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Kinds of Drama

There are several kinds of drama, including comedy, tragedy, domestic drama, fantasy, heroic drama, masques, medieval mystery plays, melodrama, problem plays, and tragi-comedy. Comedies can be further divided into subcategories like burlesques, comedy of manners, comedy of situation, comedy of character, domestic comedy, farce, romantic comedy, satire, and Pinter-style "comedy of menace." Tragedies focus on eliciting pity and fear through portraying an important action with embellished language. Tragi-comedies raise complex issues but end happily.

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3K views2 pages

Kinds of Drama

There are several kinds of drama, including comedy, tragedy, domestic drama, fantasy, heroic drama, masques, medieval mystery plays, melodrama, problem plays, and tragi-comedy. Comedies can be further divided into subcategories like burlesques, comedy of manners, comedy of situation, comedy of character, domestic comedy, farce, romantic comedy, satire, and Pinter-style "comedy of menace." Tragedies focus on eliciting pity and fear through portraying an important action with embellished language. Tragi-comedies raise complex issues but end happily.

Uploaded by

Yeni Purtika
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© © All Rights Reserved
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YENI PURTIKA

081222210028
C 08 EDU REG
DRAMA
KINDS OF DRAMA

The word drama comes from a Greek word which means to do or to act. The word
drama simply means action. Drama is mimetic action, action in imitation or representation of
human behavior. A drama can also be defined as a story enacted onstage for a live audience. There
are several kinds of drama as follows:
1. Chronicle plays
This kind of drama dealt directly with historical scenes and characters.
2. Comedy
Comedy is lighter drama in which the leading characters overcome the difficulties
which temporarily beset them. There are several kinds of comedy:
a. Burlesques : lampooning other works of art, including theatre pieces.
b. Comedy of manners : comedy which wittily portrays fashionable life.
c. Comedy of situation : character and ideas are minor hidden identities, discoveries,
reversals, etc. similar to farce, but less unrealistic.
d. Comedy of character : eccentricities of the protagonist (Molire)
e. Domestic comedy : home and hearth.
f. Farce : exaggerated comedy marked by ridiculous situations, a
horseplay.
g. Romantic comedy : struggles of love, sympathetic characters, ludicrous devices
lovers use.
h. Satire : ridicule of public institutions and figures. The satyrs were
mythical half-human, half-goat figures and actors in these
plays wore large phalluses for comic effect. Few examples of
these plays survive. They are classified by some authors as
tragicomic, or comedy dramas.
i. Pinter : has been called comedy of menace.
3. Domestic/ Burgeois Drama
Deals with "ordinary" people, from everyday life.
4. Fantasy
A play sometimes, but not always, in comic spirit in which the author gives free
reign to his fantasy, allowing things to happen without regard to reality.
5. Heroic Drama
retains parts of tragedy
heroic or noble characters
verse (heroic verse) is where the kind of drama got its name. Heroic verse consists of
"couplets" :
1. two rhyming lines of iambic pentameter
2. other elevated language
extreme situations
but differs from tragedy because:
1. usually has a happy ending
2. generally optimistic view, even if ending is sad
6. Masques
Masques were slight plays involving much singing and dancing and costuming. They
were usually allegorical.
7. Medieval mystery plays
This kind of drama dealt with Bible stories and allegorical mysteries.
8. Melodrama
Like farce, melodrama pays almost no attention to human values, but its object is to
give a thrill instead of a laugh.
9. Problem Play
Drama of social criticism discusses social, economic, or political problems by means
of a play.
10. Tragedy
Tragedy is an imitation of an important and complete action, which has a specific
length, written in an embellished language, with its separate parts set in order and not
randomly, in active and not narrative form, tending through pity and fear to the catharsis of
passions.
11. Tragi-Comedy
Trasgi-Comedy ends happily, but raises complex issues of love, friendship,
cowardice, courage, and death; societal norms, morality concealed identities,
misinformation, and coincidence, last-minute revelations.

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