English drama

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
See also: Theatre of the United Kingdom

Drama was introduced to Britain from Europe by the Romans, and auditoriums were constructed across the country for this purpose.

Roman theatre at Verulamium (St Albans)

Medieval period

Main article: Medieval theatre

By the

mummers' plays had developed, a form of early street theatre associated with the Morris dance, concentrating on themes such as Saint George and the Dragon and Robin Hood. These were folk tales
re-telling old stories, and the actors travelled from town to town performing these for their audiences in return for money and hospitality.

English mystery plays

Main article: Mystery play
cycle
.

Mystery plays and

craft guilds.[3]

There are four complete or nearly complete extant English biblical collections of plays from the late

Saint Paul exist, all hailing from East Anglia. Besides the Middle English drama, there are three surviving plays in Cornish known as the Ordinalia
.

These biblical plays differ widely in content. Most contain episodes such as the Fall of Lucifer, the Creation and Fall of Man, Cain and Abel, Noah and the Flood, Abraham and Isaac, the Nativity, the Raising of Lazarus, the Passion, and the Resurrection. Other pageants included the story of Moses, the Procession of the Prophets, Christ's Baptism, the Temptation in the Wilderness, and the Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin. In given cycles, the plays came to be sponsored by the newly emerging Medieval

visit of the Magi, with their offerings of gold, frankincense and myrrh, from the goldsmiths.[4][5] The guild associations are not, however, to be understood as the method of production for all towns. While the Chester pageants are associated with guilds, there is no indication that the N-Town plays are either associated with guilds or performed on pageant wagons. Perhaps the most famous of the mystery plays, at least to modern readers and audiences, are those of Wakefield. Unfortunately, we cannot know whether the plays of the Towneley manuscript are actually the plays performed at Wakefield but a reference in the Second Shepherds' Play to Horbery Shrogys (The Towneley plays
line 454) is strongly suggestive

Morality plays

The morality play is a genre of Medieval and early Tudor theatrical entertainment. In their own time, these plays were known as "interludes", a broader term given to dramas with or without a moral theme.[6] Morality plays are a type of allegory in which the protagonist is met by personifications of various moral attributes who try to prompt him to choose a Godly life over one of evil. The plays were most popular in Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries. Having grown out of the religiously based mystery plays of the Middle Ages, they represented a shift towards a more secular base for European theatre.

The Somonyng of Everyman (The Summoning of Everyman), usually referred to simply as

Christian salvation
by use of allegorical characters, and what Man must do to attain it. The premise is that the good and evil deeds of one's life will be tallied by God after death, as in a ledger book. The play is the allegorical accounting of the life of Everyman, who represents all mankind. In the course of the action, Everyman tries to convince other characters to accompany him in the hope of improving his account. All the characters are also allegorical, each personifying an abstract idea such as Fellowship, [material] Goods, and Knowledge. The conflict between good and evil is dramatized by the interactions between characters.

Renaissance: Elizabethan and Jacobean periods

Main article: English Renaissance theatre
William Shakespeare, chief figure of the English Renaissance, is here seen in the Chandos portrait.

The period known as the

Gammer Gurton's Needle
 (c. 1566), belong to the 16th century.

During the reign of

James I, and a possible friend of and influence on William Shakespeare, had brought much of the Italian language and culture to England. He was also the translator of Montaigne into English. The earliest Elizabethan plays include Gorboduc (1561) by Sackville and Norton and Thomas Kyd's (1558–94) revenge tragedy The Spanish Tragedy (1592), that influenced Shakespeare's Hamlet
.

