrenmatt, E. Albee, T. Williams.
The “element” of the drama is modernity, the private life of people, situations based on solvable conflicts concerning the fate of individuals that do not affect problems of public importance.
There were such varieties of drama as the lyrical drama of M. Maeterlinck and A. Blok (The Pavilion, The Rose and the Cross), the intellectual drama of J.-P. Sartre, J. Anouilh, the drama of the absurd by E. Ionesco (“The Bald Singer”, “Chairs”), S. Beckett (“Waiting for Godot”, “The End of the Game”), oratorical, rally theater - the political theater of B. Brecht with his "epic" plays ("What is that soldier, what is this").
In the history of the Soviet theater, the political theater, whose traditions were laid by V. Mayakovsky, V. Kirshon, A. Afinogenov, B. Lavrenev, K. Simonov, and distinguished by a pronounced position as an author, has taken an important place. In the 60s - 90s of the XX century. journalistic dramas appeared (“Man from outside” by I. Dvoretsky, “Minutes of one meeting” by A. Gelman, “Interview in Buenos Aires” by G. Borovik, “Further ... further ... further” by M. Shatrov) and documentary dramas (“Leaders” by G. Sokolovsky, “Joseph and Hope” by O. Kuchkina, “The Black Man, or Me, Poor Soso Dzhugashvili” by V. Korkiya, “Sixth of July” and “Blue Horses on Red Grass” by M. Shatrov , "Anna Ivanovna" by V. Shalamov, "The Republic of Labor" by A. Solzhenitsyn, etc.). In the genre of drama, such varieties as debate plays, dialogue plays, chronicle plays, parable plays, fairy tale plays and "new drama" appeared.
Separate varieties of drama merge with related genres, using their means of expression: with tragicomedy, farce, mask theater.
There is also a genre such as melodrama. Melodrama (from the Greek m?los - song, melody and drama - action, drama) - 1) the genre of drama, a play with sharp intrigue, exaggerated emotionality, a sharp opposition between good and evil, a moral and moral tendency; 2) a musical and dramatic work in which the monologues and dialogues of the characters are accompanied by music. J.J. Rousseau developed the principles of this genre and created its model - "Pygmalion"; an example of Russian melodrama is "Orpheus" by E. Fomin.
Melodrama originated in the 18th century. in France (plays by J.-M. Monvel and G. de Pixerécourt), it flourished in the 30s and 40s of the 19th century, later external entertainment began to prevail in it. Melodrama appeared in Russia in the 1920s. (plays by N.V. Kukolnik, N.A. Polevoy, etc.), interest in it revived in the 20s of the XX century. There are elements of melodrama in the work of A. Arbuzov (“Old-fashioned comedy”, “Tales of the Old Arbat”)270. Dramatic genres turned out to be very mobile.
Summing up what has been said about the genera, types and genres of literature, it should be noted that there are inter-generic and non-generic forms. According to B.O. Korman, it is possible to single out works in which the properties of two generic forms are combined - “two-generic formations”271.
For example, the epic beginning, according to V. Khalizev, is in the plays of A.N. Ostrovsky and B. Brecht, M. Maeterlinck and A. Blok created "lyrical dramas", the lyrical-epic principle in the poems became a well-known fact. Non-generic forms in literary criticism include essays, literature of the “stream of consciousness”, essayism, for example, “Experiments” by M. Montaigne, “Fallen Leaves” and “Solitary” by V. Rozanov (it tends to syncretism: the beginnings of the actual artistic in it are combined with journalistic and philosophical, as in the works of A. Remizov "Salting" and M. Prishvin "Eyes of the Earth").
So, V.E. Khalizev, “... there are distinguishable generic forms proper, traditional and undividedly dominating in literary creativity for many centuries, and “non-generic”, non-traditional forms, rooted in “post-romantic” art. The first interact with the second very actively, complementing each other. Today, the Platonic-Aristotelian-Hegelian triad (epos, lyrics, drama), apparently, is largely shaken and needs to be corrected. At the same time, there are no grounds for declaring the customarily distinguished three types of literature obsolete, as is sometimes done with light hand Italian philosopher and art theorist B. Croce. Among Russian literary critics, A.I. Beletsky: "For ancient literatures the terms epic, lyric, drama were not yet abstract. They denoted special, external ways of transmitting a work to a listening audience. Going into the book, poetry abandoned these modes of transmission, and gradually<...>types (meaning the types of literature. - V.Kh.) became more and more fiction. Is it necessary to continue the scientific existence of these fictions?" 1. Disagreeing with this, we note: literary works of all eras (including modern ones) have a certain generic specificity (epic, dramatic, lyrical form, or not rare in the 20th century. "stream of consciousness", essay). Genus affiliation (or, on the contrary, involvement of one of the "extra-generic" forms) largely determines the organization of the work, its formal, structural features. Therefore, the concept of "kind of literature" in the composition of theoretical poetics is integral and essential "2. ? Control questions and tasks I 1.
What served as the basis for the allocation of three types of literature. What are the signs of an epic, lyrical, dramatic way of reproducing reality? 2.
Name the genres of artistic literature, give their characteristics. Tell us about the relationship between genera, species, genres of literary works. 3.
How is a story different from a novel and a short story? Give examples. 4.
What are the hallmarks of the novel? Give examples. 1 Beletsky A.I. Selected works on the theory of literature. G. 342. 2
Khalizev V.E. Theory of Literature. pp. 318 - 319.
Control questions and tasks 5.
Why, in your opinion, did the novel and short story become the leading genres of realistic literature? Their differences. 6.
Outline the article by M.M. Bakhtin "Epos and the novel: On the methodology of the study of the novel" (Appendix 1, p. 667). Complete the tasks and answer the questions suggested after the article. 7.
Gogol initially called "Dead Souls" a "novel", then - a "small epic". Why did he stop at defining the genre of his work as "poem"? eight.
Determine the features of the epic novel in the works "War and Peace" by L. Tolstoy and "Quiet Flows the Don" by M. Sholokhov. 9.
Give a genre definition to the work of N. Shmelev "The Summer of the Lord" and justify it (novel-fairy tale, novel-myth, novel-legend, true-fiction, myth-remembrance, free epic, spiritual novel). 10.
Read O. Mandelstam's article "The End of the Novel". SMandelstam O. Works: In 2 vols. M., 1990. S. 201-205). Using B. Pasternak's novel "Doctor Zhivago" as an example, explain what is the innovative approach of writers of the 20th century. to the problem of the modern novel. Is it possible to assert that "... the compositional measure of the novel is a human biography"? I. How would you define the genre of Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, in which history and feuilleton, lyrics and myth, everyday life and fantasy (novel, comic epic, satirical utopia) are freely combined?
What are the features of lyrics as a kind of literature? 2.
Outline the article by V.E. Khalizeva "Lyric" (Appendix 1, p. 682). Prepare answers to the questions provided. 3.
Based on the article by L.Ya. Ginzburg "On the lyrics" (Appendix 1, p. 693) prepare a message "Style features of the lyrics." Name the main lyrical and lyrical genres, indicate their differences. What is the classification of lyrics based on the thematic principle? 4.
Explain what the terms "suggestive lyrics" and "meditative lyrics" mean. Give examples. 5.
Read the article by A.N. Pashkurova “Poetics of pre-romantic elegy: “Time” by M.N. Muravyov” (Appendix 1, p. 704). Prepare the message “What path did the Russian elegy take in its development from pre-romanticism to romanticism?”. 6.
Tell us about the history of the development of the sonnet genre. 7.
Read the article by G.N. Esipenko "Studying the sonnet as a genre" (Literature at school. 2005. No. 8. P. 29-33) and complete the tasks proposed in it related to the analysis of sonnets by N. Gumilyov, I. Severyanin, I. Bunin (optional), and also write a poem in the form of a sonnet (perhaps in imitation of a poet). eight.
What ways of depicting life does A. Pushkin use in the poem "Gypsies"? 9.
What works are called lyroepic? On the example of one of the poems of V. Mayakovsky (“Man”, “Good!”), S. Yesenin (“Anna Onegin”) or A. Tvardovsky (“By the Right of Memory”), analyze how lyrical and epic elements are combined in them. 10.
What is the image of the lyrical heroine of the "Denisiev cycle" F.I. Tyutchev? thirteen.
Determine the features of the lyrical heroine in the poetry of M. Tsvetaeva and A. Akhmatova. 14.
