Summary of Michael Patterson`s:
“Studying Drama”
The text “Studying Drama” written by Michael Patterson deals with the
question how drama as a literary genre really works and with its
development from its origins in Ancient Greece till nowadays.
At the beginning of the text Patterson exemplifies the general
characteristics of a play. In a play environment and setting are not
described directly to the reader like in a novel those informations are
given via stage directions. A drama is always intended to be performed on a
stage and characters communicate in dialogues.
Furthermore Patterson explains that the origins of drama lie in Ancient
Greece, where the verb “dran” meant “to do/act/perform” and the Greek noun
“theatron” can be translated with “a place of viewing”. The term “play” is
normally connected to children who also act out roles recreating their
imaginations by situations they have encoutered in real life. Here
theatre/drama is seen as a world of “making believe”, where actors wear
costumes, perform roles and pretend things which emanate from an author`s
mind.
Patterson constitutes childrens`s play as a natural impulse with a
functional value, where they prepair themselves for their adult existence.
After that the author discusses the aspect that drama can be understood as
an experience of transcendence. People involve themselves with the
willingness to play at being someone else, which stands for a great common
ground of humanity.
Now Patterson leads to the point in what ways drama differs from
poetry and narrative fiction. He explains that poetry and prose offer the
feeling of transcendence as well but that these genres are always reported
as tough they would lie in the past. By reading a novel for example the
reader is mostly confronted with a sense of distance, as if the emotion was
already experienced or the action was already complete. Drama in contrast
communicates a sense of action in the present. Even if a person knows a
play well he is still able to enter the plot, feeling the tension and
experiencing events as they really happen. Drama is the genre of present-
tense.
As a further aspect Patterson focuses on the objectivity of drama. In
contrast to drama, lyric and poetry express individual and subjunctive
emotions of the writer, written from the point of view of a character or a
fixed narrator, whereas a drama writer can contradict himself in public and
is able to put his identity in each character but also to give them an own
voice. Therefore establishment of writer`s own opinion gets difficult.
Afterwards Patterson comes back to the point that a play is usually
intended to be enacted, therefore concentration of time is persued. In
extreme this could mean that stage time equals real time. The opposite of
concentration is time compression; hereby for example events of a whole day
are presented as if they happened in a matter of minutes. A novel usually
ranges over a longer period of time, changing location is possible. Drama
is intended to be performed with a high level of realism and a defined
location. Poetry and fiction are conceived to be enjoyed by the reader
alone; he decides what he likes to read by his individual choice. Plays can
be enjoyed as pure literature as well, but its full potential is first
achieved when it is presented on stage.
But there are much more
difficulties in seeing a play staged than reading a novel at home. For
performing a place (building) is needed, performers and audience need to
assemble at the same time. Drama is intended to take place in public and
therefore drama can be constituted as the most public of all the arts.
Moreover drama can have other functions than delighting people. It can get
to a threat to oppressive regimes, as happend in the German Democratic
Republic, where theatre provided a political forum for democratic debate
and as a consequence caused collapse of Communist regime.
Patterson
clarifies that a play poses greater danger to the status quo than hundreds
of isolated individuals reading poems and novles at a non-pubic place.
Furthermore the author informs the reader about Aristotle`s theory of drama
which is the origin of all dramatic theories. Aristotle wanted to jusitifiy
drama in terms of its purposefullness. In Ancient Greece watching a drama
was inseparably connected with the idea of catharsis. This was understood
as a medical term, a purgation of soul. By watching a tragedy spectator
should feel pity for the hero`s downfall and fear for its outcome. Thereby
purgation, flushing out the bad juices of the body, takes place. When these
emotions are flushed out, people can leave theatre less pitying and less
fearful.
So Aristotle was the first and most famous who tried to justyfie
drama as being socially useful though not going into great detail. Further
on Aristotle developed some ideas about nature of drama. He defined tragedy
as serious drama where an action is immitated (mimesis) and reprocuction of
reality on stage takes place, though an exact photographic copy is out of
question. Action is an important fact referring to nature of drama. Plays
are about important individuals, usually a character lies at the centre of
a drama, who is revealed and determined by events of the play. As a
consequence characters proceed from action.
