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
Anaxagoras was an Ionian philosopher. He was born in 488 BC at Clazomense and died in 428 BC. When only about twenty years of age he settled at Athens, and soon gained a high reputation, and gathered round him a circle of renowned pupils, including Pericles, Euripides, Socrates, etc. At the age of fifty he was publicly charged with impiety and condemned to death, but the sentence was commuted to perpetual banishment. Thereupon he went to Lampsacus, where he died. Anaxagoras belonged to the atomic school of Ionic philosophers. He held that there was an infinite number of different kinds of elementary atoms, and that these, in themselves motionless and originally existing in a state of chaos, were put in motion by an eternal, immaterial, spiritual, elementary being, Nous (Intelligence), from which motion the world was produced. The stars were, according to him, of earthy materials; the sun a glowing mass, about as large as the Peloponnesus;
the earth was flat; the moon a dark, inhabitable body, receiving its light from the sun; the comets wandering stars. Research Anaxagoras
Charles James Blomfield was Bishop of London. He was born in 1786 at Bury-St.-Edmunds and died in 1857. He studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took high honours and was elected fellow. He was ordained in 1810, and after filling successively several curacies, and acting for a time as chaplain to the Bishop of London, was presented to the rectory of St Botolph, Bishopsgate. In 1822 he became Archdeacon of Colchester, in 1824 he was made Bishop of Chester, and in 1828 Bishop of London. He was a distinguished classical scholar, and published editions of several of the dramas of AEschylus, and others of Callimachus and Euripides, writing also on kindred subjects for the Edinburgh and the Quarterly Review. He edited a translation of the Greek grammar of Matthias, executed by a younger brother, Edward Blomfield. His chief distinction was gained by his energy in the management of his diocese, and his success in the cause of churchextension in the metropolis. By his exertion many churches were built and schools started, and the colonies benefited by his efforts as well as London. In regard to the Tractarian movement, his attempts to lead his clergy to take a middle course gave rise to a good deal of discussion in his diocese. Research Charles Blomfield
Euripides was a Greek dramatist. He was born in 480 BC ior 485 BC at Phyla on the island of Salamis and died in 406 BC. He studied under Prodicus and Anaxagoras, and is said to have begun to write tragedies at the age of eighteen, although his first published play, the Peliades, appeared only in 455 BC. He was not successful in gaining the first prize until the year 441 BC, and he continued to exhibit until 408 BC, when he exhibited the Orestes. The violence of unscrupulous enemies, who accused him of impiety and unbelief in the gods, drove Euripides to take refuge at the court of Archelaus, king of Macedonia, where he was held in the highest honour. According to a tradition he was killed by hounds in 406 BC.
Euripides is a master of tragic situations and pathos, and shows much knowledge of human nature and skill in grouping characters, but his works lack the artistic completeness and the sublime earnestness that characterize AEschylus and Sophocles. Euripides is said to have composed seventy-five, or according to another authority ninety-two tragedies. Of these eighteen (or nineteen, including the Ehesus) are extant: Alcestis, Medea, Hippolytus, Hecuba, Heracleidse, Supplices, Ion, Hercules Eurens, Andromache, Troades, Electra, Helena, Iphigenia in Tauris, Orestes, Phcenissse, Bacchas, Iphigenia in Aulis, and Cyclops. Research Euripides
George Buchanan was a Scottish reformer, historian, scholar, and Latin poet. He was born in 1506 at the parish of Killearn, Stirlingshire and died in 1582. An uncle sent him in 1520 to the University of Paris, but the death of his uncle compelled his return, and in 1523 he joined the French auxiliaries employed by the regent, Albany, serving as a private soldier in one campaign against the English. He was then sent to the University of St Andrews, where he took the Arts degree in October, 1525. Following his tutor, Mair or Major, to France, he became in 1526 a student in the Scots College of Paris; took his degrees; in 1529 was elected professor in the College of St Barbe; and in 1532 was engaged as friend and tutor of Gilbert Kennedy earl of Cassillis, with whom he resided for five years, and to whom he inscribed his first published work, a translation of Linacre's Rudiments of LatinGrammar, printed in 1533.
In 1536 Cassillis and George Buchanan returned to Scotland, where the latter published his Sonmium, a satire against the Franciscans. To shield him from the hostility of the Roman Catholic party, James V retained him as preceptor to his natural son James Stuart, encouraging him to write the Franciscanus, one of the most pungent satires to be found in any language. By the Catholic influence he was arrested in 1539, but escaped to London and thence to France, where he became professor of Latin at Bordeaux, wrote his tragedies Jephthes and Baptistes, and translated the Medea and Alcestis of Euripides.
Among his pupils was Montaigne, and he was on intimate terms with the elder Scaliger. From BordeauxBuchanan removed to Paris, and thence to Portugal to take a chair in the University of Coimbra. Here he was sentenced by the Inquisition to be confined in a monastery, but at length received permission to depart, and was shortly afterwards appointed to a regency in the College of Boncourt at Paris, an office held by him until 1555, when he was engaged as tutor to the son of the Comte de Brissac. During this period a portion of his version of the Psalms in Latinverse was published.
About 1560 he returned to Scotland, and for some time acted as tutor to the young queen Mary, to whom he dedicated his version of the Psalms. He had now openly joined the leaders of the Reformation. In 1566 he was nominated principal of St Leonard's College, St Andrews, and in the following year was chosen moderator of the General Assembly, the only instance of the chair being held by a layman. When Elizabeth called witnesses from Scotland to substantiate the charges against Mary, George Buchanan accompanied the Regent Moray into England, and his evidence against her was highly important.
In 1570 he was selected to superintend the education of King James, whom he made an excellent scholar. He was also appointed keeper of the privy-seal, a post which he held until 1578. In 1579 he published his De Jure Regni apud Scotos, a work in which he defended the rights of the people to judge of and control the conduct of their governors, and which subsequently had much influence on political thought. The dedication of his Rerum Scoticarum Historia (History of Scotland) to the king is dated August 29th, 1582, and on the 28th September following George Buchanan died.
As a Latinist both in prose and verse he was perhaps the best of his day, as evidenced by his History and his version of the Psalms. As regards its matter, the former is entirely uncritical, and is of value only for matters belonging to his own time. Research George Buchanan
Johann Gottfried Jakob Hermann was a German scholar. He was born in 1772 and died in 1848. He began to lecture on ancient literature at Leipzig in 1794, and with this university he was connected until his death in 1848. Johann Hermann originated valuable reforms in the method of Greek grammatical instruction; and he is especially known for his editions of AEschylus, Euripides, Aristophanes, Bion, and Moschus, and for the controversies in which his theories involved him with Voss, Creuzer, Bockh, Ottfried Muller, and other scholars. Research Johann Hermann
John Eugene Vedrenne was a British stage manager. He was born in 1867. Leaving a commercial career, he became business manager to various London theatres. In 1904 he took the Court Theatre and, in partnership with Granville Barker made many striking productions, including plays of Euripides, and contemporary writers, such as George Bernard Shaw. The partnership ended in 1907, and John Vedrenne became associated with Lewis Waller at The Lyric, and in 1911 with Dennis Eadie at The Royalty, and later at The Kingsway. Research John Vedrenne
Abbreviations
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