Is it possible to talk about the peculiar "passivity" of the lyrical hero B. Pasternak, as R. Yakobson believed? 15.
How is the biography of A. Blok connected with his work? What evolution has the image of the lyrical hero undergone? sixteen.
Why has modern poetry lost most of its traditional genres?
Describe the division into genres in a dramatic way. 2.
Outline the article by V.E. Khalizeva "Drama" (Appendix 1, p. 713). Prepare answers to the questions provided. 3.
Tell us about the main stages in the development of the tragedy genre. 4.
What is the difference between drama and tragedy? 5.
Name the types of comedy. Give examples. 6.
Describe the "small" dramatic genres. Give examples. 7.
How do you understand the genre definition of A. Ostrovsky's plays? Can the dramas "Thunderstorm", "Dowry" be called classic tragedies? eight.
Define the genre of "The Cherry Orchard" by A.P. Chekhov (comedy, tragedy, farce, melodrama). 9.
On the example of one of the plays, analyze Chekhov's new approaches to the organization of dramatic action (decentralization of plot lines, refusal to divide characters into main and secondary ones) and methods for creating individual characters (self-characteristics, monologues-cues, building a speech part of an image on a change in stylistic key; "random » Dialogue lines that emphasize instability psychological state characters, etc.). 10.
Read and analyze one of the plays by a contemporary playwright (optional). eleven.
Define the concept of "subtext" (see: Literary Encyclopedia of Terms and Concepts. M., 2001. P. 755; Literary Encyclopedic Dictionary. M., 1987. P. 284). Give examples of lyrical and psychological subtexts in A.P. Chekhov (optional), in the novels of E. Hemingway, in the poems of M. Tsvetaeva (“Longing for the Motherland! For a long time ...”) and O. Mandelstam (“Slate Ode”).
Drama (Greek Dsb?mb) is one of the types of literature (along with lyrics, epic, and lyre-epic), which conveys events through the dialogues of characters. Since ancient times, it has existed in folklore or literary form among various peoples; independently of each other, the ancient Greeks, the ancient Indians, the Chinese, the Japanese, and the Indians of America created their own dramatic traditions.
V Greek the word "drama" reflects a sad, unpleasant event or situation of one particular person.
Drama (gr.drama - action)
- 1) in a broad sense - any plot literary work written in colloquial form and without the author's speech; b.h. intended for performance in the theatre; in the narrow sense - a literary work of this kind, which differs from comedy in the seriousness of the conflict, the depth of experiences;
- 2) any amazing event in life.
Drama types
Tragedy- at the heart of its tragic conflict. The hero finds himself in disharmony with society, conscience and himself. Attempts to break out of the vicious circle lead to the death of the hero. The main pathos of the tragedy is how the protagonist confronts difficulties and tries to deal with failures. Wanting to change the situation, the hero performs actions that further aggravate his situation. Often in a tragedy, the hero himself is to blame for what happens. Nal he is dominated by fate, fate, and it is impossible to resist this. Examples - "Hamlet" (W. Shakespeare), "Boris Godunov" (A.S. Pushkin).
Comedy- the exact opposite of tragedy. Initially it was considered a low genre, since its heroes were representatives of the lower class. The comedy depicts such life situations and characters that cause laughter. Comedy exposes the negative phenomena of reality and the vices of people. For example, "The Government Inspector" (N.V. Gogol). But comedy isn't just about entertaining the audience. In such comedies, there are many ridiculous situations in which, by the will of fate, a positive hero finds himself, as a result of which he is rejected by everyone and remains alone. For example, "Woe from Wit" (A. Griboyedov).
Tragicomedy, a dramatic or stage work that has the features of both tragedy and comedy, and is built according to its own specific laws.
Throughout almost the entire history of theatrical art, the term did not have a strict meaning. Tragicomedy has consistently been considered an intermediate, auxiliary inter-genre education. So, back in the 19th century. The Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron defines tragicomedy as "a dramatic work in which a tragic plot is depicted in a comic form, or which represents a disorderly heap of tragic and comic elements." Under the definition of tragicomedy could fall, for example, and the so-called. "high comedy" dedicated to serious social and moral problems (Woe from the Wit of A. Griboyedov), and a satirical comedy that sharply castigates the vices of society (Krechinsky's Wedding or A. Sukhovo-Kobylin's Case). The basis for this was the purely formal presence of both comedic and tragic themes, episodes, characters. Only in the middle of the 20th century. culturological sciences (art studies, theater studies, literary criticism) singled out tragicomedy as a separate genre with its own structure-forming features. At the same time, theoretical studies of the architectonics of a young, but very rapidly developing genre began. drama genre theater
Disputes around the genre of tragicomedy do not subside even today: the centuries-old stereotype of perception of a chaotic combination, the interweaving of the tragic and the comic is too strong. However, the criterion for testing any theory is practice. And it is precisely the numerous paradoxes or failures of theatrical practice, in which tragicomedy stubbornly opposes the usual methods of stage embodiment, that make us look closely at the laws of this mysterious genre.
For example, it was only through the architectonics of tragicomedy that world theatrical directing managed to find the keys to Chekhov's dramaturgy. Later Chekhov's plays ("The Seagull", "Uncle Vanya", "The Cherry Orchard", "Ivanov") for many decades baffled theater researchers and practitioners (the phrase "Chekhov's riddle" very soon became a truism), causing numerous discussions and not less numerous stage interpretations. At the same time, the failures of Chekhov's productions were commonplace; and rare successes were based, as a rule, on a radical rethinking of the entire structure of the play. So, the first production of The Seagull at the Alexandrinsky Theater failed, despite the brilliant work of V.F. Komissarzhevskaya as Nina; and the production by K.S. Stanislavsky at the Moscow Art Theater, despite the overwhelming success of the audience, did not arouse much approval from the author himself. The Moscow Art Theater consistently defended the elegiac, sad and even tragic intonation of the performance, replete with the play of halftones, subtle psychological nuances and filigree development of the psychology of the characters. Chekhov, on the other hand, stubbornly defined the genre of his plays as "comedies".
Much later, only after liberating themselves from the charismatic, bewitching magic of Stanislavsky's performances, theater theorists and practitioners were able to understand that Chekhov's characters are actually very funny. All the characters, and not just those who were traditionally considered to be considered in a comic light (Charlotta Ivanovna, Simeonov-Pishchik - in The Cherry Orchard, Medvedenko - in The Seagull, Natasha - in The Three Sisters, Serebryakov - in Uncle Vanya"), but also the main characters of all Chekhov's plays: Ranevskaya, Treplev, Voinitsky, etc. This does not in the least remove the tragedy of their destinies, moreover: the funnier and smaller each hero looks, the more terrible and larger his tragedy.
It gradually became clear that A. Chekhov became the founder of a new genre, in which the tragic and the comic not only exist in an inseparable unity, but mutually condition and sharpen each other. The emphasis on one of the sides (whether comic or tragic) completely destroys the genre structure of his plays, transferring them to a completely different plane.
However, these features of tragicomedy were not immediately clear. The emergence and development in the second half of the 20th century largely contributed to the practical understanding of the principles of tragicomedy. a new theatrical trend - the so-called. theater of the absurd, which considered A.P. Chekhov (E. Ionesco, S. Beckett, H. Pinter, S. Mrozhek, J. Genet, F. Arrabal and others).
It seems that the term "absurdism", despite its firmly occupied place in the classification of artistic movements, is not entirely correct - it is not without reason that most playwrights of this movement resolutely rejected it. This term reveals the philosophical, semantic content of drama without affecting its artistic logic and architectonics. Meanwhile, in the artistic principles of the theater of the absurd, more clearly than anywhere else, all the fundamental principles of tragicomedy can be traced.
If in all other theatrical genres (comedy, tragedy, drama) the conflict is built on a clearly defined moral absolute, then in tragicomedy the moral absolute is, as it were, put out of brackets. Here the author not only does not answer the question “is this good or bad”, but also does not raise such a question. moral issues appear before the viewer or reader in a relativistic light; Simply put, everything is relative here, everything is both good and bad at the same time. Any event, conflict, plot twist cannot be unambiguously interpreted; everything that happens is ambiguous and fundamentally variable. Humor is extremely interesting here: the comic performs not a social sanction (traditional for a satirical comedy: denunciation, ridicule), but a social heuristic function of cognition of reality. Here, the comic is called upon to eliminate the problem, situation, character, present them in an unusual form, consistently and fundamentally destroying the viewer's stereotype of perception and forcing them to a new, non-standard view. Thus, humor in tragicomedy appears as an analysis tool, emphasizing and even absolutizing its cognitive role. Tragicomedy activates the thinking of the audience, provoking consideration of the same problem from a variety of points of view.
