Literature theory. Drama and its genres Features of a dramatic work
In literature, there are three main types: epic, lyric and drama. Each of them has its own characteristics, each has its own genres. The epic speaks the language of prose, the lyrics are vividly represented in poetry (it speaks the language of feelings and emotions). Drama is a separate literary genus that contains a synthesis of the epic and the lyric.
First you need to remember General characteristics, by which you can distinguish the text of one or another literary kind from each other:
- genre (story or short story, poem or ballad, tragedy or comedy, etc.);
- the form of the story (who talks about the events);
- problems (in different genres one and the same topic and the problem can be revealed in different ways);
- number of characters ( different genres differ from each other in the number of heroes);
- the form of interaction of characters with each other (monologue, dialogue).
Features of drama and dramatic works
The above features will help to roughly understand what kind of work is in front of us. Let us now consider the specific characteristics of dramatic works.
First, a few words about what drama is. This literary genus was popular even among the ancient Greeks and in translation from Greek means action. Such works were intended only for staging on stage, therefore they had their own characteristics. Let's not dive deeply into history and consider the main features of the drama:
- Action, which means dynamics (the plot is developing rapidly);
- Characters are not heroes, but characters;
- The text of the work is intended for staging on stage (the volume of the work is small, actors Little);
- The form of interaction of the characters is dialogues in the form of remarks (maybe a monologue in digressions to convey drama);
- Sharp social issues works;
- Genres: tragedy, comedy, drama-extravaganza (with fantastic elements), tragicomedy and many others (contain their own subcategories);
- Drama is a synthesis of the epic and the lyrical (a story about something accompanied by a "strong" emotion).
This is not the entire list of features of a dramatic work, but these are its main characteristics.
Introduction
Acquaintance with the specifics of drama as a special kind of literature and teaching methods will help to understand the originality and originality of each of the studied dramatic works, will contribute to a more meaningful perception of it.
“A play is a drama, a comedy is the most difficult form of literature, - wrote M. Gorky. - ... In the novel, in the story, the people portrayed by the author act with his help, he is with them all the time , he shows the reader how to understand them, explains to him secret thoughts, hidden motives of the actions of the depicted figures, sets off their moods with descriptions of nature, environment ... controls their actions, deeds, words, relationships ... it happens that each unit acting in it is characterized both by word and deed independently, without prompting from the author's side ... ".
The playwright does not talk about life, about the characters of his heroes, but shows them in action. The absence of the author's characteristics, portrait and other components of the image, characteristic of prose, complicates the perception of drama by students. Therefore, it is necessary to look for such methods and forms of work, which, on the one hand, would make it possible to acquaint schoolchildren with the specifics of drama as a special kind of literature, and on the other hand, would help them see in the studied samples works intended for the stage and therefore requiring much more imagination and effort on the part of the reader. This is the relevance of the work, that the originality of the drama, its difference from the epic and lyric poetry give grounds to raise the question of some peculiarities in the correlation of methods and techniques of work used in the analysis of dramatic works in secondary school.
Purpose of the work: to identify the specifics of teaching a dramatic work based on the play by A.N. Ostrovsky "Dowry".
To achieve this goal, it is necessary to solve the following tasks:
Reveal the specifics of drama as a kind of literature;
Get acquainted with the methodology of teaching a dramatic work at school;
Find out the peculiarities of studying the play by A.N. Ostrovsky "Dowry"
The work consists of an introduction, two chapters, conclusion, literature.
Study of dramatic works
Specificity of the drama
Drama occupies a special position in the literary system, since it is both a full-fledged literary genus and a phenomenon that naturally belongs to the theater. Drama as a genus has a specific content, the essence of which was the awareness of the contradictions of reality, and "above all its social contradictions through the relations of people and their individual fates." not a story. " According to VG Belinsky's precise and figurative definition, "the drama represents the event that has taken place, as it were, taking place in the present, before the eyes of the reader or viewer."
The specific features of the drama as a genus are the absence of a narrator and a sharp weakening of the descriptive element. The basis of the drama is a visible action, and this affects the special correlation in it of event movement and the speeches of the characters. The statements of the characters and the arrangement, the ratio of parts are the most important ways of revealing the author's thoughts. In relation to them, other ways of expression author's position(list of characters, remarks, instructions for directors and actors) play a subordinate role.
