Dialogue is a conversation or discourse between two or more persons. The word is used more particularly for a formal conversation in theatrical performances, and for a written conversation or composition, in which two or more persons carry on a discourse. This form was much in favour amongst the ancient philosophers as a medium for expressing their thoughts on subjects. The Dialogues of Plato are the finest example. Many of the great French and Italian writers have used this form. Landor's Imaginary Conversations is a classic example of this kind in English. Research Dialogue
Drama (from the Greek drew, I act), is a class of writings which almost entirely consist of dialogue, persons being represented as acting and speaking, and the pieces being usually intended to be acted on a stage by parties assuming the characters of the respective persons.
Its two great branches are tragedy and comedy, the former, roughly speaking, melancholy in character, the latter cheerful. The origin of the drama must be sought for in the love of imitation, and dramatic performances of some kind are to be met with probably among all nations.
Dramatic compositions are found in the Old Testament, for example in Job and the Song of Solomon; and ancient India and China both developed a dramatic literature of their own.
The European drama bad its origin in Greece. Both forms, tragic and comic, took their rise in the celebrations of the Greek festivals of Dionysus (Bacchus), at which hymns and chants were sung by choruses in honour of the god, and the chorus continued to be a prominent feature of the old Greek drama. Greek comedy commenced about 580-560 BC with Susarion, but it was long in attaining regular form. Of the old Greek comedy the chief representatives were Oratinus, Eupolis, Pherecrates, and Aristophanes - the last the greatest.
The invention of tragedy is generally ascribed to Thespis about 530 BC, who was followed by Phrynichus. But the true creator of tragedy was Aeschylus, in whose works and those of Sophocles and Euripides it found its most perfect expression. Thespis had only one actor, who from time to time relieved the chorus by declamation. Aeschylus changed this representation into real action by making use of two actors in addition to the chorus. Aeschylus also introduced masks; and by means of a long gown and the cothurnus, or buskin, the lofty stature of the heroes was imitated. A third actor was first introduced by Sophocles. The accommodations for the spectators were improved, and machinery and scenery introduced. The theatres, which had been formerly built of wood, were now large stone erections, capable of containing the greater number of the citizens. The regular drama among the Romans was borrowed from the Greeks. Plautus and Terence were imitators of the Greek comedy, Livius Andronicus (240 BC) of the Greek tragedy. Of the Roman tragedy, the dramas of Seneca are the only specimens extant.
In most modern European countries the regular drama took its rise in the mysteries, miracle-plays, and moralities of the middle ages. In Italy, however, it began with a reproduction in Latin of classical models. The earliest tragedy in Italian is Trissino's Sofonisba (1502). Regular comedies in Italian were written by Ariosto, Aretino, Macchiavelli, and others; and to the same period (15th and 16th centuries) belongs the Italian Pastoral Drama, which sprung from the ancient idylls, and aimed at a fanciful delineation of Arcadian and mythological scenes. Among the pastoral dramatists of this period are Poliziano, Tasso, and Guarini. The pastorals gave birth to the opera, early masters of which, so far as it may be included in the poetic drama, are Zenoand Metastasio. The Italian drama waned in the 17th century, but in the 18th genuine comedy and classic tragedy were restored, the former by Goldoni, the latter by Alfieri. Monti, Manzoni, and Niccolini are among the later writers of tragedy.
The other European nations cultivated the dramatic art much later than the Italians. The English and Spaniards devoted their attention to it almost at the game time; the former reaching their acme in William Shakespeare, the latter in Lope de Vega and Calderon. The history of the English theatre and the drama is naturally divided into two parts, the first of which begins with the reign of Elizabeth I and ends with the reign of Charles I. The rapid developmentof the drama during the reign of Elizabeth I was entirely unhampered by foreign influence. Lyly, Peele, Greene, Marlowe, William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletchor, Chapman, Webster, Middleton, Marston, Ford,and Massinger are among the chief names connected with the brilliant period of the English drama.
During the Commonwealth the Puritans prohibited all kinds of plays, and the theatres were shut up for thirteen years. With Charles II the drama reappeared, and exhibited a licentiousness hardly equalled by that of any other Christian nation. Among the chief names belonging to this period are Dryden, Otway, Lee, Shadwell, Wycherley, and Etherege. From the close of the 17th to that of the 18th century British comedy was cultivated with much success by Cibber, Farquhar, Congreve, Sheridan, and others.
During the 19th century many writers have been conspicuous by their dramas. Among the chief of these may be noted Byron, Coleridge, Landor, Shelley, Maturin, Talfourd, Milman, Sir Henry Taylor, the first LordLytton, Knowles, R. H. Home, Arnold, Browning, Swinburne, and Tennyson. Among other 19th-century writers for the stage, who, however, may be called playwrights rather than dramatists, may be named, Douglas Jerrold, Tom Taylor, Charles Reade, Thomas Robertson, W. G. Wills, H. Byron, R. Buchanan, Dion Boucicault, W. S. Gilbert, J. M. Barrie, A. W. Pinero, H. A. Jones, etc.