In the truly tragicomic works of the theater of the absurd, of course, not only the aesthetic ideas of Chekhov can be traced. Here, the creatively reworked principles of many theatrical trends of the late 19th and early 20th centuries merge fancifully. In particular - the English theater of paradox (O. Wilde, B. Shaw) - it is no coincidence that E. Ionesco believed that the most accurate definition of his aesthetic direction should be considered "the theater of paradox". Or: the theory of “estrangement” (that is, showing ordinary, familiar phenomena in a strange, unusual perspective) of the German playwright and director B. Brecht, who emphasizes the social research orientation of his theater.
In a theoretical study of the architectonics of the tragicomic invaluable contribution introduced the largest Russian scientist M. Bakhtin. Exploring the serious-comical genres of antiquity (in particular, “Socratic dialogue” and “Menippean satire”), Bakhtin wrote a lot about “the dialogical nature of truth and human thought about it ... it is a matter of testing the idea, truth, and not about testing a certain human character, individual or socio-typical” (highlighted by M. Bakhtin).
The theoretical and practical development of the problems of tragicomedy made it possible to draw a conclusion that determined its only possibility for an adequate stage embodiment: the main artistic device of the genre is the grotesque (French grotesque, from Italian grotesco - bizarre), i.e., a conscious violation of life forms and proportions; disclosure of the absurd, caricature, base in tragic phenomena; a sudden displacement of the serious, the tragic into the plane of the comic. The grotesque permeates all the structural components of tragicomedy - from the problems and displayed realities to the characters of the characters. Linear logic is fundamentally absent, everything is "shifted", everything does not correspond to each other: the hero - situations; character - action; goal - means; life - being; thoughts - actions; etc. Tragicomic works are not amenable to stage interpretation by means of traditional realistic directing and acting. This, in fact, is the secret of the numerous failures of Chekhov's productions. The characters of tragicomic heroes are not voluminous and multifaceted, but discrete, intricately woven from numerous, contradictory, but inseparable components. Without being fully aware of this, it is impossible to understand each of Chekhov's plays (say, in the famous scene from The Three Sisters, when the sweet, thin, sensitive Olga rather angrily ridicules the timid Natasha for a green belt to a pink dress).
Extremely interesting and extremely paradoxical was the development of tragicomedy in Russia. The richest traditions of the Russian realistic theater practically did not anticipate the appearance of A. Chekhov - on the contrary, his plays arose, as it were, in defiance of all previous history. The Russian theater has always been characterized by a distinct and consistent "educational", educational function; the moral absolute, the ideal, was certainly present, even in those cases (a satirical comedy) when it seemed to be taken out of the play. Chekhov, with his moral relativism and sympathy for all the heroes of his works without exception, for a long time remained the only, "separate" author - in fact, outside theater traditions and no followers. Chekhov's motives were, as already mentioned, first taken up and continued abroad by the "absurdists". At the same time, the lively and diverse development of the theory and practice of the theater of the absurd was familiar to most of the theatrical figures in Russia in the 1950s-1970s. mostly by hearsay - the social situation of the "Iron Curtain" prevented international cultural contacts. It would seem that in Russia the development of tragicomedy has come to a standstill, practically froze, leaving only a shadow of memory about itself the mysterious giant phenomenon of Chekhov, the founder of a new genre.
However, by the end of the 1960s (and again - practically "out of nowhere") a new bright Russian phenomenon arose - the dramaturgy of A. Vampilov ("Provincial jokes" - "The case with the mezzanine" and "Twenty minutes with an angel", "Duck hunting "). It was extremely difficult for Vampilov's plays to make their way onto the stage - for reasons mainly of an ideological nature: the absence of a clearly defined moral absolute (ie, the main feature of the genre) was perceived as a lack of dramaturgy. But, however, when they nevertheless managed to be staged, the performances, as a rule, did not turn out, the history of Chekhov's plays was completely repeated. The directors struggled in search of "positive characters" in Vampil's dramaturgy, tried to find volume and linear logic in the consistently discrete characters of his characters. As a result, stage versions changed Vampilov's plays almost beyond recognition. As the most striking curiosity, one can cite as an example a later (1979) film adaptation of Vampilov's play "Duck Hunt" - "Vacation in September" (staged by V. Melnikov): almost the most terrible character of Vampilov, the Waiter, an evil genius and alter ego of the main hero, by the will of the director and performer G. Bogachev, was transformed into his main moral opponent.
Around the same time (1967), the most repertoire playwright in Russia, A. Arbuzov, wrote a strange and amazing play - “My feast for the eyes”, perhaps the only one of all his works that practically did not hit the stage. The reason is the same: "My feast for the eyes" was written in the genre of tragicomedy, and therefore it was extremely difficult to comprehend it. Recall: access to practical and partly theoretical understanding of the genre, which by this time had a serious European history, while difficult for the Soviet theater. In fact, I had to go "by touch", re-mastering the laws of the genre and comprehending their patterns.
Nevertheless, a decade later, by the end of the 1970s, most of the most interesting comedyographic experiences of Soviet playwrights fell on tragicomedy. And, perhaps, this is natural. Tragicomedy at that time acted as a catalyst for social thinking, which made it possible to get away from the straightforward dogmas of both communist ideology and dissidence. This time can be called the time of searching for a path, perspective; and fundamentally heuristic, cognitive function tragicomedy came in handy here.
One after another, the tragicomedies of both venerable and very young playwrights appeared: E. Radzinsky (“She is in the absence of love and death”), A. Smirnova (“My dear ones”), L. Petrushevskaya (“Colombina’s apartment”, “Three girls in blue"), A. Sokolova ("Faryatiev's Fantasies"), A. Galina ("Eastern Tribune"), A. Arbuzov (" Happy Days unhappy man”, “Tales of the Old Arbat”), M. Roshchina (“Pearl Zinaida”); Gr. Gorina ("Till", "The same Munchausen", "The house that Swift built"); A. Chervinsky (“My happiness”, “Tic-tac-toe”, “Blonde around the corner” - the last of them was made into a film that completely destroyed the harmonious tragicomic structure of the play and turned it into an uncomplicated vaudeville). Many of these plays are staged - not always successfully; many are filmed; some are less fortunate. But practically each of these plays was very widely discussed by the theatrical community, though for the most part in terms of problems, but not aesthetic principles genre. And, probably, this is also natural: during the period of the social and ideological crisis, it was precisely the heuristic side of tragicomedy that was most in demand.
But the next period - the mid-1980s-1990s - pushed tragicomedy into the background. The time of political perestroika, social upheavals that brought down the entire habitual life of Russians, gave rise to a tragic worldview in them. The most demanded were melodramas that take you to a beautiful fantasy world, giving a short break from the hard reality. Russian theaters in those days also experienced a deep economic crisis.
The last period of Russian history gives rise to hopes for the return of tragicomedy to the live Russian theatrical process - as its full participant. Playwrights L. Petrushevskaya, A. Shipenko, N. Kolyada and many others still work in this genre. Many theater directors demonstrate their passion for this genre - R. Viktyuk, S. Artsibashev, M. Zakharov, G. Kozlov, M. Levitin, E. Nyakroshyus, I. Reichelgauz, V. Fokin, and others whose creative authority in our theater unconditional.
comedy of masks- a kind of Italian folk theater. As a rule, the actor played in masks, which were repeated in other performances. The actors spoke different languages and made fun of the nobles and merchants. Notable authors include Locatelli, Scala; the influence of this genre was experienced by Molière.
Farce- a concept adjacent to the words "intermedia", "fablio". This is a term of carnival, using the terminology of M. Bakhtin, origin. The genre is close to the comedy of masks. It is difficult to establish who wrote and performed these comedies, because their authors were actors without a group or even a crowd of people who gathered in the square. They ridiculed everything and everyone (except the king): merchants, wealthy townspeople, churchmen and monks. Often the visiting commoner, who was unable to navigate the city crowd, also got it. The then intelligentsia also got it: students and teachers, if they were suspected of being lazy and generally randomly going in search of knowledge. Of course, the churchmen were the most ferocious persecutors of street singers and buffoons. Shakespeare, Moliere, Cervantes, K. Goldoni liked this democratic genre, and they used it. Such clowning and buffoonery would have come to the court in our time, but the genre has degenerated, the masters did not appear, and the last hello from that distant era, apparently, only clowns in modern circuses perform.