The most important category of content in drama is conflict. Of course, conflicts exist in the epic, they can be present in lyric work, but their role and meaning in the epic and lyrical plot are different than in drama. The choice of conflicts and their alignment in a system largely determine the originality of the position of the writer, dramatic collisions are an essential way of identifying the life programs of characters and self-disclosure of their characters. The conflict largely determines the direction and rhythm of the plot movement in the play.
The content of conflicts, as well as the way they are embodied in a dramatic work, can be of a different nature. Traditionally, drama conflicts are subdivided into tragic, comic, and dramatic in terms of their content, emotional acuteness and coloring. The first two types are distinguished in accordance with the two main genre forms of drama, they originally accompany tragedy and comedy, reflecting the most essential aspects of life conflicts. The third - arose at a rather late stage of drama, and its understanding is associated with the theory of drama developed by Lessing ("Hamburg Drama") and Diderot ("The Paradox of the Actor").
Of course, the conflict, with all the meaningful ambiguity and variety of functions, is not the only component that determines the specificity of the drama as a genus. No less important are the sp-events of the plot organization and dramatic narration, the ratio speech characteristics heroes and action constructions, etc. However, we deliberately focus on the category of conflict. On the one hand, the analysis of this aspect allows, based on the generic specificity of the drama, to reveal the depth of the artistic content of the work, to take into account the peculiarities of the author's attitude to the world. On the other hand, it is the consideration of the conflict that can become the leading direction in school analysis dramatic work, since high school students are characterized by an interest in effective clashes of beliefs and characters, through which the problems of the struggle between good and evil are revealed. Through the study of the conflict, it is possible to lead schoolchildren to comprehend the motives behind the words and actions of the heroes, to reveal the originality of the author's intention, the moral position of the writer. The task of this section is to reveal the role of this category in creating the eventual and ideological tension of the drama, in expressing the social and ethical programs of the heroes, in recreating their psychology.
The drama depicts a person only in action, during which he discovers all aspects of his personality. "Drama, - emphasized VG Belinsky, noting the peculiarities of the drama," consists not in one conversation, but in the live action of one talking to another. "
In the works of the dramatic genre, in contrast to the epic and lyrical, there are no author's descriptions, narration, digressions. The author's speech appears only in the stage directions. Everything that happens to the heroes of the drama, the reader or viewer learns from the heroes themselves. The playwright, therefore, does not talk about the life of his heroes, but shows them in action?
Due to the fact that the heroes of dramatic works manifest themselves only in action, their speech has a number of features: it is directly related to their actions, is more dynamic and expressive than the speech of the heroes epics... Of great importance in dramatic works are also intonation, pause, tone, that is, all those features of speech that acquire concreteness on stage.
The playwright, as a rule, depicts only those events that are necessary to reveal the characters of the characters and, therefore, to justify the developing struggle between the characters. All other facts of life that are not directly related to the depicted, slowing down the development of the action are excluded.
Everything shown in a play, tragedy, comedy or drama is tied by the playwright, as Gogol aptly put it, "into one big common knot." Hence - the concentration of the imaged events and minor characters around the main characters. The plot of the drama is characterized by tension and impetuous development. This peculiarity of the plot of dramatic works distinguishes it from the plot of epic works, although both plots are based on common elements: the plot, the culmination and the decoupling.
The difference between drama and epic and lyric poetry is also expressed in the fact that works of the dramatic genre are written for the theater and receive their final completion only on stage. In turn, the theater influences them, subjecting them to some extent to its own laws. Dramatic works are divided, for example, into actions, phenomena or scenes, the change of which involves a change in scenery and costumes. In about three or four acts of the play, that is, during the three or four hours occupied by the play, the drama-writer must show the origin of the conflict, its development and completion. These requirements related to playwrights oblige them to choose such phenomena and events of life in which the characters of the people portrayed are especially clearly manifested.
While working on a play, the playwright sees not only his hero, but also his performer. This is evidenced by the numerous statements of writers. Regarding the performance of the roles of Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky, N. V. Gogol wrote: “... creating these two little officials, I imagined V. their skin Shchepkin and Ryazantsov ... ”We find the same thoughts in A. P. Chekhov. During the period of the Art Theater's work on the play " The Cherry Orchard"Chekhov told KS Stanislavsky:" When I wrote to Lopakhin, I thought it was your role. "
There is also another dependence of dramatic production on the theater. It manifests itself in the fact that the reader connects the play with the stage in his imagination. When reading plays, images of certain supposed or actual performers of roles appear. If the theater, according to A. V. Lunacharsky, is a form, the content of which is determined by drama, then the actors, in turn, help the playwright with their performance to finish the images. The scene to some extent replaces the author's descriptions. "Drama lives only on the stage," wrote N. V. Gogol to M. P. Pogodin. "Without her, she is like a soul without a body."
