Evolution of Drama

[Khadija Rathor]

Drama evolved out of religious observances during the Middle Ages. Beginning in the 10th and 11th centuries churches began putting on skits to illustrate the lives and deeds of saints. These were called miracle plays. Later on they developed what were called mystery plays. These dramatized bible stories. There also developed passion plays, which depicted the life of Christ. Beginning in the 13th century these began to be performed outside of the churches as part of festivals or by travelling companies. As time went on the scripts began to include various non-religious elements and slapstick comedy, which made them increasingly unpopular with church authorities.
Beginning in the 15th century there developed the morality plays. These were allegorical stories, which taught moral lessons. They evolved out of the mystery and miracle plays but were never performed in churches but always by secular acting groups. From these gradually evolved professional theate companies and secular drama. By the advent of the Renaissance in the 15th and 16th cent., most European countries had established native traditions of religious drama and farce that contended with the impact of the newly discovered Greek and Roman plays. Little had been known of classical drama during the Middle Ages, and evidently the only classical imitations during that period were the Christian imitations of Terence by the Saxon nun Hrotswitha in the 100th cent.
The translation and imitation of the classics occured first in Italy, with Terence, Plautus, and Seneca as the models. The Italians strictly applied their interpretation of Aristotle's rules for the drama, amd this rigidity was primarily responsible for the failure of Italian Renaissance drama. Some liveliness appeared in the comic sphere, particularly in Machiavill's satiric masterpiece. The pastoral drama set in the country and depicting the romantic affairs of rustic people, usually shepherdeness was more successful than either comedy or tragedy.
The true direction of the Italian stage was towards the spectacular and the musical. A popular Italian Renaissance form was the intermezzo,
which presented music and lively entertainment between the acts of classical imitations. The native taste for music and theatricality led to the emergence of the opera in the 16th century and the truimph of this form on the Italian stage in the 17th century. Similarly the commedia dell'arte, emphasizing comedy and improvisation and featuring character types familiar to a contemporary audience, was more popular than academic imitation of classical comedy.
Renaissance drama appeared somewhat later in France than in Italy. Estienne Jodelle's Senecan tragedy Cleopatre captive(1553) marks the beginning of classical imitation of classical imitation in France. The French drama initially suffered from the same rigidity as the Italian, basing itself on Roman models and Italian imitations. However, in the late 16th century in France there was a romantic reaction to classical dullness, led by Alexandre Hardy, France's first professional playwright.
This romantic trend was stopped in the 17th century by Cardinal Richelieu's judgement, however, bore fruit in the triumphs of the French neoclassical tragedies of Jean Racine and the comedies of Moliere. The great tragedies of Pierre Corneille, although classical in their grandeur and in their concern with noble characters, are decidely of the Rennaissance in their exaltation of man's ability, by force of will, to transcend adverse circumstances.
Rennaisance drama in Spain and England was more successful than in France and Italy because the two former nations were able to transform classical models with infusions of native characteristics. In Spain the two leading Rennaissance playwrights were Lope de Vega and Pedro Calderon de la Barca.Earlier, Lope de Rueda had set the tone for future Spanish drama with plays that are romantic, lyrical, and generally in the mixed tragicomic form. Lope de Vega wrote an enormous number of plays of many types, emphasing plot, charater, and romantic action.
The English drama of the 16th century showed from the beginning that it would not be bound by classical rules. Elements of farce, morality, and a disregard for the unities of time, place, and action inform the early comedies Gammer Gurton's Needle and Ralph Roister Doister (both c.1553) and the Senecan tragedy Gorboduc(1562). William Shakespeare's great work was foreshadowed by early essays in the historical chronicle play, by elements of romance found in the works of John Lyly, by revenge plays such as Thomas Kyd's Spanish tragedy(c.1586) again inspired by the works of Senecaand by Christopher Marlowe's development of blank verse and his deepening of the tragic perception.
Shakespere,of course,stands as the supreme dramatist of the Renaissance period,equally adept at writting tragedies ,comedies,or
chronicle plays.His great achievements include da perfection of averse form & language that capture da spirit of ordinary speech
and yet stand above it to give a special dignity to his characters and situation;an unrivaled subtlety of characterization;and a marvellous ability to unify plot,character,imaginary,and verse movement.

With the reign of James I the English drama began to decline until the closing of the theaters by the Puritans in 1642.This period is
marked by sensation alism &rhetoric in tragidy,as in the the works of John Webster & Thomas Middleton ,spectacle in the form of
the masque,& a gradual turn to polished wit in comedy ,began by Francis Beaumont & John Fletcher & further by James Shirley. The best plays of da Jacobean period r da comedies of Ben Jonson, in which he satirized contemporary life by means of his own invention, da comedy of humours. Then drama enters into a very new phase but da gap of years chokes up da spirits.
regards