Drama- Combines tragedy and comedy. The rudiments of drama - in primitive poetry, in which the elements of lyrics, epic and drama that emerged later merged in connection with music and mimic movements. Earlier than other peoples, the drama is like special kind poetry was formed among the Hindus and Greeks.
Greek drama that develops serious religious and mythological plots (tragedy) and funny ones drawn from modern life(comedy), reaches high perfection and in the 16th century is a model for European drama, which until then artlessly processed religious and narrative secular subjects (mysteries, school dramas and interludes, fastnachtspiel, sottises).
medieval drama- the most richly represented in literary monuments and the most developed form of dramatic creativity of the Western European Middle Ages is the liturgical action and the dramatic genres that grow out of it.
Hence the frequently encountered definition of medieval drama as a whole, as an instrument of Christian propaganda created by the church for its own purposes, a symbolic expression of Catholic dogma. This concept of medieval (not comical) drama can be found not only in the old literature on the subject, but also in the latest reviews summarizing the study.
The liturgical action, according to Stammler (an article in the Reallexikon der deutschen Literaturgeschichte, 1925-1926), grows out of "the desire to repeat everything again in clear symbols and imprint the saving truths of Christianity in the believing mass." In reality, however, the development of medieval drama appears to be much more complex.
First of all, the history of the liturgical action does not cover all the dramatic production of the Middle Ages. On the one hand, such a peculiar phenomenon as the literary drama (Lesedrama) of the 10th century remains outside of it - imitations of Terentius Grotsvita of Gandersheim, representing an interesting example of the assimilation by the ruling class - the aristocratic-clerical elite - of the forms of Roman comedy for the tasks of Christian propaganda, however, they did not have a direct impact on the further development of the medieval theater.
On the other hand, the evolution of dialogic forms in medieval literature and the appearance of such works as the dramatized pastoral "Jeu de Robin et Marion" of "the hunchback from Arras" (XIII century) testify to the "secular" and even "courtly" sources of creativity of bourgeois poetic associations. of that time (puy), who at the same time played a prominent role in the later development of liturgical genres.
Finally, phenomena such as monologic and dialogic fablios, representing the first step towards their later dramatization (“De clerico et puella” (XIII century), “Le garcon et l" Avugle "(XIII century)], as the latest design of carnival games (Fastnachtspiele ), point to the coexistence with the liturgical action of the buffoon action, the legacy of the "pagan" mime, which had a significant impact on the introduction of the comic element into the liturgical drama and its further development.
True, the dramatic production of this type is represented only in random, rare and relatively late monuments; but the absence of a record is quite natural here, since the buffoon action served mainly social groups that remained outside the boundaries of written culture.
On the other hand, there is hardly any doubt that for its success the church had to take into account the “social order” of these groups, and the significance of this “order” intensified as the liturgical action moved away from the altar to the porch, and from the porch passed to the square. In addition, none of the estates of the Middle Ages - and above all the clergy - did not represent a homogeneous, close-knit community of economic interests, a social group: the interests of the estate, the tops of which were feudal lords - princes of the church (their nationalist tendencies towards independence are reflected, for example, , Ludus de Antechristo), and the lower classes formed one of the main parts of the medieval lumpen proletariat, diverged very far; and their divergence intensified with the disintegration of feudal society, the growth of cities and the development of commercial capital: the interests of the urban clergy were closer to the interests of the city-dweller-merchant than the vagant-cleric.
In this regard, it is significant, for example, as in the "pilgrimage poems" of the Middle Ages - poems glorifying, in order to attract pilgrims, any local religious center - the praise of shrines is often combined with the praise of the city itself, its good roads, its rich shops and courteous merchants. It is not surprising, therefore, that in the development of the liturgical action one can note an ever-increasing reflection of the interests and moods of the third estate, mainly its urban part, and that this development ends at the beginning of the battles of the reformation, the use by the third estate of the heritage of the liturgical drama as a weapon in the fight against the church.
The origins of the liturgical action are indisputably connected with the theatricalization of the church service for purely cult purposes (about the influence here of Eastern mystical actions through the cults of the Eastern churches - Egyptian, Syrian, Greek.
Two points became decisive here: the enrichment of the church service as a spectacle by the creation of specific decorative settings (a manger for Christmas, a coffin for Easter) and the introduction of dialogic forms in the performance of the gospel text (the so-called responsories, distributing the singing of the text between two half-choirs or a priest and a community, and emerging in the 10th century, tropes paraphrasing the text while repeating the same melody).
By transferring the performance of the text to the participants in the spectacular installation (clerics mimicking shepherds at the manger or myrrh-bearing women and the angel at the coffin), the simplest form of the liturgical action was created. Further development of the plot of the liturgical action, gradually developing into a religious drama, is achieved primarily by compiling the most easily dramatized episodes of the Gospel.
So in the Christmas action, the episode of the worship of the shepherds is joined by the appearance of midwives (according to the medieval tradition, witnesses of the virginity of the Virgin), the conversation of Mary and Joseph, nursing the baby, the episode of the worship of the Magi (originally presented separately on the feast of baptism - January 6), in its turn enriched with episodes of Herod, the massacre of the babies, the weeping of Rachel (symbolizing orphaned mothers) and the flight to Egypt. In the Easter action, the episodes of the myrrh-bearing women and the angel are combined with the episode of the run of the apostles Peter and John to the tomb, the episode of Mary Magdalene, the exits of Pilate, the Jews and the guards, and finally with the scenes of the descent into hell and the dramatization of the very act of crucifixion.
The dramatization of the gospel plot is then joined by the dramatization of the episodes of the Bible, interpreted church tradition as a kind of prologue to the gospel scenes (the creation of the world, the rise of Satan and the fall), as well as dramatization legendary material, in particular the legends about the coming of the Antichrist.
The further development of religious drama after its separation from the church service is characterized by an increasingly realistic interpretation, the expansion of the comic and satirical elements, and the differentiation of dramatic genres. The realistic interpretation is expressed primarily in the gradual abandonment of the cult Latin, accessible only to clerics, and in the transition to the vernacular (in the first half of the 12th century in France, at the turn of the 12th-13th centuries in Germany); cult language is limited only to those introduced into the text church hymns, while all the speeches of the characters are conducted in in native language: all the stages of this development are reflected in the surviving texts - purely Latin, Latin folk and purely folk religious dramas.
Further, a realistic interpretation is reflected in the ever richer everyday material introduced into the design of a religious plot: in the French miracles of the XIV century, in the German "Passion" of the XV century, the everyday atmosphere of a modern city dweller is conscientiously transferred to the stage in all its details; the scene, for example, of the crucifixion in the German mysteries repeats with all the details the public execution of the 15th century, St. Joseph in the Old English mysteries, about to flee to Egypt, he grumbles at his wife and, with careful tenderness, puts down "his small instrument" - an exact image of an English artisan.
Even if the church imposed a ban on too free interpretation of the main characters of the gospel plot, nevertheless, there were enough characters and episodes in it that gave place to the comic element. Herod and Pilate, the Jews and the guards, even the shepherds, the apostles (the run of the apostles to the distillation at the "Holy Sepulchre") and St. Joseph (the grumbling and squabbling with the Virgin Mary) and, in particular, the devil and his servants represented sufficient material for comics; it is characteristic (already carried out very early) the introduction of special comic episodes into the plot, as, for example, in the Christmas action of the scene of a fight between the shepherds (Mack's scene in the Woodkirk mystery) or the purchase of peace by the myrrh-bearing women from a crafty merchant in the Easter action (favorite in the German mysteries Kramerszene ). As the religious drama develops, these scenes, developed in the manner of a fablio, acquire an increasing specific weight, eventually separating themselves into independent comic plays.
If, as indicated above, the appearance of the first secular plays coincides with the first performances of poets of the third estate (Rütboeuf's dialogues, Adam de la Galle's "jeux"), then the further differentiation of the dramatic genres of the Middle Ages coincides with the beginning of the flourishing of the urban culture of merchant capital.