Theater creates a much greater illusion of life than any other art. Everything that happens on the stage is perceived by the audience especially sharply and directly. This is the tremendous educational power of drama, which distinguishes it from other kinds of poetry.
The originality of the drama, its difference from the epic and lyric poetry give grounds to raise the question of some of the peculiarities in the relationship between the methods and techniques of work used in the analysis of dramatic works in secondary school.
Drama is a literary genus (along with epics and lyrics), involving the creation artistic world for stage implementation in a play. Like the epic, it reproduces the objective world, that is, people, things, natural phenomena.
SPECIFIC TRAITS
1. Drama is the most ancient kind of literature, from the same antiquity comes its main difference from others - syncretism, when different types arts are united in one (syncretism ancient creativity- in the unity of artistic content and magic, mythology, morality).
2. Dramatic works are conditional.
Pushkin said: "Of all kinds of works, the most implausible are the dramatic ones."
3. At the heart of the drama is a conflict, an event enacted by an action. The plot is formed by the events and actions of people.
4. The specificity of drama as a literary genus consists in the special organization of artistic speech: unlike the epic, there is no narration in the drama and the direct speech of the characters, their dialogues and monologues is of paramount importance.
The drama is not only verbal (remarks "to the side"), but also staged action, therefore the speech of the characters is important (dialogues, monologues). Even in ancient tragedy, choirs played an important role (singing out the author's opinion), and in the classics this role was played by resonators.
"You cannot be a playwright without eloquence" (Diderot).
"Actors in a good play should speak in aphorisms. This tradition has been going on for a long time" (M. Gorky).
5. As a rule, a dramatic work assumes stage effects, speed of action.
6. Special dramatic character: unusual (conscious intentions, formed thoughts), the prevailing character, in contrast to the epic.
7. Dramatic works are small in volume.
Bunin remarked on this occasion: "We have to squeeze thought into precise forms. But this is so exciting!"
8. The illusion of complete absence of the author is created in the drama. From the author's speech in the drama, only the remarks remain - the author's brief instructions on the place and time of the action, on facial expressions, intonation, etc.
9. The behavior of the characters is theatrical. In life, they don't behave like that, and they don't say that.
Let us recall the unnaturalness of Sobakevich's wife: "Feodulia Ivanovna asked to sit down, saying also:" Please! "And making a movement with her head, like actresses representing queens. no nose. ".
TRADITIONAL SCHEME OF THE PLOT OF ANY DRAMATIC WORK: EXPOSITION - representation of heroes; TIE - collision; DEVELOPMENT OF ACTION - a set of scenes, development of an idea; CULTURE - the apogee of the conflict; RELEASE.
The dramatic genre of literature has three main genres: tragedy, comedy and drama in the narrow sense of the word, but it also contains such genres as vaudeville, melodrama, and tragicomedy.
Tragedy (Greek tragoidia, literally - goat song) is "a dramatic genre based on the tragic collision of heroic characters, its tragic outcome and full of pathos ..."
The tragedy depicts reality as a bunch of internal contradictions, it reveals the conflicts of reality in an extremely tense form. This is a dramatic work based on an irreconcilable life conflict leading to the suffering and death of the hero. So, in a collision with the world of crime, lies and hypocrisy, the bearer of advanced humanistic ideals tragically dies Danish prince Hamlet, the hero of the tragedy of the same name by W. Shakespeare. In the struggle waged by tragic heroes, heroic traits of the human character are revealed with great completeness.
The genre of tragedy has a long history. It arose out of religious cult rites, was a stage enactment of a myth. With the advent of the theater, tragedy took shape as an independent genre of dramatic art. The creators of the tragedies were the ancient Greek playwrights of the 5th century. BC NS. Sophocles, Euripides, Aeschylus, who left her perfect examples. They reflected the tragic clash of the traditions of the tribal system with the new social order. These conflicts were perceived and portrayed by playwrights mainly on mythological material. The hero of an ancient tragedy found himself drawn into an insoluble conflict either by the will of the imperious fate (fate), or by the will of the gods. So, the hero of the tragedy Aeschylus "Prometheus the Chained" suffers because he violated the will of Zeus when he gave fire to people and taught them crafts. In the tragedy of Sophocles "King Oedipus" the hero is doomed to be a paricide, to marry his own mother. An ancient tragedy usually consisted of five acts and was built in compliance with the "three unities" - place, time, action. Tragedies were written in verse and were distinguished by the loftiness of speech, its hero was the "tall hero".
