An Introduction to Modern One-Act Plays

An Introduction to Modern One-Act Plays (Marshall Cassady)

1.    Tragedy

Many theatre theorists believe that all tragedy must follow this definition, that it has to deal with highly serious and profound problems. The purpose of tragedy is to make the audience experience emotion by identifying with the tragic hero and his or her struggle. The workings of the protagonist’s mind are the most important aspect of a tragedy.

2.    Comedy

Comedy has a variety of  purpose in making us laugh, and they differ from play to play. The humour in a comedy can come from the treatment of character or situation. Unlike tragedy, comedy must end happily. Certain devices can help establish a comic frame of reference: derision, incongruity, exaggeration, repetition, surprise, and character inconsistency.

3.    Melodrama

Melodram is a genre that combines some of the elements of comedy and tragedy. It’s similar to comedy in that it most often has a happy ending. It’s related to tragedy in that it concerns a serious subject and the audience identifies or empathizes with the character. Melodrama often relies on creating feelings of terror, and coincidence or fate plays a large part in the outcome.

4.    Tragicomedy

Another genre that mingles elements of the comic and serious is tragicomedy.  Tragicomedy generally tries to show how life intermingles the comic and the tragic. 

Literature Reading Fiction, Poettry, and Drama (Robert DiYanni)

Types of Drama:

1.    Tragedy

In the Poetics, Aristotle described tragedy as “an imitation of an action that is serious, complete in itself, and of a certain magnitude.”  Typically, tragic protagonist nake mistakes: they misjudge other characters, they misinterpret events, and they confuse appearance with reality. An essential element of the tragic hero’s experience is a recognition of what has happened to him.

2.    Comedy

But in comedy the reversals and errors lead not to calamity as they do in tragedy, but to prosperity and happiness. The happy endingds of comedies are not always happy for all the characters involved. This marks one of the significant differences between the two major types of comedy: satiric and romantic comedy. Satire exposes human folly, criticizes human conduct, and aims to correct it. Romantic comedy, on the other hand, portrays characters gently, even generously; its spirit is more tolerant and its tone more genial.

Stories From Shakespeare (John Murray)

By Shakespeare’s time, stories in books were usually in prose but stories in the theatre were still in verse. Shakespeare told his stories for the theatre and so he used verse. And the world is fortunate that he did, for he is England’s greatest poet. Shakespeare used prose also, especially in his comedies, for there was no rule in those days against mixing poetry and prose and Shakespeare was free to do as he pleased. Shakespeare was not only one of the greatest of poets and storytellers, but he was also one the greatest of playwrights. Since Shakespeare was a man of the theatre, he did not write his plays to be printed. After his death, the actors in his company realized that all his plays ought to be printed or many of them would be lost.

John Heminges and Henry Condell, gathered all his plays together in a single book. It was published in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare’s death, and is now known as the First Folio. Shakespeare’s plays were divided into scenes and acts when they were printed, but this is only for convenient reference and doest not indicate any pause in the action. Shakepeare faced some disadvantages in not being able to close his stage off with a curtain. But the advantages far outweight the difficulties, for the action could be kept fluid and always in motion. Shakespeare helped with every detail of the production, for in those days the actors production their own plays. As a result, there was never any writer who knew as much about stagecraft as William Shakespeare.

Literature Reading Fiction, Poettry, and Drama (Robert DiYanni)

Reading Plays

Drama, unlike the other literary genres, is a staged art. Plays are written to be performed by actors before an audience. When we read or view drama we are aware, if only implicity, of its major characteristics. First is its representational quallity. Drama is an immediate art, representing action that is occuring in the play’s present.

Elements of Drama

1.    Plot

The details of action, or incidents, in a well organized play form a unified structure. This unified structure of a play’s incidents is called its plot. The exposition of a play presents background necessary for the development of the plot. For the example, we can see in the play of Romeo and Juliet in Act 1. It is an example of exposition because in Act 1 presents background of the story Romeo and Juliet’s play. The rising action includes the separate incidents that “complicate” the plot and build toward its most dramatic moment. These incidents often involve conflicts either between characters or within them, conflicts that lead to a crisis. The point of crisis toward which the play’s action builds is called its climax. Following this high point of intensity in the play is the falling action, in which there is a relaxation of emotional intensity in the play’s denoument (French word that refers to the untying of a knot).