This assimilation and development by the new class of forms of an alien, already dying culture is observed in almost all areas of literary creativity, for example, the magnificent flowering of religious lyrics in the same eras: in its struggle with the direct enemy - the feudal aristocracy - the city dweller, culturally still too weak, willingly resorts to the most appealing to him forms of the old, in many respects hostile to chivalry, class culture - the culture of the clergy.
The great religious drama in the 15th century everywhere becomes the property of city organizations - workshops, guilds, etc. organizations (sometimes, as in Paris, created specifically for theatrical productions), which alone could - with the gradual impoverishment of monasteries - pay for expensive performances.
This transition, which finally brings the great religious drama to the city square and transfers the performance of its roles to the townspeople (the clergy retained the roles of the most revered characters - Christ, Mary - or, basically, only directing), introduces new characteristic features into the design of the drama itself. : the complication of decorative and stage design is the attraction to luxury, so typical of the flourishing culture of merchant capital, the heaping up of an infinite number of details, sometimes reminiscent of Baroque art, and finally the use of mass; the number of actors increases to several hundred, and the introduction of mass scenes allows achieving hitherto unknown effects.
The realism of interpretation is also growing, the subject often takes on a secular character (“The Siege of Orleans”, around 1429, the popularization of courtly themes in the drama - “The Destruction of Troy” by Jacques Millet, 1450--1452).
A small form of religious drama with its brightly everyday coloring, created already outside the church, in the bourgeois poetic associations (puy) of the rich cities of France - the miracle - gives way in the future to the allegorical-didactic morality that originated simultaneously with it, giving (along with the traditional biblical themes) more scope for secular subjects - practical morality, rules of conduct (in "The Condemnation of the Feast", for example, there are personifications not only of diseases, but also of remedies, up to "Bloodletting" and "Klystir"), sometimes even purely household scenes, and at the same time easily turned into an instrument of political satire and religious struggle.
Other forms of secular drama also have an allegorical-didactic character, reaching their full development in this era and partly standing out from the comic interludes of liturgical dramas, partly continuing a tradition that was little attested in monuments, but still existed. These are: in France - hundreds - a satirical genre, from a parody of church services to political and social satire, and a farce - from the Latin "farsa" - "stuffing", that is, an interlude of a serious drama - in which the third estate for the first time creates his everyday and social comedy and which continues to exist until the 17th century, influencing the literary comedy of classicism.
A parallel to these genres (as well as to allegorical morality) is the German Fastnachtspiel, which received literary form from the Meistersingers of the 15th-16th centuries, including Hans Sachs.
The limit to the development of medieval serious drama was by no means set by the beginning of the Reformation, as is depicted in the old histories of literature. On the contrary, Protestants make a number of attempts to use even the big religious drama for their own purposes (the Protestant German mystery of the doctor Jakob Ruef, the English Protestant mysteries compiled by order of Cromwell John Bale), while allegorical-didactic small genres become a favorite tool in the kindled struggle.
The limit to the development of medieval drama is imposed by the assimilation by the Renaissance and the Reformation of the forms of ancient tragedy, which were finally strengthened in the drama of classicism. The mystery, subject to a ban on the part of not only the Protestant, but also the Catholic authorities, is used as a pedagogical tool in the school, descends into the strata of the prosperous peasantry, where it continues to exist until the 19th century; the smaller allegorical-didactic genres that have an impact (as already mentioned above) on the work of the humanists turn out to be more persistent.
French playwrights, imitating the Greek ones, strictly adhered to certain provisions that were considered invariable for the aesthetic dignity of the drama, such are: the unity of time and place; the duration of the episode depicted on the stage should not exceed a day; the action must take place in the same place; the drama should develop correctly in 3-5 acts, from the plot (clarification of the initial position and characters of the characters) through the middle ups and downs (changes in positions and relationships) to the denouement (usually a disaster); the number of actors is very limited (usually 3 to 5); these are exclusively the highest representatives of society (kings, queens, princes and princesses) and their closest servants, confidants, who are introduced from the stage for the convenience of dialogue and cues. These are the main features of French classical drama (Corneille, Racine).
The strictness of the requirements of the classical style was already less respected in comedies (Molière, Lope de Vega, Beaumarchais), which gradually moved from convention to image ordinary life(genre). Shakespeare's work, free from classical conventions, opened up new paths for drama. The end of the 18th and the first half of the 19th century were marked by the appearance of romantic and national dramas: Lessing, Schiller, Goethe, Hugo, Kleist, Grabbe.
In the second half of the 19th century, realism took over in European drama (Dumas son, Ogier, Sardou, Paleron, Ibsen, Suderman, Schnitzler, Hauptmann, Beyerlein).
In the last quarter of the 19th century, under the influence of Ibsen and Maeterlinck, symbolism began to take hold of the European scene (Hauptmann, Pshebyshevsky, Bar, D'Annunzio, Hoffmannsthal).
Drama in Russia is brought from the West into late XVII century. Independent dramatic literature appears only at the end of the 18th century. Until the first quarter of the 19th century, the classical direction prevailed in drama, both in tragedy and in comedy and comedy opera; best authors: Lomonosov, Knyaznin, Ozerov; I. Lukin's attempt to draw the attention of playwrights to the depiction of Russian life and customs remained in vain: all their plays are lifeless, stilted and alien to Russian reality, except for the famous "Undergrowth" and "Brigadier" by Fonvizin, "Yabeda" by Kapnist and some comedies by I. A. Krylov .
At the beginning of the 19th century, Shakhovskoy, Khmelnitsky, Zagoskin became imitators of light French drama and comedy, and the Dollmaker was a representative of the stilted patriotic drama. Griboedov's comedy Woe from Wit, later Gogol's Inspector General, Marriage, become the basis of Russian everyday drama. After Gogol, even in vaudeville (D. Lensky, F. Koni, Sollogub, Karatygin), the desire to get closer to life is noticeable.
Ostrovsky gave a number of remarkable historical chronicles and everyday comedies. After him, Russian drama stood on solid ground; the most prominent playwrights: A. Sukhovo-Kobylin, I.S. Turgenev, A. Potekhin, A. Palm, V. Dyachenko, I. Chernyshev, V. Krylov, N.Ya. Solovyov, N. Chaev, gr. A. Tolstoy, c. L. Tolstoy, D. Averkiev, P. Boborykin, Prince Sumbatov, Novezhin, N. Gnedich, Shpazhinsky, Evt. Karpov, V. Tikhonov, I. Shcheglov, Vl. Nemirovich-Danchenko, A. Chekhov, M. Gorky, L. Andreev and others.
Vaudeville- (French Vaudeville> Vau de Vire - the name of the valley in Normandy, where this genre of theatrical art appeared at the beginning of the 15th century) - a type of comedy, usually one-act: an entertaining play with entertaining intrigue and unpretentious everyday plot in which dramatic action is combined with songs, music, dances.
Melodrama(from Greek melos - melody, song and drama - drama). - 1. A musical-dramatic work in which the speech of the characters is accompanied by music, but, unlike the opera, the characters do not sing, but speak. 2. A kind of drama, which is characterized by a sharp, entertaining intrigue, exaggerated pathos and emotional intensity of feelings (“tearfulness”), often tendentious moralization. It was popular in Russia in the 30s and 40s. 19th century (N.V. Kukolnikov, N.A. Polevoy).
dramatic genres - totality genres that emerged and developed within the drama as a literary genre.
Dramas specifically depict, as a rule, the private life of a person and his social conflicts. At the same time, the emphasis is often placed on universal human contradictions embodied in the behavior and actions of specific characters. Drama is a literary work that depicts a serious conflict, a struggle between actors
As a genre of dramaturgy, drama took shape in the middle of the 19th century. This is an intermediate genre between comedy and tragedy.
Types of drama (dramatic genres)
- Tragedy
Tragedy is a dramatic work in which the protagonist (and sometimes other characters - in side collisions), distinguished by the maximum strength of will, mind and feelings for a person, violates a certain generally binding (from the author's point of view) and invincible law; at the same time, the hero of the tragedy may either not be aware of his guilt at all - or not be aware of it for a long time - acting either according to plans from above (for example, ancient tragedy), or being in the power of blinding passion (for example, Shakespeare). The struggle against an invincible law involves great suffering and inevitably ends in the death of the tragic hero; the struggle with an irresistible law - its reappraisal in the event of an inevitable triumph - causes in us spiritual enlightenment - catharsis.