Comedy, like tragedy, originated in Ancient Greece... The ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes (V-IV centuries BC) is considered the "father" of comedy. In his works, he ridiculed the greed, bloodthirstiness and immorality of the Athenian aristocracy, advocated a peaceful patriarchal life ("Horsemen", "Clouds", "Lysistratus", "Frogs").
In Russia, folk comedy has existed for a long time. The outstanding comedian of the Russian Enlightenment was D.N. Fonvizin. His comedy "The Minor" mercilessly ridiculed the "wild lordship" reigning in the Prostakov family. Wrote comedies I.A. Krylov ("A Lesson for Daughters", "Fashion Shop"), making fun of the admiration for foreigners.
In the XIX century. samples of satirical, social realistic comedy are created by A.S. Griboyedov ("Woe from Wit"), N.V. Gogol ("The Inspector General"), A.N. Ostrovsky ("A profitable place", "Our people - we will be numbered", etc.). Continuing the traditions of N. Gogol, A. Sukhovo-Kobylin in his trilogy ("The Wedding of Krechinsky", "Delo", "Death of Tarelkin") showed how the bureaucracy "lightened" the whole of Russia, bringing her troubles comparable to the damage caused by the Tatar Mongol yoke and the invasion of Napoleon. The comedies of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin (The Death of Pazukhin) and A.N. Tolstoy ("The Fruits of Enlightenment"), which in some ways approached the tragedy (they contain elements of tragicomedy).
Tragicomedy rejects the moral absolute of comedy and tragedy. The perception of the world underlying it is associated with a sense of the relativity of the existing criteria of life. Overestimating moral principles leads to uncertainty and even abandonment of them; subjective and objective principles are blurred; an unclear understanding of reality can cause interest in it or complete indifference and even recognition of the illogicality of the world. The tragicomic worldview in them dominates at the turning points of history, although the tragicomic beginning was already present in the drama of Euripides ("Alkestida", "Ion").
A drama is a play with an acute conflict, which, in contrast to the tragic, is not so sublime, more mundane, ordinary and somehow resolvable. The specificity of the drama lies, firstly, in the fact that it is based on modern and not on antique material, and secondly, the drama asserts a new hero who rebelled against his fate and circumstances. The difference between drama and tragedy is in the essence of conflict: conflicts of a tragic plan are insoluble, because their resolution does not depend on the personal will of a person. The tragic hero finds himself in a tragic situation involuntarily, and not because of a mistake he has made. Dramatic conflicts unlike tragic ones, they are not insurmountable. They are based on the clash of characters with such forces, principles, traditions that oppose them from the outside. If the hero of the drama dies, then his death is in many ways an act of a voluntary decision, and not the result of a tragically hopeless situation. So, Katerina in "The Thunder" by A. Ostrovsky, acutely worried that she had violated religious and moral norms, unable to live in the oppressive atmosphere of the Kabanovs' house, rushes into the Volga. This denouement was not necessary; the obstacles to the rapprochement between Katerina and Boris cannot be considered insurmountable: the heroine's rebellion could have ended differently.
Dramatic works are organized by the statements of the characters. According to Gorky, “the play requires that each acting unit be characterized by word and deed independently, without prompting from the author” (50, 596). There is no detailed narrative-descriptive image here. Actually the author's speech, with the help of which the depicted is characterized from the outside, is auxiliary and episodic in the drama. These are the title of the play, its genre subtitle, an indication of the place and time of action, a list of characters, sometimes
accompanied by their brief summarizing characteristics, preceding acts and episodes describing the stage setting, as well as remarks given in the form of commentary on individual lines of the heroes. All this constitutes a side text of the dramatic work. And his text is a chain of dialogical remarks and monologues of the characters themselves.