2.    Character

Characters in drama can be classified as major and minor, static and dynamic, flat and round. A major character is an important figure at the center of the play’s action and meaning. Supporting the major character are one or more secondary nor minor characters, whose function is partly to illuminate the major characters. Minor characters are often static or unchanging: they remain essentially the same throughout the play. Dynamic characters, on the other hand, exhibit some kind of change-of attitude, of purpose, of behaviour. An other way of describing static and dynamic characters is as flat and round characters. The protagonist is the main character in a play. The antagonist is the character or force against which the protagonist struggles. In Romeo and Juliet’s play, we know that the major and protagonist characters are Romeo and Juliet as two young lovers. They also as the dynamic character who has a change in attitude. The minor characters are the other characters besides Romeo and Juliet. They are the static characters because there isn’t significance change behaviour. The antagonist in the play is the feud of Romeo and Juliet’s family, which is become the obstacle of Romeo and Juliet to show their love.

3.    Dialogue

Although generally we use the word dialogue to refer all the speech of a play, strictly speaking, dialogue involves two speakers and monologue to the speech of one. A sliloquy is a speech given by a character as if alone, eventhough other characters may be on stage. A soliloquy represents a character’s thought so the audience can know what he or she is thinking at a given moment. Soliloquies should be distinguished from asides, which are comments made directly to the audience in the presence of other characters, but without those other characters hearing what is said. The Romeo and Juliet’s play is using dialogue and

there is no aside in act 1.

4.    Staging

By staging we have in mind the spectacle a play presents in performance, its visual detail. This includes such things as the positions of actors onstage (sometime referred to as blocking), their nonverbal gestures and movements (also called stage business), the scenic background, the props and costumes, lighting, and sound effects. Stage Directions in Romeo and Juliet’s plays offer very few stage directions such as:

·         Enter Sampson and Gregory, of the house of Capulet, with swords and bucklers.

·         Enter Abraham and Balthasar.

·         Enter Benvolio.

·         They fight.

·         Beats down their swords.

·         Enter Tybalt.

·         Enter three or four Citizens, with clubs or partisans.

·         Enter Capulet, in his gown; and Lady Capulet.

·         Enter Montague and Lady Montague.

·         Enter Prince Escalus, with his train.

·         Exeunt all but Montague, Lady Montague, and Benvolio.

·         Enter Romeo

·         Etc

5.    Symbolism

A simbol can be defined simply as any object or action that means more that itself; it represents something beyond its literal self. Object, action, clothing, gestures, dialogue-all may have symbolic meaning. In Romeo and Juliet’s plays, in act 1 scene 1 the arrival of Prince Escalus is symbolizes law. The purpose of Prince Escalus comes to give a warning to the Capulet and Montague family to stop the quarrel or he will give a punishment.

6.    Irony

Simple verbal irony comes from saying the opposite of what is meant. Another type of irony is irony of circumstance (sometimes called irony of situation), in which a playwright creates a disperancy between what characters think is the case and what actually is the case. The final type of irony found in plays is called dramatic irony. Dramatic irony involves a discrepancy between what characters know and what readers or viewers know. In Romeo and Juliet’s play dramatic irony can be seen in act 1 scene 5 when Romeo and Juliet met in Capulet’s party. They didn’t know the other is from their enemy’s family, the reader is inform on this.

7.    Theme

We use the word theme to designate the main idea or point of a play stated as a generalization. In Romeo and Juliet’s play the theme is about the passion of love and hate. As we see from the prologue when the chorus of the play said in the first time, this play is about two young lover’s love and the feud of their family. Here is the quotation:

“ ... from ancient grudge break to new mutinity ... A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life ... Doth, with their death, bury their parent’s strife ...”