The hero of any dramatic work is steadily striving towards his goal: this aspiration, a single action, encounters a counter-action environment. It must not be forgotten that tragedy developed out of a religious cult; the original content of the tragedy is resistance to fate, its convincing and inevitable predestinations, which neither mortals nor gods can bypass. Such, for example, is the construction of Oedipus by Sophocles. In the Christian theater, tragic action is a struggle with God; such, for example, is Calderon's Adoration of the Cross. In some Shakespearean tragedies, for example, in Julius Caesar, ancient fate, fate, is revived in the form of cosmic forces that take a formidable part in the dramatic struggle. In German tragedies, as a rule, a violation of divine law is depicted, German tragedies are religious - and religious in a Christian way. Such is Schiller in most of his tragedies (in "The Robbers" - God very often takes on Jewish features, the influence of the Bible affects here), Kleist, Goebbel and others. The Christian worldview is also felt in Pushkin's tragic sketches, as, for example, in "Feast during plague." "Dramatic guilt" - violation of the norms of a certain way of life; “tragic guilt” is a violation of the absolute law. On the other hand, a tragedy is possible that develops on a social and state level, devoid of religious pathos in the narrow sense of the word; the hero of a tragedy may struggle not with God, but with "historical necessity", etc.
The hero of a social tragedy encroaches on the basic foundations of social life. The protest of the hero of everyday drama is caused by living conditions; in another environment, he can calm down. In a society where a woman is equal with a man, Ibsen's Nora should show great calm, on the contrary, the hero of a social tragedy - like any tragedy - under any conditions - a rebel. He does not find a place for himself and the framework of sociality. Such, for example, is Shakespeare's Coriolanus; in any environment, his indomitable arrogance should manifest itself. He rebels against the immutable demands of citizenship. There is no tragedy if the hero is not strong enough.
(That's why Ostrovsky's Thunderstorm is not a tragedy. Katerina is too weak; barely feeling her sin, her tragic religious guilt, she commits suicide; she is unable to fight with God).
The counter-action of other characters in the tragedy should also be maximal; all the main characters in a tragedy must be endowed with extraordinary energy and intellectual acuity. The tragic hero acts without malicious intent - this is the third mandatory sign of tragedy. Oedipus his murder and incest is destined from above; Macbeth carries out the predictions of the witches. The hero of the tragedy is guilty without guilt, doomed. At the same time, he is human, he is capable of deep suffering, he acts in spite of his suffering. The heroes of the tragedy are richly gifted natures who are at the mercy of their passions. The themes of tragedy are mythological. The myth is an effective fundamental principle human relations, not obscured by household layers. Tragedy uses historical images as images of folk legend, and not as scientific material. She is interested in history - legend, not history - science. The truth of tragedy is the truth of the passions, not the exact realistic image. Tragedy enlightens our spiritual consciousness; in addition to artistic imagery, it has the pathos of philosophical penetration. The tragedy inevitably ends with the death of the hero. His passion is directed against fate itself and, moreover, indomitable; the death of the hero is the only possible outcome of the tragedy. However, the daring power of the hero arouses in us moments of sympathy, an insane hope for his victory.
- Drama (genre)
drama appears at the end of the 18th century. This is a play with a modern everyday theme. The difference from melodrama is that drama does not seek to pity. The task is to outline a section of modern life with all the details and show a certain flaw, vice. It can solve in a comedic way. Drama can mix with melodrama.
- crime drama
- existential drama
- drama in verse
Melodramaappeared in France. Melodrama is a play that directly appeals to the emotions of the audience, causing compassion, fear, and hatred of Ypres. Unhappiness is usually due to external causes: natural Disasters, sudden death, villains acting out of selfish motives. In tragedy, such a villain is bifurcated: he doubts and suffers. In melodrama, a person is whole and involved in a single emotional outburst. Plots are taken from the lives of ordinary people, the ending, as a rule, is prosperous.
Melodrama is a drama that captivates not so much with the seriousness of the dramatic struggle and the detailed depiction of the life in which this struggle develops, as with the sharpness of the scenic situations. The poignancy of stage situations arises partly as a result of the complex and spectacular circumstances (dramatic knot) in which melodrama occurs, partly as a result of the inventiveness and resourcefulness of its characters. The heroes of the melodrama are put in isolation prison cell, sewn into a bag and thrown into the water (A. Dumas), and they still escape. Sometimes they are saved by a happy accident; the authors of melodramas, striving for more and more new effects, sometimes greatly abuse such random turns in the fate of their heroes. The main interest of melodrama is thus purely fabulous. This interest is often heightened in melodramas by sudden "recognitions" (Aristotle's term); many heroes of the melodrama act under an assumed name for a long time, a dramatic struggle is waged between close relatives who have not been aware of this for a long time, etc. Due to the superficial depiction of everyday life, the melodrama develops under the sign of "tragic guilt" (see "Tragedy") . However, the melodrama is far from a tragedy; there is no spiritual deepening in it; the characteristics of melodrama are more sketchy than in any other dramatic work. In the melodrama, there are often villains, noble adventurers, helplessly touching characters (“Two Orphans”), etc.
- hierodrama
- mystery
- Comedy
Comedy developed from a ritual cult that had a serious and solemn character. The Greek word κω?μος has the same root as the word κω?μη - village. Therefore, it must be assumed that these cheerful songs - comedies - appeared in the village. Indeed, Greek writers have indications that the beginnings of this type of works, called mimes (μι?μος, imitation), arose in the villages. The etymological meaning of this word already indicates the source from which the content for memes was obtained. If tragedy borrowed its content from the tales of Dionysus, gods and heroes, that is, from the world of fantasy, then the mime took this content from everyday life. Memes were sung during festivities dedicated to a certain time of the year and associated with sowing, harvesting, grape harvesting, etc.
All these everyday songs were improvisations of playful satirical content, with the nature of the topic of the day. The same diharic songs, i.e. with two singers, were known to the Romans under the name of atellan and festan. The content of these songs was changeable, but, despite this changeability, they took on a certain form and made up something whole, which sometimes was part of the Greek tetralogy, consisting of three tragedies about one hero (Aeschylus's Oresteia consisted of the tragedies "Agamemnon", Choephors, Eumenides) and the fourth satirical play. More or less definite form in the VI century. BC In the V century. BC, according to Aristotle, the comedian Chionides was famous, from whom only the titles of some plays have survived. Aristophanes is thus. successor of this type of creativity. Although Aristophanes in his comedies ridicules Euripides, his contemporary, he builds his comedies according to the same plan that was developed by Euripides in his tragedies, and even the external construction of comedies is no different from tragedy. In the IV century. BC Menander comes to the fore among the Greeks. . We have already spoken about Plautus, since his comedies imitate the comedies of Menander. In addition to this, let us add that Plautus' love affair plays importance. The comedies of Plautus and Terrence lack a chorus; it was more important in Aristophanes than in the tragedy of Euripides and his predecessors. Chorus in their parabases, i.e. deviations from the development of the action, turned to the audience to interpret and understand the meaning of the dialogues of the characters. The next writer after Plautus was Terence. He, just like Plautus, imitates Menander and another Greek writer Apollodorus. Terence's comedies were not intended for the masses, but for a select aristocratic society, therefore he does not have that obscenity and rudeness that we find in abundance in Plautus. The comedies of Terence are notable for their moralizing character. If in Plautus fathers are fooled by their sons, then in Terentius they are the leaders of family life. The seduced girls of Terentius, in contrast to Plautus, marry their seducers. In pseudo-classical comedy, the moralizing element (vice is punished, virtue triumphs) comes from Terentius. In addition, the comedies of this comedian are distinguished by greater thoroughness in depicting the characters than those of Plautus and Menander, as well as by the elegance of the style. During the Renaissance in Italy, a special kind of comedy was developed:
COMMEDIA DELL'ARTE all'improvviso - a comedy played out by professional Italian actors not according to a written text, but according to a script (Italian Scenario or soggetto) that outlines only milestones in the content of the plot, leaving the actor himself to clothe the role in those words that his stage experience, tact, resourcefulness, inspiration will tell him or education. This kind of game flourished in Italy around the middle of the 16th century. It is difficult to strictly distinguish between improvised comedy and literary comedy (sostenuta erudita): both genres were in undoubted interaction and differed mainly in performance; a written comedy sometimes turned into a script and vice versa, a literary comedy was written according to the script; There are clear similarities between the two characters. But in the improvised one, even more than in the written one, they froze into definite, fixed types. Such are the greedy, enamored and invariably fooled Pantalone; Dr. Gratiano, sometimes a lawyer, sometimes a physician, a scientist, a pedant who invents incredible etymologies of words (like pedante from pede ante, since the teacher makes the students go forward); captain, a hero in words and a coward in deeds, confident in his irresistibility for any woman; in addition, two types of servants (zanni): one is smart and cunning, a master of all sorts of intrigue (Pedrolino, Brighella, Scapino), the other is the silly Harlequin or even more stupid Medzetin, representatives of involuntary comedy. Somewhat apart from all these comic figures stand the lovers (innamorati). Each of the actors chose some one role for himself and often remained faithful to it all his life; thanks to this, he got used to his role and achieved perfection in it, leaving the imprint of his personality on it. This prevented the masks from finally freezing in immobility. Good actors had a large stock of their own or borrowed concetti, which they kept in mind, in order to use one or the other at the right moment, according to circumstances and inspiration. The lovers had at the ready concetti of supplications, jealousy, reproaches, raptures, etc.; they learned a lot from Petrarch. There were about 10-12 actors in each troupe and, accordingly, the same number of roles in each scenario. Various combinations of these almost unchanged elements create a variety of plots. The intrigue usually boils down to the fact that parents, out of greed or rivalry, prevent young people from loving by choice, but the first Zannt is on the side of the youth and, holding all the threads of intrigue in his hands, removes obstacles to marriage. The form is almost without exception three-act. Scene in C.d. arte, as in literary Italian and ancient Roman comedy, depicts a square with two or three houses of actors overlooking it, and on this amazing square without passers-by all conversations, meetings take place .. In the comedy of masks, there is nothing to look for a rich psychology of passions, in its conditional world has no place for a true reflection of life. Its advantage is in movement. The action develops easily and quickly, without lengthiness, with the help of the usual conditional methods of eavesdropping, dressing up, not recognizing each other in the dark, etc. This is exactly what Molière adopted from the Italians. The time of the highest flowering of the comedy of masks falls on the first half of the 17th century.
