2.

Climaxes

of English drama (from the Renaissance to the

present)
Renaissance and Elizabethan periods
The period known as the English Renaissance, approximately 15001660, saw a
flowering of the drama and all the arts. A large number of comedies, tragedies, and examples
of intermediate types were produced for London theaters between 1500 and 1642, when the
London theaters were closed by order of the Puritan Parliament. The first theatre was The
Theatre built by a famous actor Burbage outsid of London in 1567. The first English plays
were written in the sixteenth century. The first comedy is Ralph Roister Doister written by
Nicholas Udall. It was influenced by the Latin comedies of Plautus. The main model for
tragedie was Seneca, whose plays were translated into English. It was a model for the earliest
popular tragedy of blood and revenge, The Spanish Tragedy of Thomas Kyd. Most probably
Kyd was the author of the first play on the theme of Hamlet. Christopher Marlowe began the
tradition of the chronicle play, about the fatal deeds of kings and potentates, a few years later
with the tragedies Tamburlaine the Great and Edward II. Marlowes plays, such as The
Tragical History of Dr. Faustus and The Jew of Malta. These plays are remarkable primarily
for their daring depictions of world-shattering characters who strive to go beyond the normal
human limitations as the Christian medieval ethos had conceived them. Ben Johnson
invented a genre called comedy of humours. He wrote plays without any philosophy and
characters are bearers of one dominant feature, e.g.Every Man in his Humour or Volpone or
the Fox.
Perhaps the most famous playwright in the world, William Shakespeare from Stratfordupon-Avon, wrote plays that are still performed in theatres across the world to this day. He
was himself an actor and deeply involved in the running of the theatre company that
performed his plays.
Comedies:
As You Like It, A Midsummer Nights Dream, Much Ado about Nothing, The Taming of
a Shrew, The Merchant of Venice, The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Twelft Night, Alls
Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure, Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winters Tale,
The Tempest

Almost all comedies were

written before 1600, there was

no great attempt at

moralizing or satirizing. Shakespeare's comedies tend to have following features: struggle of

young lovers to overcome difficulty thats often presented by elders, separation and
unification, mistaken identity, hightened tension, often within a family, multiple plots,
frequent use of puns, Apollonian reasons ( society, law, order) x Dionysian reasons
(emotions, individuals, freedom) and many female characters.
Tragedies:
In the period of Renaissance, tragedy was considered to be a serious artistic genre, much
higher than comedy. Unlike comedy, tragedy had a philosophy and a literary criticism behind
it. It was strongly influenced by

Aristotle's Poetics. Aristotle was still much quoted

philosopher in the Elizabethan period. In his plays he gave portrayals of tragic heroes who
were partly responsible for their downfalls. The heroes were not perfect or innocent, they
were described as morally weak, making wrong decisions. All of Shakespeare's great
tragedies focus on the psychology of the tragic hero and the inherent violence in human
nature. The main heroes create their own individual world where normal moral laws are
overturned.
Famous tragedies:
Titus Andronicus, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra,
Timon of Athens, Corionalus, Troilus and Cressida, The Tragedy of King Richard II

The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

was artistic expression of the crisis of

humanism and Renaissance optimism at the turn of the century. It reflects the time when the
court of Queen Elizabeth I got into more and more frequent conflicts with the entrepreneurial
House of Commons and other manifestations of the new, early capitalist Puritan England.
Hamlet was Shakespeares longest but also probably most philosophical play.
(Plot: Prince Hamlet mourns both his father's death and his mother, Queen Gertrude's remarriage to Claudius.
The ghost of Hamlet's father appears to him and tells him that Claudius has poisoned him. Hamlet swears
revenge. He kills the eavesdropping Polonius, the court chamberlain. Polonius's son Laertes returns to Denmark
to avenge his father's death. Polonius's daughter Ophelia loves the Prince but his behaviour drives her to
madness. Ophelia dies by drowning. A duel takes place and ends with the death of Gertrude, Laertes, Claudius,
and Hamlet.)

themes:
1) madness - Ophelias case is real madness, its put to contrast with Hamlets pretended
one =>fools are innocent, cannot hide anything X Hamlet tries to find out the truth some say he eventually really goes mad => when thinking about he future we can ask
whether he would be a good ruler
2) the role of the ghosts - people dying without forgiveness were believed to go to
purgatory; generally seen as evil spirits
3) the truth, reality vs fiction, appearance - Hamlet as somebody who is decided to find
out the truth at any cost + who is prepared to serve as a tool of the truth no matter his
personal benefit; the truth of the murder is often being hidden (by Claudius)
4) death - murder, revenge, possible war with Fortinbras, to be or not to be etc.
5) love - real love (Hamlet-Ophelia, Hamlet-his mother), pretended love, flattery
(Claudius, Polonius to Ophelia)
6) real values X corrupted ones
7) conflict - man v. man, man v. himself => philosophical dimension
8) relative unclearness - Shakespeare gives not many definite answers, some are
indirectly put in the story, must be interpreted from the text and supported by
arguments => the interpretation of the play is very difficult X that doesnt mean its
impossible or that Shakespeare didnt want to communicate a certain message => he
didnt want to say it straightforward, he wanted the reader to find it out