The French drama was in a miserable state before Corncille (1606-84), who indeed is looked on as the founder of the drama in France. Racine, Moliere, Voltaire, and in later times Hugo, are some of the other distinguished French dramatists. Since about 1820 a new dramatic school has been formed in France, which, departing from the ancient strictness of what is called the classic, approaches more and more to the German or British, or what is called the romantic school. The establishment of this school formed part of the general reaction against the excessive adherence to classic models in literature, the leader in the movement being Victor Hugo. C. Delavigne marks the transition from the classical to the beginnings of the romantic school, and among the 19th century dramatists may be mentioned A. de Vigny, George Sand, A. de Musset, Merimee, Ponsard, Augier, Scribe, Dumas the Younger, and Sardou.
The German drama is of later birth than any thus far mentioned, and for a long time the Germans contented themselves with translations and adaptations from the French. Leasing was the first who, by word and deed, broke the French sway (1755), and he was succeeded by Schiller and Goethe, who rank as the greatest of the more modern dramatists. Prominent names in the German drama are Kotzebue, Korner, Schlegel, Tieck, Brentano, Grillparzer, Hebbel, Ludwig, Gutzkow, Freytag, Laube, Von Moser, etc.
The Dutch drama begins with the classical tragedies of Koster in the beginning of the 17th century, and reached its highest in Vondel (1587-1659). Holberg, Heiberg, Oehlenschlager, Ibsen, and Bjornson are the chief names connected with the Scandinavian drama.
The advent of moving pictures during the 20th century revolutionised drama, and introduced film or movies to the audience, with the USA quickly developing a reputation for film making based in Hollywood, and by the end of the 20th century the Indian city of Mumbai had become a leading center of Hindi language film making producing more films than even Hollywood. Research Drama
The Fescennine Verses were crude Latin verses in the form of a dialogue between two persons, who satirized and ridiculed each other's failings and vices with great freedom of speech. They originated in country districts in ancient Italy, but were ultimately introduced into the towns, and formed a favourite amusement at marriages and on other occasions of festivity. Research Fescennine Verses
The Theatre of the Absurd was a movement in the 1940s to 1960s that expressed existentialist philosophy through theatrical style. Absurdist plays are filled with non-sensical dialogue and plot, which convey the inability of people to communicate with each other and the irrationality of existence. Principal figures in absurdist theatre were Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco and Jean Genet. Research Theatre of the Absurd
In drama, vaudeville is a light and amusing play in which dialogue is intermingled with songs, and almost identical with musical comedy. The term originated in the 15th century with Olivier Basselin of the valleys of the Vire, in Normandy, the author of a number of drinking and love songs, which he circulated under the title Lais des Vaux de Vire, of which Vaudeville is a corruption. Research Vaudeville
Denis Diderot was a French philosopher, novelist, playwright, encyclopaedist and critic. He was born in 1713 at Langres in Champagne and died in 1784.
Educated in the school of the Jesuits, and afterwards at Paris, at the College of Harcourt, his first works were the Essai sur le Merite et la Vertu (1745); and the Pensees Philosophiques (1746), a pamphlet against the Christian religion. His Lettre sur les Aveugles a l'Usage de Ceux qui Voyent, is in the same strain. These heterodox publications cost him an imprisonment for some time at Vincennes. Denis Diderot now tried writing for the stage, but his pieces were failures. In 1749 he had begun along with D'Alembert and some others the Encyclopedia. At first it was intended to be mainly a translation of one already published in English by Chambers. Denis Diderot and D'Alembert, however, enlarged upon this project, and made the new Encyclopaedia a magnificently comprehensive and bold account of all the thought and science of the time. Denis Diderot, besides revising the whole, undertook at first the mechanical arts, and subsequently made contributions in history, philosophy, and art criticism. But the profits of all his labour were small, and it was only the liberality of the Russian EmpressCatharine, who purchased his library for 50,000 livres and made him a yearly allowance of 1000 livres, that saved Denis Diderot from destitution.
In 1773 he visited St Petersburg to thank his benefactress and was received with great honour. On his return to France he lived in retirement, and died in 1784. Besides his articles in the Encyclopedia he wrote numerous works, some of which were published after his death. Among the best known are Le Neveu de Eameau, a kind of philosophical dialogue which Johann Goethe thought worthy of translation; Essai sur la Peinture, and Paradoxe sur le Comedien, suggestive essays on the principles of painting and acting; two lively tales, La Religieuse and Jacques le Fataliste. Research Denis Diderot
Galileo Galilee was an Italian physicist. He was born in 1564 at Pisa and died in 1642. The son of a Florentine nobleman, his father intended him to go into medicine and procured for him an excellent education in literature and the arts, and in 1581 he entered the University of Pisa.
At nineteen the swinging of a lamp in Pisacathedral led him to investigate the laws of the oscillation of the pendulum, which he subsequently applied in the measurement of time; and in 1586 the works of Archimedes suggested his invention of the hydrostatic balance. He now devoted his attention exclusively to mathematics and natural science, and in 1589 was made professor of mathematics in the University of Pisa.