By the 19th century, the comedy of characters was becoming more important.
COMEDY. Comedy depicts a dramatic struggle that excites laughter, causing us to have a negative attitude towards the aspirations, passions of the characters or the methods of their struggle. The analysis of comedy is connected with the analysis of the nature of laughter. According to Bergson, every human manifestation is ridiculous, which, due to its inertness, contradicts social requirements. Ridiculous in a living person is the inertia of a machine, automatism; for life requires "tension" and "elasticity." Another sign of the funny: "The depicted vice should not greatly hurt our feelings, for laughter is incompatible with emotional excitement." Bergson points to the following moments of comedic "automatism" that causes laughter: 1) laugh "treating people like puppets"; 2) amusing mechanization of life, which is reflected in repeated stage positions; 3) the automatism of actors blindly following their idea is ridiculous. However, Bergson loses sight of the fact that any dramatic work, both comedy and tragedy, is formed by a single, integral desire of the main character (or the person leading the intrigue) - and that this desire in its continuous activity acquires the character of automatism. We also find signs indicated by Bergson in tragedy. Not only Figaro treats people like puppets, but also Iago; however, this appeal is not funny, but terrifying. To use Bergson's language, "tension" devoid of "elasticity," flexibility, can be tragic; strong passion is not "elastic". Defining the signs of comedy, it should be noted that the perception of the funny is changeable; What excites one may make another laugh. Then: there are quite a lot of plays where dramatic (tragic) scenes and lines alternate with comedic ones. Such, for example, are Woe from Wit, some of Ostrovsky's plays, etc. These considerations, however, should not interfere with the establishment of the signs of comedy—comedy style. This style is not determined by the goals towards which the clashing, struggling aspirations of the characters are directed: stinginess can be depicted in comedic and tragic terms (Moliere's The Miser and Pushkin's The Miserly Knight). Don Quixote is ridiculous, despite the loftiness of his aspirations. Dramatic wrestling is funny when it doesn't evoke compassion. In other words, comedy characters should not suffer so much that we are offended by it. Bergson rightly points out the incompatibility of laughter with emotional excitement. Comic wrestling should not be violent, pure style comedy should not have terrifying stage situations. As soon as the hero of the comedy begins to suffer, the comedy turns into drama. Since our capacity for compassion is related to our likes and dislikes, the following relative rule can be established: the more disgusting the hero of a comedy, the more he can suffer without arousing pity in us, without leaving the comedic plan. The very nature of the heroes of comedy is not predisposed to suffering. The comedic hero is distinguished either by extreme resourcefulness, quick resourcefulness, which saves him in the most ambiguous situations - like, for example, Figaro - or by animal stupidity, which saves him from an excessively sharp awareness of his position (for example, Caliban). This category of comedy characters includes all the heroes of everyday satire. Another hallmark of comedy is that the comedic struggle is conducted by means that are awkward, ridiculous, or humiliating—or both ridiculous and humiliating. Comedy wrestling is characterized by: an erroneous assessment of the situation, inept recognition of persons and facts, leading to incredible and lengthy delusions (for example, Khlestakov is mistaken for an auditor), helpless, even if stubborn resistance; inept cunning, not reaching the goal - moreover, devoid of any scrupulousness, means of petty deceit, flattery, bribery (for example, the tactics of officials in the "Inspector"); the struggle is pitiful, absurd, humiliating, buffoonish (and not cruel)—such is the pure type of comedic struggle. A strong effect is produced by a mixing remark when it is given by a funny face.
The strength of Shakespeare in the portrayal of Falstaff is precisely in the combination: a funny joker. Comedy does not move deeply, however, we do not conceive of life without death and suffering; therefore, according to Bergson's subtle remark, the comedy gives the impression of being unreal. Moreover, it needs a convincing everyday coloring, in particular, a well-developed characteristic of the language. Comedy fiction is also distinguished, so to speak, by rich everyday development: specific details of the legend appear here, so to speak, the life of mythological creatures (for example, the scenes of Caliban in Shakespeare's The Tempest). However, comedy characters are not types like everyday drama types. Since pure style comedy is characterized by unskillful and humiliating struggles, its characters are not types, but caricatures, and the more caricature they are, the brighter the comedy. Laughter is hostile to tears (Boileau). It should also be added that the outcome of the comedy struggle, in view of its non-violent nature, is not significant. The comedic victory of vulgarity, baseness, stupidity - since we ridiculed the winners - touches us a little. The defeat of Chatsky or Neschastvittsev does not cause bitterness in us; laughter in itself is a satisfaction for us. Therefore, in a comedy, an accidental denouement is also acceptable - at least through the intervention of the police. But where defeat threatens someone with real suffering (for example, Figaro and his beloved), such an ending, of course, is unacceptable. How insignificant the denouement in itself is in a comedy is evident from the fact that there are comedies where it can be foreseen in advance. Such are the innumerable comedies in which lovers are prevented from marrying by their cruel and ridiculous relatives; here the marriage denouement is predetermined. We are carried away in comedy by the process of ridicule; however, interest rises if the denouement is difficult to foresee. The denouement is positive, happy.
Distinguish:
1) satire, a high-style comedy directed against the vices most dangerous to society,
2) everyday comedy, ridiculing the characteristic shortcomings of a certain society,
3) situation comedy, entertaining with amusing stage situations, devoid of serious social significance. - Vaudeville
Vaudeville is called a dramatic clash in a comedic way (see comedy). If in comedy dramatic combat is not supposed to be violent, then this applies even more so to vaudeville. Here, usually, a comedic violation of some very insignificant social norm is depicted, for example, the norm of hospitality, good neighborly relations, etc. Due to the insignificance of the violated norm, vaudeville usually comes down to a sharp short collision - sometimes to one scene.