17th and 18th centuries

During the Interregnum 16491660, English theatres were kept closed by
the Puritans for religious and ideological reasons. When the London theatres opened again
with the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, they flourished under the personal interest and
support of Charles II. Wide and socially mixed audiences were attracted by topical writing
and by the introduction of the first professional actresses (in Shakespeare's time, all female
roles had been played by boys). New genres of the Restoration were heroic drama, pathetic
drama, and Restoration comedy. Notable heroic tragedies of this period include John
Dryden's All for Love (1677)). The Restoration plays that have best retained the interest of
producers and audiences today are the comedies, such as George Etherege's The Man of
Mode (1676), William Wycherley's The Country Wife (1676), John Vanbrugh's The

Relapse (1696), and William Congreve's The Way of the World (1700). This period saw the
first professional woman playwright, Aphra Behn, author of many comedies including The
Rover (1677). Restoration comedy is famous or notorious for its sexual explicitness, a quality
encouraged by Charles II (16601685) personally and by the rakish aristocratic ethos of
his court.
In the 18th century, the highbrow and provocative Restoration comedy lost favour, to be
replaced by sentimental comedy, domestic tragedy such as George Lillo's The London
Merchant (1731), and by an overwhelming interest in Italian opera. Popular entertainment
became more dominant in this period than ever before. Fair-booth burlesque and musical
entertainment, the ancestors of the English music hall, flourished at the expense of legitimate
English drama. By the early 19th century, few English dramas were being written, except
for closet drama, plays intended to be presented privately rather than on stage.

Victorian era and later

A change came in the Victorian era with a profusion on the London stage of farces, musical
burlesques, extravaganzas and comic operas that competed with Shakespeare productions and
serious drama by the likes of James Planch and Thomas William Robertson. W. S.
Gilbert and Oscar Wilde (The Importance of Being Earnest, Lady Windermere's Fan, A
Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband) were leading poets and dramatists of the late
Victorian period.[1] Wilde's plays, in particular, stand apart from the many now forgotten plays
of Victorian times and have a much closer relationship to those of the Edwardian dramatists
such as Irishman George Bernard Shaw (Candida) and Norwegian Henrik Ibsen.
The length of runs in the theatre changed rapidly during the Victorian period. As
transportation improved, poverty in London diminished, and street lighting made for safer
travel at night, the number of potential patrons for the growing number of theatres increased
enormously. Plays could run longer and still draw in the audiences, leading to better profits
and improved production values. The first play to achieve 500 consecutive performances was
the London comedy Our Boys, opening in 1875. Its astonishing new record of 1,362
performances

was

bested

in

1892

by Charley's

Aunt.[2] Several

of Gilbert

and

Sullivan's comic operas broke the 500-performance barrier, beginning with H.M.S.
Pinafore in 1878, and Alfred Cellier and B. C. Stephenson's 1886 hit,Dorothy, ran for 931
performances.

Edwardian musical comedy held the London stage (together with foreign operetta imports)
until World War I and was then supplanted by increasingly popular American musical
theatre and comedies by Noel Coward, Ivor Novello and their contemporaries.
Postmodernism had a profound effect on English drama in the latter half of the 20th Century.
The most prominent playwrights were those of The Theater of the Absurd from the late
1940s to 1960s. Their works usually employ illogical situations, unconventional dialogue, and
minimal plots to express the apparent absurdity of human existence. The play is usually broad
comedy mixed with horrific or tragic images. These writers reacted against traditional
Western theatrical conventions, rejecting assumptions about logic, characterization, language,
and plot.
The main representative of The Theatre of the Absurd was the Irish writer Samuel
Beckett. His Waiting for Godot (portrays two tramps waiting for a character named Godot. They are not
sure who Godot is, whether he will show up to meet them, and indeed whether he actually exists, but they spend
each day waiting for him and trying to understand the world in which they live.)

Beckett often reduced

character, plot, and dialogue to a minimum in an effort to highlight fundamental questions of

human existence. Beckett creates a full range of styles which seem not to match together and
seems that there is no logical connection, there is misunderstanding and no communication is
possible.
Samuel Beckett influenced a younger generation of English dramatists of the Theatre of
Absurd, such as Harold Pinter or Tom Stoppard. Harold Pinter is major postwar British
playwright, known for his cryptic and unusual plays that have been described as comedies of
menace. Pinters dialogue reflects the difficulties inherent in verbal communication and
explores the layers of meaning produced by long pauses and silence. His most important stage
dramas are The Caretaker and The Homecoming. Tom Stoppard is an English playwright,
born in Czechoslovakia, noted for his ingenious use of language and ironic political
metaphors. Although sometimes he was criticized for the limited character development in his
work, he used inventive linguistic displays and plot inversions to fuel the texts for his plays
The Real Inspector Hound, Jumpers , Travestie, Every Good Boy Deserves Favor, The Real
Thing and Hapgood.