Classical Greek drama ) with masks of New Comedy'', 1st century BC – early 1st century AD,
Princeton University Art Museum Western drama originates in
classical Greece. The
theatrical culture of the
city-state of
Athens produced three
genres of drama:
tragedy,
comedy, and the
satyr play. Their origins remain obscure, though by the 5th century BC, they were
institutionalised in
competitions held as part of
festivities celebrating the god
Dionysus. Historians know the names of many ancient Greek dramatists, not least
Thespis, who is credited with the innovation of an actor ("
hypokrites") who speaks (rather than sings) and impersonates a
character (rather than speaking in his own person), while interacting with the
chorus and its leader ("
coryphaeus"), who were a traditional part of the performance of non-dramatic poetry (
dithyrambic,
lyric and
epic). Only a small fraction of the work of five dramatists, however, has survived to this day: we have a small number of complete texts by the tragedians
Aeschylus,
Sophocles and
Euripides, and the comic writers
Aristophanes and, from the late 4th century,
Menander. Aeschylus' historical tragedy
The Persians is the oldest surviving drama, although when it won first prize at the
City Dionysia competition in 472 BC, he had been writing plays for more than 25 years. The competition ("
agon") for tragedies may have begun as early as 534 BC; official records ("
didaskaliai") begin from 501 BC when the
satyr play was introduced. Tragic dramatists were required to present a
tetralogy of plays (though the individual works were not necessarily connected by story or theme), which usually consisted of three tragedies and one satyr play (though exceptions were made, as with Euripides'
Alcestis in 438 BC).
Comedy was officially recognized with a prize in the competition from 487 to 486 BC. Five comic dramatists competed at the City
Dionysia (though during the
Peloponnesian War this may have been reduced to three), each offering a single comedy.
Ancient Greek comedy is traditionally divided between "old comedy" (5th century BC), "middle comedy" (4th century BC) and "new comedy" (late 4th century to 2nd BC).
Classical Roman drama , 1st century AD Following the expansion of the
Roman Republic (527–509 BC) into several Greek territories between 270 and 240 BC, Rome encountered
Greek drama. From the later years of the republic and by means of the
Roman Empire (27 BC–476 AD), theatre spread west across Europe, around the Mediterranean and reached England;
Roman theatre was more varied, extensive and sophisticated than that of any culture before it. While Greek drama continued to be performed throughout the Roman period, the year 240 BC marks the beginning of regular
Roman drama. From the beginning of the empire, however, interest in full-length drama declined in favour of a broader variety of theatrical entertainments. The first important works of
Roman literature were the
tragedies and
comedies that
Livius Andronicus wrote from 240 BC. Five years later,
Gnaeus Naevius also began to write drama. The Roman comedies that have survived are all
fabula palliata (comedies based on Greek subjects) and come from two dramatists:
Titus Maccius Plautus (Plautus) and
Publius Terentius Afer (Terence). In re-working the Greek originals, the Roman comic dramatists abolished the role of the
chorus in dividing the drama into
episodes and introduced musical accompaniment to its
dialogue (between one-third of the dialogue in the comedies of Plautus and two-thirds in those of Terence). The action of all scenes is set in the exterior location of a street and its complications often follow from
eavesdropping. All of the six comedies that Terence wrote between 166 and 160 BC have survived; the complexity of his plots, in which he often combined several Greek originals, was sometimes denounced, but his double-plots enabled a sophisticated presentation of contrasting human behaviour. Nine of Seneca's tragedies survive, all of which are
fabula crepidata (tragedies adapted from Greek originals); his
Phaedra, for example, was based on
Euripides'
Hippolytus. Historians do not know who wrote the only
extant example of the
fabula praetexta (tragedies based on Roman subjects),
Octavia, but in former times it was mistakenly attributed to Seneca due to his appearance as a
character in the tragedy. The earliest example is the
Easter trope
Whom do you Seek? (Quem-Quaeritis) (). Two groups would sing responsively in
Latin, though no impersonation of
characters was involved. By the 11th century, it had spread through Europe to
Russia,
Scandinavia, and
Italy; excluding
Islamic-era Spain. In the 10th century,
Hrosvitha wrote six plays in Latin modeled on
Terence's comedies, but which treated religious subjects. Her plays are the first known to be composed by a female dramatist and the first identifiable Western drama of the post-Classical era.
The Interlude of the Student and the Girl (), one of the earliest known in English, seems to be the closest in tone and form to the contemporaneous French
farces, such as
The Boy and the Blind Man. Many plays survive from
France and
Germany in the
late Middle Ages, when some type of religious drama was performed in nearly every European country. Many of these plays contained
comedy,
devils,
villains, and
clowns. In England, trade guilds began to perform
vernacular "
mystery plays", which were composed of long cycles of many playlets or "pageants", of which four are
extant:
York (48 plays),
Chester (24),
Wakefield (32) and the so-called "
N-Town" (42). ''
The Second Shepherds' Play'' from the Wakefield cycle is a farcical story of a stolen sheep that its
protagonist, Mak, tries to pass off as his new-born child asleep in a crib; it ends when the shepherds from whom he has stolen are summoned to the
Nativity of Jesus.
Morality plays (a modern term) emerged as a distinct dramatic form around 1400 and flourished in the early
Elizabethan era in England. Characters were often used to represent different ethical ideals.
Everyman, for example, includes such figures as Good Deeds, Knowledge and Strength, and this characterisation reinforces the conflict between good and evil for the audience.