All's Well that Ends Well.[7]

His early classical and Italianate comedies, like

A Comedy of Errors, containing tight double plots and precise comic sequences, gave way in the mid-1590s to the romantic atmosphere of his greatest comedies,[8] A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night. After the lyrical Richard II, written almost entirely in verse, Shakespeare introduced prose comedy into the histories of the late 1590s, Henry IV, parts 1 and 2, and Henry V. This period begins and ends with two tragedies: Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar, based on Sir Thomas North's 1579 translation of Plutarch's Parallel Lives, which introduced a new kind of drama.[9]

Though most of his plays met with success, it was in his later years that Shakespeare wrote what have been considered his greatest plays: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra. In his final period, Shakespeare turned to romance or tragicomedy and completed three more major plays: Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale and The Tempest, as well as the collaboration Pericles, Prince of Tyre. Less bleak than the tragedies, these four plays are graver in tone than the comedies of the 1590s, but they end with reconciliation and the forgiveness of potentially tragic errors.[10] Shakespeare collaborated on two further surviving plays, Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen, probably with John Fletcher.[11]

Other important playwrights of this period include Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Dekker, John Fletcher Francis Beaumont, Ben Jonson, and John Webster.

Other important figures in Elizabethan theatre include Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593), Thomas Dekker (c. 1572 – 1632), John Fletcher (1579–1625) and Francis Beaumont (1584–1616). Marlowe (1564–1593) was born only a few weeks before Shakespeare and must have known him. Marlowe's subject matter is different from Shakespeare's as it focuses more on the moral drama of the renaissance man than any other thing. Marlowe was fascinated and terrified by the new frontiers opened by modern science. Drawing on German lore, he introduced the story of Faust to England in his play Doctor Faustus (c. 1592), a scientist and magician obsessed by the thirst for knowledge and the desire to push man's technological power to its limits. At the end of a 24-year covenant with the devil, Faust must surrender his soul to him. Beaumont and Fletcher are less known, but they may have helped Shakespeare write some of his best dramas, and were popular at the time. One of Beaumont and Fletcher's chief merits was that of realising how feudalism and chivalry had turned into snobbery and make-believe and that new social classes were on the rise. Beaumont's comedy The Knight of the Burning Pestle (1607) satirises the rising middle class and especially the nouveaux riches who pretend to dictate literary taste without knowing much literature at all.

Ben Jonson (1572/3-1637) is best known for his

theory of humours. However, the stock types of Latin literature were an equal influence.[13] Jonson therefore tends to create types or caricatures. However, in his best work, characters are "so vitally rendered as to take on a being that transcends the type".[14] He is a master of style, and a brilliant satirist. Jonson's famous comedy Volpone (1605 or 1606) shows how a group of scammers are fooled by a top con-artist, vice being punished by vice, virtue meting out its reward. Others who followed Jonson's style include Beaumont and Fletcher, whose comedy, The Knight of the Burning Pestle
(c. 1607–08), satirizes the rising middle class and especially of those nouveaux riches who pretend to dictate literary taste without knowing much about literature at all. In the story, a grocer and his wife wrangle with the professional actors to have their illiterate son play a leading role in the play.

A popular style of theatre during Jacobean times was the revenge play, which had been popularised earlier in the Elizabethan era by Thomas Kyd (1558–94), and then subsequently developed by John Webster (1578–1632) in the 17th century. Webster's major plays, The White Devil (c. 1609 – 1612) and The Duchess of Malfi (c. 1612/13), are macabre, disturbing works. Webster has received a reputation for being the Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatist with the most unsparingly dark vision of human nature. Webster's tragedies present a horrific vision of mankind; in his poem "Whispers of Immortality," T. S. Eliot memorably says that Webster always "saw the skull beneath the skin". While Webster's drama was generally dismissed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there has been "a strong revival of interest" in the 20th century.[15]

Other revenge tragedies include The Changeling, written by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley; The Atheist's Tragedy by Cyril Tourneur, first published in 1611; Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta; The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois by George Chapman; The Malcontent (c. 1603) of John Marston; and John Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore. Besides Hamlet, other plays of Shakespeare's with at least some revenge elements are Titus Andronicus, Julius Caesar, and Macbeth.

George Chapman (?1559-?1634) was a successful playwright who produced comedies (his collaboration on Eastward Hoe led to his brief imprisonment in 1605 as it offended the King with its anti-Scottish sentiment), tragedies (most notably Bussy D'Ambois) and court masques (The Memorable Masque of the Middle Temple and Lincoln's Inn), but who is now remembered chiefly for his translation in 1616 of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.