Hence, there is a certain limitation in the artistic possibilities of the drama. The writer-playwright uses only a part of the subject-pictorial means that are available to the creator of a novel or an epic, a short story or a story. And the characters of the characters are revealed in the drama with less freedom and completeness than in the epic. “I ... perceive the drama,” noted T. Mann, “as the art of silhouette and only feel the person being told as a volumetric, integral, real and plastic image” (69, 386). At the same time, playwrights, unlike the authors of epic works, are forced to limit themselves to the volume of verbal text that meets the needs of theatrical art. The plot time in a drama must fit within the strict stage time frame. And the performance in the forms familiar to European theater lasts, as you know, no more than three to four hours. And that requires an appropriately sized dramatic text.
At the same time, the author of the play also has significant advantages over the creators of stories and novels. One moment depicted in the drama is tightly adjacent to another, adjacent one. The time of the events reproduced by the playwright throughout the stage episode (see Ch. X) is not compressed or stretched; the characters in the drama exchange remarks without any noticeable time intervals, and their statements, as Stanislavsky noted, form a solid, continuous line. If with the help of narration the action is captured as something past, then the chain of dialogues and monologues in the drama creates the illusion of the present. Life here speaks as if from its own face: between what is depicted and the reader there is no intermediary - the narrator. The action of the drama seems to take place before the eyes of the reader. “All narrative forms, - wrote F. Schiller, - transfer the present into the past; everything dramatic makes the past real " (106, 58).
The dramatic kind of literature recreates the action with
maximum spontaneity. Drama does not allow for the summary characteristics of events and actions that would replace their detail. And she is, as Yu. Olesha noted, "a test of severity and at the same time flight of talent, a sense of form and everything special and surprising that makes talent" (71, 252). A similar thought about the drama was expressed by Bunin: “We have to squeeze thought into precise forms. But it's so exciting. "
FORMS OF BEHAVIOR OF CHARACTERS
The characters of the drama reveal themselves in behavior (primarily in the spoken words) more vividly than the characters in epic works. And this is natural. First, the dramatic form disposes of the characters to "polyphony". Secondly, the words of the characters in the drama are focused on the wide space of the stage and auditorium, so that the speech is perceived as directed directly to the audience and potentially loud. "Theater demands ... exaggerated broad lines in both voice, recitation and gestures." (98, 679), wrote N. Boileau. And D. Diderot noted that “you cannot be a playwright without eloquence” (52, 604).
The behavior of the characters in the drama is marked by activity, flashiness, and showiness. In other words, it is theatrical. Theatricality is the conduct of speech and gesticulation, carried out with the expectation of a public, mass effect. She is the antipode of the intimacy and inexpressiveness of forms of action. Behavior filled with theatricality becomes the most important subject of depiction in the drama. Dramatic action often takes place with active participation wide range of people. Such are the many scenes of Shakespeare's plays (especially the final ones), the culmination of Gogol's "The Inspector General" and Ostrovsky's "The Thunderstorm", the supporting episodes of Vishnevsky's "Optimistic Tragedy". The viewer is especially influenced by episodes where there is an audience on the stage: images of meetings, rallies, mass performances, etc. Leave a vivid impression and scenic episodes showing few people if their behavior is open, not inhibited, effectively. “As in the theater he played,” Bubnov (At the Bottom of Gorky) comments on the frenzied tirade of the desperate Tick about the truth, which, by an unexpected and abrupt intrusion into the general conversation, gave him a theatrical character.
At the same time, playwrights (especially supporters
realistic art) feel the need to go beyond theatricality: to recreate human behavior in all its richness and diversity, capturing private, domestic, intimate life, where people express themselves in word and gesture sparingly and unassumingly. At the same time, the speech of the characters, which, according to the logic of the depicted should not be spectacular and bright, is presented in dramas and performances as lengthy, full-voiced, hyperbolically expressive. Here, a certain limitation of the drama's capabilities is reflected: playwrights (like actors on stage) are forced to elevate the “non-theatrical in life” to the rank of “theatrical in art”.
In a broad sense, any work of art is conditional, that is, it is not identical with real life. At the same time, the term convention (in a narrow sense) denotes ways of reproducing life, in which the discrepancy and even contrast between the forms depicted and the forms of reality itself are emphasized. In this respect artistic conventions oppose "likelihood" or "lifelike". “Everything should be essentially vital, not necessarily everything should be life-like,” wrote Fadeev. - Among the many forms, there may be a conditional form. " (96, 662) (that is, "not life-like." B. X.).
In dramatic works, where the behavior of the characters is theatrical, conventions are especially widely used. The drama's inevitable departure from lifestyles has been spoken of more than once. Thus, Pushkin argued that "of all kinds of works, the most implausible works are dramatic." (79, 266), and Zola called drama and theater "the citadel of everything conventional." (61, 350).