In 1592 he was appointed professor of mathematics in Padua, where he continued eighteen years, and his lectures acquired European fame. Here he made the important discovery that the spaces through which a body falls, in equal times, increase as the numbers 1, 3, 5, 7. If he did not invent he improved the thermometer, and made some interesting observations on the magnet. To the telescope, which in Holland remained not only imperfect but useless, he gave a new importance. He noted the irregularity of the moon's surface, and taught his scholars to measure the height of its mountains by their shadow.
A particular nebula he resolved into individual stars, and conjectured that the Milky Way might be resolved in the same manner. His most remarkable discovery was that of Jupiter's satellites in 1610, and he observed, though imperfectly, the ring of Saturn. He also detected the sun's spots, and inferred, from their regular advance from east to west, the rotation of the sun, and the inclination of its axis to the plane of the ecliptic.
In 1610 Cosmo II, grand-duke of Tuscany, appointed him grand-ducal mathematician and philosopher, and with increased leisure he lived sometimes in Florence, and sometimes at the country seat of his friend Salviata, where he gained a decisive victory for the Copernican system by the discovery of the varying phases of Mercury, Venus, and Mars. In 1611 he visited Rome for the first time, where he was honourably received; but on his return to Florence he became more and more involved in controversy, which gradually took a theological turn.
The, monks preached against him, and in 1616 he found himself again obliged to proceed to Rome, where he is doubtfully said to have pledged himself to abstain from promulgating his astronomical views. In 1623 Galileo replied to an attack upon him in his Saggiatore, a masterpiece of eloquence, which drew upon him the fury of the Jesuits. In 1632, with the permission of the pope, he published a dialogue expounding the Copernican system as against the Ptolemaic. A congregation of cardinals, monks, and mathematicians, all sworn enemies of Galileo, examined his work, condemned it as highly dangerous, and summoned him before the tribunal of the Inquisition. The veteran philosopher was compelled to go to Rome early in 1633, and was condemned to renounce upon his knees the truths he had maintained. At the moment when he arose, he is said (but this is doubtful) to have exclaimed, in an undertone, stamping his foot, 'E pur si muove!' (and yet it moves!). Upon this he was sentenced to the dungeons of the Inquisition for an indefinite time, and every week, for three years, was to repeat the seven penitential psalms of David. After a few days' detention his sentence of imprisonment was commuted to banishment to the villa of the Grand-duke of Tuscany at Rome, and then to the archiepiscopal palace at Sienna.
He was afterwards allowed to return to his residence at Arcetri, near Florence, where he employed his last years principally in the study of mechanics and projectiles. The results are found in two important works on the laws of motion, the foundation of the present system of physics and astronomy. At the same time he tried to make use of Jupiter's satellites for the calculation of longitudes; and though he brought nothing to perfection in this branch, he was the first who reflected systematically on such a method of fixing geographical longitudes. He was at this time afflicted with a disease in his eyes, one of which was wholly blind and the other almost useless, when, in 1637, he discovered the libration of the moon.
Domestic troubles and disease embittered the last years of Galileo's life. After his death his remains were ultimately deposited in the church of Sta. Croce, at Florence. Research Galileo
Hermes Trismegistus was a mythical personage, the reputed author of a great variety of works, probably written by Egyptian Neo-Platonists, who ascribed the authorship of the highest attainments of the humanmind to Thoth, the Egyptian Hermes; regarding him as the source of all knowledge and inventions, the Logos incarnate, thrice greatest. Clement of Alexandria mentions the contents of forty-two books of Hermes which were extant in his time. Of those which now remain the most important is the Poimandres or Poimander, a dialogue on nature, the creation, the deity, the soul, knowledge, and similar topics. Of the extant works none belongs, in all probability, to an earlier date than the 4th or perhaps the 3rd century. Research Hermes Trismegistus
James Whale was an English born homosexual Hollywood film director. He was born in 1893 at Dudley and died in 1957, committing suicide by drowning. He is best known for the horror films he directed for the Universal studios during the 1930's. A prisoner of War during the Great War, it was while a prisoner that he learned how to put on plays and after the war he worked on the London stage before moving to work on Broadway and then landing a contract with Paramount as a dialogue director, after which he moved to Universal. Research James Whale
Joao de Barros was a Portuguese historian. He was born in 1496 and died in 1570. He was attached to the court of King Emmanuel, who, after the publication in 1520 of Barros' Romance, the Emperor Olarimond, urged him to undertake a history of the Portuguese in India, which appeared thirty-two years later. King John III appointed Barros governor of the Portuguese settlements in Guinea, and general agent for these colonies, further presenting him in 1530 with the province of Maranham in Brazil, for the purpose of colonization. For his losses by the last enterprise the king indemnified him, and he died in retirement in 1570. Besides his standard work, Asia Portuguesa, he wrote a moral dialogue on compromise, and the first Portuguese Grammar. Research Joao de Barros
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
Research Dialogue