Elizabeth Tanfield Cary
(1585–1639) and first published in 1613, was the first original play in English known to have been written by a woman.

17th and 18th centuries

See also:
Restoration Comedy
Aphra Behn was the first professional English woman playwright.

During the Interregnum 1649–1660, English theatres were kept closed 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

A change came in the

Edwardian musical comedies. W. S. Gilbert and Oscar Wilde were leading poets and dramatists of the late Victorian period.[16] 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 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.[17] 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.

The theatre: 1901–45

Edwardian musical comedy held the London stage (not together with foreign operetta imports) until World War I and was then supplanted by increasingly popular American musical theatre and comedies by Noël Coward, Ivor Novello and their contemporaries. The motion picture mounted a challenge to the stage. At first, films were silent and presented only a limited challenge to theatre. But by the end of the 1920s, films like The Jazz Singer could be presented with synchronized sound, and critics wondered if the cinema would replace live theatre altogether. Some dramatists wrote for the new medium, but playwriting continued.

Irish playwrights

Edwardian theatre into an arena for debate about important political and social issues, like marriage, class, "the morality of armaments and war" and the rights of women.[19] In the 1920s and later Noël Coward (1899–1973) achieved enduring success as a playwright, publishing more than 50 plays from his teens onwards. Many of his works, such as Hay Fever (1925), Private Lives (1930), Design for Living (1932), Present Laughter (1942) and Blithe Spirit (1941), have remained in the regular theatre repertoire. In the 1930s W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood co-authored verse dramas, of which The Ascent of F6 (1936) is the most notable, that owed much to Bertolt Brecht. T. S. Eliot had begun this attempt to revive poetic drama with Sweeney Agonistes in 1932, and this was followed by The Rock (1934), Murder in the Cathedral (1935) and The Family Reunion
(1939). There were three further plays after the war.

The period 1945–2000

An important cultural movement in the British theatre which developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s was

Angry Young Men, in plays like John Osborne's Look Back in Anger (1956). Arnold Wesker and Nell Dunn
also brought social concerns to the stage.

Again In the 1950s, the

Theatre of the Absurd influenced Harold Pinter (1930-2008), (The Birthday Party, 1958), whose works are often characterised by menace or claustrophobia. Beckett also influenced Tom Stoppard (1937-) (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead,1966). Stoppard's works are, however, also notable for their high-spirited wit and the great range of intellectual issues which he tackles in different plays. Both Pinter and Stoppard continued to have new plays produced into the 1990s. Michael Frayn
(1933- ) is among other playwrights noted for their use of language and ideas. He is also a novelist.

Other Important playwrights whose careers began later in the century are: Caryl Churchill (Top Girls, 1982) and Alan Ayckbourn (Absurd Person Singular, 1972).

An important new element in the world of British drama, from the beginnings of radio in the 1920s, was the commissioning of plays, or the adaption of existing plays, by BBC radio. This was especially important in the 1950s and 1960s (and from the 1960s on for television). Many major British playwrights in fact, either effectively began their careers with the BBC, or had works adapted for radio. Most of playwright

British television series which starred Leo McKern as Horace Rumpole, an aging London barrister who defends any and all clients. It has been spun off into a series of short stories, novels, and radio programmes.[22]

Other notable radio dramatists included Brendan Behan, and novelist Angela Carter. Novelist Susan Hill also wrote for BBC radio, from the early 1970s.[23] Irish playwright Brendan Behan, author of The Quare Fellow (1954), was commissioned by the BBC to write a radio play The Big House (1956); prior to this he had written two plays Moving Outand A Garden Party for Irish radio.[24]

Among the most famous works created for radio, are Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood (1954), Samuel Beckett's All That Fall (1957), Harold Pinter's A Slight Ache (1959) and Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons (1954).[25] Samuel Beckett wrote a number of short radio plays in the 1950s and 1960s, and later for television. Beckett's radio play Embers was first broadcast on the BBC Third Programme on 24 June 1959, and won the RAI prize at the Prix Italia awards later that year.[26]