Characters in dramas often speak out not because they need it in the course of the action, but because the author needs to explain something to readers and viewers, to make a certain impression on them. So, in dramatic works, additional characters are sometimes introduced, who either themselves tell about what is not shown on the stage (messengers in ancient plays), or, becoming interlocutors of the main characters, encourage them to talk about what happened (choirs and their leading figures in ancient tragedies ; confidantes and servants in the comedies of antiquity, Renaissance, classicism). In the so-called epic dramas, the characters-actors from time to time turn to the audience, "step out of the role" and, as it were, from the outside, report what is happening.
A tribute to convention is, further, the richness of speech in the drama with maxims, aphorisms, reasoning about what is happening. Monologues pronounced by the heroes alone are also conditional. Such monologues are not actually speech actions, but a purely stage technique for bringing out internal speech; there are many of them both in ancient tragedies and in the drama of modern times. Even more conditional are the remarks “to the side”, which, as it were, do not exist for the other characters on the stage, but are clearly audible to the audience.
It would be wrong, of course, to "fix" the theatrical hyperbole for the dramatic kind of literature alone. Similar phenomena are characteristic of classical epics and adventure novels, if we talk about the classics of the 19th century. - for the works of Dostoevsky. However, it is in the drama that the conventionality of speech self-disclosure of the characters becomes the leading artistic trend. The author of the drama, setting up a kind of experiment, shows how a person would express himself if in the spoken words he expressed his moods with maximum completeness and brightness. Naturally, dramatic dialogues and monologues turn out to be much more extensive and effective than those lines that could be uttered in a similar life situation. As a result, speech in a drama often acquires a resemblance to artistic-lyrical or oratorical speech: the heroes of dramatic works tend to express themselves as improvisers - poets or sophisticated orators. Therefore, Hegel was partly right, considering the drama as a synthesis of the epic principle (eventfulness) and the lyrical (speech expression).
From antiquity to the era of romanticism - from Aeschylus and Sophocles to Schiller and Hugo - dramatic works in the overwhelming majority of cases gravitated towards dramatic and demonstrative theatrics. L. Tolstoy reproached Shakespeare for the abundance of hyperbole, which allegedly "disrupts the possibility of artistic impression." From the very first words, - he wrote about the tragedy "King Lear", - one can see exaggeration: exaggeration of events, exaggeration of feelings and exaggeration of expressions " (89, 252). In assessing Shakespeare's work, L. Tolstoy was wrong, but the idea of the great English playwright's adherence to theatrical hyperbole is completely correct. What has been said about "King Lear" with no less reason can be attributed to ancient comedies and tragedies.
days, dramatic works of classicism, Schiller's tragedies, etc.
In the 19th-20th centuries, when the desire for the everyday authenticity of artistic pictures prevailed in literature, the conventions inherent in drama began to be reduced to a minimum. At the origins of this phenomenon is the so-called "bourgeois drama" of the 18th century, the creators and theorists of which were Diderot and Lessing. Works of the greatest Russian playwrights of the XIX century. and the beginning of the XX century - A. Ostrovsky, Chekhov and Gorky - are distinguished by the reliability of the recreated life forms. But even when the playwrights were set on the likelihood of the depicted, the plot, psychological and proper speech hyperboles persisted. Even in Chekhov's drama, which showed the maximum limit of "life-likeness," the theatrical conventions made themselves felt. Let's take a look at the final scene of Three Sisters. One young woman, ten to fifteen minutes ago, broke up with a loved one, probably forever. Another five minutes ago learned about the death of her fiancé. And so they, together with the elder, third sister, summarize the moral and philosophical results of what happened, reflecting to the sounds of a military march about the fate of their generation, about the future of mankind. It is hardly possible to imagine this happening in reality. But we do not notice the implausibility of the ending of The Three Sisters, as we are accustomed to the fact that drama significantly alters the forms of people's life.
32. Features of the dramatic plot.
PLOT
Eventful concentration is unusually concentrated
It was the drama that gravitated towards such plots, where a sharp transition from one event to another was carried out with a bright, unexpected denouement. This is a circular plot.
The recognition technique was often used for an unexpected end (the ancient Greek comedy "Oedipus the King")
The recognition principle existed until the end of the 19th century, i.e. before the appearance of the New Drama.