Aristotle also listed the
components of drama: Plot, Character, Dialogue, Meaning, Music and
Performance, he suggested that in contrast to epic, the action of a play
should be single and taking place between twentyfour hours. Hence drama
tends towards a greater concentration of incident and time. The Greek
philosopher divided drama into three unities (action, time and place).
In addition to that Patterson takes a nearer description of several
components of drama. The plot hast to be differenciatated from mere story,
because the story can be seen as raw material that the playwright shapes
into a plot by using historical subjects on stage for example.
Admittedly
complexity of historical events needs to be simplified that a good dramatic
plot can be constituted as a carefully a shaped version of a story. In
Aristotle`s concept of drama a play must have beginning, middle and end.
Because history is all middle (has no beginning or end in common sense) a
point to begin the play has to be chosen. This intruductiorary part of a
play is called exposition. The playwright can create a formal prologue or
establish the starting point by a short scene, possibly played by
characters which have no further importance to the play.
A quick recital of
the background which is used for instance in more modern plays is also
possilble. History does not contain neat engings as well. In traditional
drama everthing aspires to a sense of completeness (death, marriage). A
tragic death stands for this finality although often a good character who
points forward to a more hopeful future appears. A serious modern play ends
without a definite outcome and the sense of finality is harder to achieve
in realistic drama than in more poetic forms, because life in fact does not
yield clear endings.
The character is another component of drama. Patterson underlines that
characters in a drama are revealed through action; they are introduced by
what they say or do and are judged by the audience. The fact that
characters can be determined by a particular situation they only have a
very little existence outside drama. A novel in contrast provides the
reader with background information or allows him speculating about
characters` past lives. Concept of character has evolved considerably in
history of drama.
The earliest form of characters where chorus leaders who
provided an individual voice to responses from a chorus. In former times it
was not allowed that more than one character appeared on stage at once.
When that rule was relaxed there were extending possibilities of dramatic
interaction with portrays of extreme types. In times of Greek drama and
during Medieval periods characters remained generalized figures with little
psychological nuance but with beginning of Renaissance a new psychological
complexity of dramatic characters and complex individuals arose. Those
“rounded characters” as they are still most familiar to us today lead
Bertold Brecht to experiment with so called “flat characters”.
Dramatic
characters of today are mostly presented in naturalistic mode not only
determined by dramatic situation but products of heredity and environment,
so that a drama of today gets more and more close to a novel where a
speculation about a characters` existence outside the play is possible. The
theory of Konstantin Stanislavski, a well known theatre director, pleaded
for seeking out given circumstances of a character that the actor can
approach a role from clues in the text or by his own imagination. So
providing a full biographical background for a character, by a conscious
investigation of its psychological motivation becomes possible.
Stanislavski`s aim is rounding out dramatic roles that might otherwise be
flat (“There are no small parts, only small actors”, compare page 57, line
14). Today people emphasise on psychological characterisation by discussing
critics about nature of drama and flaws in characters. The new kind of
character is a character without past or any of the given circumstances, a
character who refuses to reveal its own background. Playwrights develop
characters freed of accidents of individuality who can more easily become
representatives of human condition (non-naturalistic characters). In
contrast to that realistic characters offer the opportunity that people can
match their behaviour against their own.
Afterwards Patterson leads to the next component of drama, the dialogue. He
explains that all serious drama in Western Europe was written in verse
until eighteenth century and that the same linguistic register maintained
in all dialogues of classical/neoclassical drama. It was William
Shakespeare who mixed up dialogue by using blank verse and often moved from
poetry to prose. Later on playwrights little by little tried to imitate
everyday speech in their stage dialogues (authentic dialogues), even though
that is only an impression because conversations on stage are still
logically developed sequences.