21st century

child grooming takes place while sexually abusing children [28] and describes how the authorities failed to investigate allegations of rape because the victims were perceived as unreliable witnesses.[29] The story is told from the viewpoint of three of the victims: fourteen-year-old Holly Winshaw (Molly Windsor), sixteen-year-old Amber Bowen (Ria Zmitrowicz) and her younger sister Ruby (Liv Hill)[30][31] According to lawyers Richard Scorer & Nazir Afzal, the drama Three girls helps in building awareness around child protection issues of 21st century.[28] While few critics including whistleblower Sara Rowbotham and few victims appreciated accuracy of depiction; Ben Lawrence in The Telegraph found it to be too timid and not going deep down to investigate & expose root causes surrounding inappropriate behavior of perpetrators of Pakistani descent fully enough.[28]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ 'Properly speaking, Mysteries deal with Gospel events only. Miracle Plays, on the other hand, are concerned with incidents derived from the legends of the saints of the Church.' Ward, Augustus William (1875). History of English dramatic literature. London, England: Macmillan.
  2. ^ "mystery, n1 9". Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. December 2009.
  3. OCLC 249158675
    .
  4. ISBN 0853435499
    .
  5. ISBN 9780300106367
    .
  6. ^ Richardson and Johnston (1991, 97-98).
  7. ^ M. H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms, 7th edition. (Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace, 1999), p.246.
  8. ^ Ackroyd 2006, 235.
  9. ^ Ackroyd 2006, 353, 358; Shapiro 2005, 151–153.
  10. ^ Dowden 1881, 57.
  11. ^ Wells et al. 2005, 1247, 1279
  12. ISBN 0-521-64678-2
    .
  13. ^ "Ben Jonson." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2012. Web. 20 September 2012. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/127459/Ben Jonson.
  14. ^ "Ben Jonson." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online Academic Edition.
  15. ^ Margaret Drabble, 'The Oxford Companion to English Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p.1063.
  16. ISBN 0-19-816174-3
  17. ^ "Stage Beauty". www.stagebeauty.net.
  18. ^ The Oxford Companion to English Literature. (1996), p.781.
  19. ^ "English literature." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2012. Web. 15 Nov. 2012. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/188217/English-literature>.
  20. ^ "Caryl Churchill - playwright". www.doollee.com. Archived from the original on 2006-05-09.
  21. ^ a b Tim Crook, "International radio drama"
  22. ^ "John Mortimer Radio Plays": [1]; John Mortimer Biography (1923–2009)
  23. ^ "RADIO DRAMA,APPLES,EKEGUSII,POTATOES,EARLY MUSIC,Mandy Giltjes". www.suttonelms.org.uk.
  24. ^ The Columbia encyclopedia of modern drama, by Gabrielle H. Cody; "Brendan Behan" - RTÉ Archives [2]
  25. ^ J. C. Trewin, "Critic on the Hearth." Listener [London, England] 5 Aug. 1954: 224.
  26. ^ "PRIX ITALIA" (PDF). www.rai.it. Archived from the original on March 3, 2012.
  27. ^ Lara Martin; James Rodger (May 23, 2017). "BBC drama Three Girls: What happened to the sex abuse victims". Birmingham Mail. Retrieved 27 May 2017.
  28. ^ a b c Youngs, Ian (2017-05-19). "Three Girls hailed as 'landmark' drama". BBC News. Retrieved 2020-04-12.
  29. ^ "Three Girls: who is Sara Rowbotham? The sexual health worker behind the uncovering of the Rochdale child-abuse scandal". The Telegraph. 23 May 2017. Retrieved 27 May 2017.
  30. ^ Homa Khaleeli (16 May 2017). "Molly Windsor, star of Rochdale abuse drama Three Girls: 'It made me really angry'". The Guardian. Retrieved 27 May 2017.
  31. ^ "Three Girls (TV Mini-Series 2017)". IMDb.

Works cited

External links
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