New Drama:
- The role of ring plots is weakened, sometimes they are abandoned
- The plot is built in such a way that even if the hero is killed (self), it does not complete anything.
- "The Seagull": Treplev commits suicide, while others sat and played loto
- "3 sisters": one of the latest events - the murder of Tuzenbach in a duel; Irina cried, and the play ends with a talk about work and a trip to Moscow
Drama is always talking.
- "Hamlet": the ghost tells about the betrayal of Claudius.
- All events revolve around what exists in the plot.
- Conversations are purely intellectual in nature - about life, about society in general
- And the drama of the 19th century. gravitates towards such intellectual disputes, keeping the audience on their toes.
- All events revolve around what exists in the plot.
Exposition (in a narrative work) is a representation of what happened before the start of the action. A dramatic work is a prologue.
In the drama of the 17th century. the exposure is no longer used. But the need for input remains. This happens in the course of the action. And it is called diffuse exposure.
Diffused exposure is when the circumstances that exist for understanding the action are revealed in the conversations, the thoughts of the characters (can be outlined by one character).
There are such actions that cannot be carried out on the stage (mainly due to technical means). It is difficult, if not impossible, to portray massive battles; it is also difficult to portray when the characters are floating on the river (but the East copes with it).
Basically, in early theater, there are things that are unacceptable to be shown on stage, as this is "dangerous" for the viewer, as they can have an adverse effect on him.
Ancient indian and ancient greek theaters did not depict death, murder. Ancient Indian theaters also did not depict the pronouncement of a curse.
"Medea": the scene where the spouse strangles the children before leaving his spouse was not shown on stage.
Thus, these actions are included in the plot, but not in the stage action.
Cornelius "Sid": Sid fights and wins, but he is not on stage. But Sid himself talks about this, since this victory plays a very important role - the persecution of him, the wedding are canceled.
Perhaps a short or long message, therefore, a dramatic text with dialogical speech may include elements of the narrative.
Early tragedy uses special techniques that later tragedy abandons. A special figure was used - messengers. They made special appearances on stage to report events behind the scenes. In later theater, these messages are shared among the characters, although they are not completely abandoned.
Although Shakespeare has many deaths, all of this is shown on stage, and fights are also shown.
Thus, these taboos are gradually disappearing. In the theater of the 19th and even 20th centuries. there were taboos on sex scenes.
In the drama, there are actions of the characters:
They have an inner world, experiences, reflections.
And we see them only externally, in contrast to the narrative, where we see them from the inside and outside.
In early theaters, the figure of the confidant (s) appears in dramas. They have almost zero plot role. Their main function is to listen to the outpourings of the heroes (their fears, worries). Often in early theater it is a servant or maid. These heroes gradually disappear from the drama, although, for example, friends remain.
The drama, right up to Chekhov, is preserved in the form of an internal monologue, which is pronounced in private - the character's speech, which is presented as a reflection or an emotional experience. It can also be in the form of improperly direct speech (but in plays written not for the theater). The inner monologue is ambiguous, as it must be addressed to someone.
"Uncle Vanya" - a monologue during a thunderstorm:
Falls in love with Elena, but something did not work out, she got married
He ponders how wonderful it would be to be with her at that moment, etc.
The actor may look into the audience, as if laughing with him, or he may not look as if we are just observers or eavesdrop on him.
Early theater often uses words aside (the actor turns aside to convey an internal reaction).
ORGANIZATION OF SPEECH IN DRAMA
A dramatic text is a chain of characters' utterances.
- Only direct speeches are used, which are interrupted by a small number of remarks.
- The main form is dialogue.
The dialogue is built from a series of relatively short lines.
- Monologues are also important, which are of two types:
- Elongated monologues that reflect the characters' reflections, in which decisions are often made
- Converted monologues, for example, there are a lot of them in Woe from Wit
But the speech is really meant for the public. Monologues often go beyond the ongoing conversation.
The revolutionary era is the heyday, the most transmitting in terms of quests.
The Moscow Art Theater, the Mierhold avant-garde theater, and the Tair theater appear. The construction of the stage is changing. In France in the 18th century. the theater takes on extraordinary importance on the eve and during the French bourgeois revolution.
Changes:
The separation of the stage from the hall breaks
Actions are taken out in auditorium
Revolutionary plays appear
The theater strives for publicism (the audience is agitated)
For example, Voltaire's plays are worn for the public educational ideas... In the theater, there is always a consciousness of publicity, the possibility of direct appeal to the public.