Performance is also an important component. The written text should be seen
as basis for performance. Reading a drama is always more accessible than
seeing it on stage because difficult passages can be reread and directorial
interventions are out of question. Physical setting is one of performances`
main areas. Here characters appear and the manner in which the lines are
delivered becomes obvious. Theatrical signs can be found in each element of
performance, the study of these signs is called semiotics. Stage directions
give an indication of where the action is set. For example Shakespeare was
writing for a bare stage, was free to roam but at the end of nineteenth
century audience demanded more authentic settings; so more and more plays
were written for one location that an elaborately authentic set could be
constructed.
Making drama more expressive, stage scenery was created by
lightning and also sound effects became more important. In semiotic
analysis one distinguishes between icon, index and symbol. An icon is a
thing for what it is (Patterson uses the example of the Christmas tree in
Henrik Ibsen`s “Nora- A Doll`s House”). The index points about the
environment of that icon, a symbol represents a particular situation (the
dishevelled tree as a symbol for disharmony). Lightening may make
statements about action of a play, characters` appearance, gestures or
moves might tell something about the inner feelings of a character or
reveal characters` actual thoughts.
Soliloquies were primarily used for
deceitful characters. In realistic dialogue soliloquies became impossible
because people normally do not talk to themselves. Gestures and moves
became more important when meaning of realistic plays began to depend on
sympathetic performances. Now Patterson focuses on interpretation which is
the most important component communicating to an audience. A resultant
problem is that plays which are not performed very often could easily be
misunderstood because it gets difficult confuting a bizarre staging for
example.
As a next main aspect Patterson informs the reader about the different
dramatic genres. A tragedy involves death, better said the deaths of
several individuals, no recovery is possible. A false step, not a
compulsory evil act but a very foolish one, whose consequences are out of
all proportion to the cause, leads the hero to catastrophe. Overconfidence
(hubris) will invariably be punished by downfall (nemesis). The world is
seen as an ordered place where events are not governed by chance and
defiance as a magnificent value in human society. In drama of Middle Ages
tragedy as a literary genre does not appear.
First with the new humanism of
Renaissance the sense of a great figure who refuses to conform, taking the
easy way out, accept his fate and finally plunges himself and others into
tragic downfall was rediscovered. Patterson emphasises if the figures avoid
their tragedies that they then lose our respect. During time tragedy became
less important because changes of moral values in society like loss of
religious face, loss of a sense of human individuality and loss of
admiration for great heroic figures for example.
That development already
began in eighteenth century when “bourgeois tragedies” came up. Here tragic
events are put into middle-class/working-class background. Patterson
underlines that those tragedies could be easily avoided by “throwing a sum
of money onto the stage” whereas no gifts of money can save the classical
ancient heroes (compare page 63, lines four to 8). Nowadays a play may
generate pathos towards the victim so that a mixed sense of admiration and
horror is not created.
Comedy is a more populist genre with a plot about every-day-figures from
common life. Its origins lie in fertility festivals, story in most cases
turns around two lovers who find their path to happiness blocked by a
figure with some power over them. Finally the blocking figure is removed or
his attitude has changed, lovers can come together and celebrate a happy
ending together with the audience. As a consequence a comedy derives much
more closely from the social context in which it is written and therefore
possesses the universal impact of tragedy. Moreover Patterson mentions that
a play with comic structure may also occasionally develop seriousness of
theme that it is no longer regarded as comedy. Black comedy caused reversal
of classical comedy. In traditional comedy society was secure and laughter
was generated by those individuals who stepped beyond social norms.
In
tragi-comedy the serious is blended with the comic, a permanent play
between tension, laughter and pain. Moreover Patterson differentiates
between humoristic and satiric black comedy: A humorist includes himself
and the follies of all humankind in his laughter and sees life as the
biggest joke of alls whereas a satirist points at others and laughs at
their follies. At the end of his text Patterson points out that a tragi-
comedy does not represent a dilution of conventional genres, rather a
strengthening to demands of contemporary society.
Ruhruniversitt Bochum
Studiengang: Anglistik
Kurs: Literatur I
Dozent: Dr. phil. Herbert Geisen