The Castle of Perseverance (–1425) depicts an archetypal figure's progress from birth through to death.
Horestes (), a late "hybrid morality" and one of the earliest examples of an English
revenge play, brings together the classical story of
Orestes with a
Vice from the medieval
allegorical tradition, alternating comic,
slapstick scenes with serious,
tragic ones. Also important in this period were the folk dramas of the
Mummers Play, performed during the
Christmas season. Court
masques were particularly popular during the reign of
Henry VIII.
Elizabethan and Jacobean One of the great flowerings of drama in
England occurred in the 16th and 17th centuries. Many of these plays were written in verse, particularly
iambic pentameter. In addition to Shakespeare, such authors as
Christopher Marlowe,
Thomas Middleton, and
Ben Jonson were prominent playwrights during this period. As in the
medieval period, historical plays celebrated the lives of past kings, enhancing the image of the
Tudor monarchy. Authors of this period drew some of their storylines from
Greek mythology and
Roman mythology or from the plays of eminent Roman playwrights such as
Plautus and
Terence.
English Restoration comedy as the extravagant and affected Lord Foppington, "brutal, evil, and smart", in
Vanbrugh's The Relapse (1696)
Restoration comedy refers to English comedies written and performed in England during the
Restoration period from 1660 to 1710.
Comedy of manners is used as a synonym of Restoration comedy. After
public theatre had been banned by the
Puritan regime, the re-opening of the theatres in 1660 with the Restoration of
Charles II signalled a renaissance of
English drama. Restoration comedy is known for its
sexual explicitness, urbane, cosmopolitan
wit, up-to-the-minute topical writing, and crowded and bustling plots. Its dramatists stole freely from the contemporary French and Spanish stage, from English
Jacobean and
Caroline plays, and even from
Greek and
Roman classical comedies, combining the various plotlines in adventurous ways. Resulting differences of tone in a single play were appreciated rather than frowned on, as the audience prized "variety" within as well as between plays. Restoration comedy peaked twice. The genre came to spectacular maturity in the mid-1670s with an extravaganza of
aristocratic comedies. Twenty lean years followed this short golden age, although the achievement of the first professional female playwright,
Aphra Behn, in the 1680s is an important exception. In the mid-1690s, a brief second Restoration comedy renaissance arose, aimed at a wider audience. The comedies of the golden 1670s and 1690s peak times are significantly different from each other. The unsentimental or "hard" comedies of
John Dryden,
William Wycherley, and
George Etherege reflected the atmosphere at Court and celebrated with frankness an aristocratic
macho lifestyle of unremitting sexual intrigue and conquest. The
Earl of Rochester, real-life Restoration rake, courtier and poet, is flatteringly portrayed in Etherege's
The Man of Mode (1676) as a riotous, witty, intellectual, and sexually irresistible aristocrat, a template for posterity's idea of the glamorous
Restoration rake (actually never a very common character in Restoration comedy). The single play that does most to support the charge of
obscenity levelled then and now at Restoration comedy is probably Wycherley's masterpiece
The Country Wife (1675), whose title contains a lewd
pun and whose notorious "china scene" is a series of sustained
double entendres. During the second wave of Restoration comedy in the 1690s, the "softer" comedies of
William Congreve and
John Vanbrugh set out to appeal to more socially diverse audience with a strong middle-class element, as well as to female spectators. The comic focus shifts from young lovers outwitting the older generation to the vicissitudes of marital relations. In Congreve's
Love for Love (1695) and
The Way of the World (1700), the give-and-take set pieces of couples testing their attraction for one another have mutated into witty prenuptial debates on the eve of marriage, as in the latter's famous "Proviso" scene. Vanbrugh's
The Provoked Wife (1697) has a light touch and more humanly recognisable characters, while
The Relapse (1696) has been admired for its throwaway wit and the characterisation of Lord Foppington, an extravagant and affected burlesque
fop with a dark side. The tolerance for Restoration comedy even in its modified form was running out by the end of the 17th century, as public opinion turned to respectability and seriousness even faster than the playwrights did. At the much-anticipated all-star première in 1700 of
The Way of the World, Congreve's first comedy for five years, the audience showed only moderate enthusiasm for that subtle and almost melancholy work. The comedy of sex and wit was about to be replaced by
sentimental comedy and the drama of exemplary morality.
Modern and postmodern The pivotal and innovative contributions of the
19th-century Norwegian dramatist
Henrik Ibsen and the
20th-century German theatre practitioner
Bertolt Brecht dominate modern drama; each inspired a tradition of imitators, which include many of the greatest playwrights of the modern era. The works of both playwrights are, in their different ways, both
modernist and
realist, incorporating formal
experimentation,
meta-theatricality, and
social critique. In terms of the traditional theoretical discourse of genre, Ibsen's work has been described as the culmination of "
liberal tragedy", while Brecht's has been aligned with an
historicised comedy. Other important playwrights of the modern era include
Antonin Artaud,
August Strindberg,
Anton Chekhov,
Frank Wedekind,
Maurice Maeterlinck,
Federico García Lorca,
Eugene O'Neill,
Luigi Pirandello,
George Bernard Shaw,
Ernst Toller,
Vladimir Mayakovsky,
Arthur Miller,
Tennessee Williams,
Jean Genet,
Eugène Ionesco,
Samuel Beckett,
Harold Pinter,
Friedrich Dürrenmatt,
Dario Fo,
Heiner Müller, and
Caryl Churchill. == Opera ==