History of vaudeville. The etymology of this word (vaux-de-Vire, Vir Valley) indicates the initial origin of this type of dramatic creativity (the city of Vire is located in Normandy); later this word was interpreted through distortion voix de ville - a village voice. Vaudeville began to be understood as such works in which the phenomena of life are defined from the point of view of naive village views. The light nature of the content is a hallmark of vaudeville. The creator of vaudeville, characterizing these works in terms of its content, was the 15th-century French poet Le Goux, who was later mixed with another poet Olivier Basselin. Le Goux published a collection of poems, Vaux de vire nouveaux. These light humorous songs in the spirit of Le Goux and Basselin became the property of the broad urban masses in Paris, thanks to the fact that they were sung by wandering singers on the Pont Neuf. In the 18th century, Lesage, Fuselier, and Dorneval, in imitation of these vaudeville songs, began to compose plays of a similar content. The text of the vaudevilles is accompanied by music from the beginning of the second half of XVIII century. musical performance vaudeville was facilitated by the fact that the entire text was written in verse (Ablesimov's Melnik). But soon, during the very performance of the vaudevilles, the artists began to make changes in the text in a prosaic form - improvisations on the current topics of the day. This made it possible for the authors themselves to alternate between verse and prose. Since that time, vaudeville began branching into two types: vaudeville proper and operetta. In vaudeville, spoken language prevails, while in operetta, singing prevails. However, the operetta began to differ in its content from the vaudeville. After this differentiation of vaudeville, what remains behind it is at first a playful depiction of the life of the urban class in general, and then of the middle and petty bureaucracy. - Farce
Farce is usually called a comedy in which the hero violates the social and physical norms of public life. Thus, in Aristophanes' Lysistrata, the heroine seeks to force the men to end the war by encouraging the women to deny them lovemaking. Thus, Argan (Moliere's Imaginary Sick) sacrifices the interests of his family to the interests of his imaginary sick stomach. The area of farce is predominantly erotica and digestion. Hence, on the one hand, the extreme danger for the farce - to fall into greasy vulgarity, on the other - the extreme sharpness of the farce, which directly affects our vital organs. In connection with the physical elements of the farce, it is naturally characterized by an abundance of outwardly effective movements, collisions, hugs, and fights. Farce is by nature peripheral, eccentric - it is an eccentric comedy.
Farce history. Farces developed from domestic scenes introduced as independent interludes into medieval plays of a religious or moralistic nature. Farces maintained the tradition of comic performances from the Greco-Roman stage and gradually developed into the comedy of the new ages, surviving as a special kind of light comedy. The performers of farces in former times were usually amateurs.
Dramaturgy has its advantages over the epic. There is no author's commentary here. This construction gives the illusion of objectivity. The reaction of the viewer is always more emotional than the reaction of the reader. The action is continuous, the pace of perception is dictated by the performance. The main impact of the dramatic kind is emotional. Since ancient times, there has been a concept cathersis - a kind of "purification" of fear and compassion.
A sign of the dramatic kind in general is conflict The on which the action is built. It can be defined as "oppositely directed human wills." In drama, the goal is never achieved calmly. Obstacles can be both material and psychological. The conflict depends not only on the will of the playwright, but also on social reality.
Late 19th century - European new drama . Representatives: Matherlinck, Hauptmann, Chekhov. Their innovation is that external conflict is eliminated in the plays. However, a persistent state of conflict remains.
Drama means "action", the sequence of events depicted depending on the actions of the characters. An action is any change on the scene, incl. and psychological. Action related to conflict
The words in the drama are not like epic ones, here they are part of the action, the image of actions. The word tends to become action. Performative - a special kind of statement in which the word coincides with the deed. ("I declare war", "I curse"). The word in the theater is always directed at someone = a replica. Either itself is a response to someone's speech. Continuous dialogue creates the effect of reality.
In a drama, unlike an epic, it is impossible to convey the thoughts and feelings of the characters on behalf of the author. We learn about them only from monologues and dialogues, or from autocharacteristics, or from the characteristics of other characters.
In the 20th century, drama tends to get closer to the epic. In Bertolt Brecht's Epic Theatre, at the end of the play there is a direct evaluation: the moment when the actors take off their masks. Thus, the actor does not merge with the hero. The viewer here should not empathize with the hero (as in a classic drama), but think.
The epic differs from the drama in its plot, work with heroes; epic tends to monologue, drama - to dialogue.
Article by V.E. Khalizeva:
Dramatic works, like epic ones, recreate the series of events, the actions of people and their relationships. The playwright is subject to the "law of developing action", but there is no narrative and descriptive image in the drama. (with the exception of rare cases when there is a prologue in the drama).
The author's speech is auxiliary and episodic. List of actors, sometimes with brief characteristics; designation of time and place of action; description of the stage setting; remarks. All this constitutes side text of a dramatic work. The main text is a chain of characters' statements, consisting of replicas and monologues => a limited set of visual means, compared to the epic.
The time of action in a drama must fit within the strict limits of stage time. The chain of dialogues and monologues gives the illusion of present time. “All narrative forms,” Schiller wrote, “carry the present into the past; all dramatic forms make the past present.
The purpose of the drama, according to Pushkin, is “to act on the multitude, to occupy its curiosity”, and for this purpose to capture the “truth of passions”: “Drama was born on the square and constituted the entertainment of the people<…>people want strong feelings<…>laughter, pity and horror are the three strings of our imagination shaken by dramatic art.
Particularly close ties are connected dramatic kind with the sphere of laughter, for the theater is strengthened and developed within the framework of mass festivities, in an atmosphere of play and fun.
Drama gravitates toward an outwardly spectacular presentation of what is depicted. Her figurativeness, as a rule, turns out to be hyperbolic, catchy, theatrically bright (for this, for example, Tolstoy reproached Shakespeare?).
In the 19th and 20th centuries, when the desire for worldly authenticity prevailed in literature, the conventions inherent in the drama became less vivid. At the origins of this phenomenon is the so-called "philistine drama", the creators of which were Diderot and Lessing. Works of the largest Russian playwrights of the 19th - 20th centuries. - Ostrovsky, Gorky, Chekhov - are distinguished by the reliability of the recreated life forms. And yet, psychological and verbal hyperbole are preserved in their work.
The most important role in dramatic works belongs to the conventions of speech self-disclosure of characters, dialogues and monologues. Conditional replicas "to the side" , which, as it were, for other characters who are not on the stage, but are clearly audible to the viewer, as well as monologues uttered by the characters in solitude, which are a purely stage technique for bringing out inner speech. Speech in a dramatic work often takes on a resemblance to artistic, lyrical or oratorical speech. Therefore, Hegel is partly right, considering drama as a synthesis of the epic beginning (eventfulness) and the lyric (speech expression).
Drama has, as it were, two lives in art: theatrical and literary. But a dramatic work was by no means always perceived by the reading public. The emancipation of the drama from the stage was carried out gradually, over a number of centuries, and ended quite recently: in the 18th - 19th centuries. World-wide significant examples of drama (from antiquity to the 18th century) at the time of their creation were practically not recognized as literary works: they existed only as part of the performing arts. Neither Shakespeare nor Molière were perceived by contemporaries as writers. The "discovery" in the 18th century of Shakespeare as a great dramatic poet played a decisive role in the purpose of the drama not only for staging, but also for reading. In the 19th century, the literary merits of a play were sometimes placed above those of the stage. The so-called Lesedrama (reading drama) became widespread. Such are Goethe's Faust, Byron's dramatic works, Pushkin's little tragedies. Dramas created for reading are often potentially stage dramas.
The creation of a performance based on a dramatic work is associated with its creative merits: the actors create intonation-plastic drawings of the roles they play, the artist designs the stage space, the director develops mise-en-scenes. In this regard, the concept of the play changes somewhat, is often concretized and generalized: the stage production introduces new semantic shades into the drama. At the same time, the principle of faithful reading of literature is of paramount importance for the theater. The director and actors are called upon to convey the staged work to the viewer with the maximum possible completeness. The fidelity of stage reading takes place where the actors deeply comprehend the literary work in its main content, genre, style features and match it as people of their era with their own views and tastes.
In the classical aesthetics of the 18th and 19th centuries, in particular in Hegel and Belinsky, drama (especially tragedy) is regarded as the highest form of literary creativity: as the "crown of poetry." A whole series of epochs has indeed imprinted itself chiefly in the dramatic art. Aeschylus and Sophocles in the period of slave-owning democracy, Molière, Corneille and Racine in the time of classicism.
Until the 18th century, drama not only successfully competed with the epic, but often became the leading form of reproducing life in space and time. Causes:
And although in the 19th - 20th century the socio-psychological novel came to the fore - the genre of epic literature, dramatic works still holds a place of honor.
Andrey Gavrilovich Volkov
Racial or ethnic quasi-democracy Racial democracy
Population censuses, their significance and methodology Educational level of the population
Number of children in a family: attitudes and reproductive behavior Population dynamics in the Russian Federation
HIV statistics in Europe: the most alarming situation in Eastern Europe and Central Asia Legal status of HIV-infected people in European countries