American Division Literature [ 19 ]

19- ] American Division Literature .

Dramatic Elements .

         A playwright’s understanding of structure is not complete without a sense of awareness of the many techniques and devices – dramatic elements – available to create various effects .Here are just a few :

1-] Foreshadowing :

Hints at the future that can build anticipation and tension in the audience .

2-] Flashbacks :

Descriptions or enactments of past events for the purpose of clarifying the situation , usually as it relates to the conflict .

3-] Intrigue :

A scheme designed by one of the characters , the success of which depends on another character’s innocence or ignorance of the situation . The usual result is complication in the plot .

4-] Suspense :

Once the audience has a sense of expectation , events happen that are not expected .

5-] Reversal also called peripety  when the main character either fails or succeeds .

6-] Discovery :  When the main character finally realizes the reality of the situation .

7-] Deus ex machina :  Once referring to the Greek practice of physically lowering a "god” to the stage at the end of the play to solve all the problems , today it refers to a contrived element in the plot used to resolve a problem .

8-] Monologue :

 When an actor delivers a speech in the presence of other characters who listen , but do not speak .

9-] Three Unities :

Although not adhered to by many playwrights , French and Italian critics of the 16^th and 17^th centuries believed that a play needs three unities to achieve verisimilitude [ believability ] :

1-] Unity of action [ first suggested by Aristotle ] .

2-] Unity of place [ a single location ] .

3-] Unity of time [ the play portraying no longer than a 24-hour period ] .

10-] Dramatic conventions :

The elements of a play that the audience knows merely represent reality , but is willing to accept them as real for the sake of the story : Italians in Italy speaking English , the stage set representing a real location in time and space etc.

11-] The aside :

When an actor speaks directly to the audience , however , the rest of the actors on stage supposedly cannot hear him or her . The aside was used in Renaissance drama to let the audience know the actor’s inner feelings and was used in the 19^th century to interject elements of comedy or melodrama .

12-] Soliloquy :

When an actor delivers a speech when he or she is alone , expressing thoughts.

13-] Relief scenes :

They allow the audience to relax briefly in the tension of the drama and balcony scenes . Ex. Romeo and Juliet .

Comic relief scenes are widely used in English drama . Sometimes , their purpose is to ease tension , but also they can add a sense of poignant sadness .

14-] Music : A mainstay of the musical drama , however , early tragedies had both dancing and choral singing . Also back ground music is used extensively to set the mood and tone . Music can help psychologically establish the setting.  For example native drums for Africa and Italian opera for Italy .

16-] Setting :  The setting of a story refers to the time and place of the story and of the socioeconomic background of the means necessary to translate the story to the audience .

     In the theater , this translation depends greatly upon illusion – using lights , costumes , props and so forth to allow the viewers to suspend reality for a brief time and to accept the story as real .

    For the religious plays and classical drama enacted in Elizabethan and Jacobean theaters of the 16^th and the 17^th centuries , there were very few props and painted backdrops . Playwrights depended upon trapdoors , some sound effects , music , mechanical contrivances [ to raise and lower characters]  and dialogue to establish the setting of the story . Due to lack of sufficient lighting , there were no evening performances and only “ special” characters [ representing , for example , animals and royalty ] in the almost all-male acting troupes wore costumes . The stage was in an open-air public theater that included an area for some of the audience to stand and galleries with seats also available .

    The Puritans closed the English theaters in 1642 , however , when they reemerged in 1660 [ the Restoration ] , they had a new look , a new subject and a new audience . The religious plays and classical dramas of Elizabethan Theater gave way to the bright and colorful Comedies of Manners [ influenced by French and Italian Neoclassicism ] , with actresses playing female roles , prose dialogue and audiences that were predominantly upper classes and royalty . The Restoration saw a change in the theater itself , with an indoor construction that included balconies . The approach of the 1800s [ and well into the 19^th century ] brought a reaction against the rules of Neoclassicism and the Age of Reason . This less restrictive style and attitude ushered in Romanticism . The plays of the period are loosely structured and characterized by tragic love affairs , the use of dramatic effects such as intrigue and dialogue written in poetry rather than prose [ although the melodrama – also a product of the 19^th century literary world and considered to be of less literary value – was usually written in prose with the hero overcoming the obstacles by the end of the play ] .

   People soon tired of the idealism of Romanticism and as the century progressed , they began to turn to Realism , especially as seen in the plot         “ formulas” of Eugene Scribe [ French ] . The plays of realism lost the freedoms of their predecessors in favor of highly structured forms and prose dialogue with the plot trying to mirror real life . Naturalism emerged , whose playwrights presented a more victimized portrait of the lower classes in plays that focused on that victimization rather than on the structure of the plot . Experimental theaters emerged in which attempts were made to make the play seem so real as to make the audiences temporarily forget that they were watching a play .

       The cycles of innovation and reaction against those innovations continued as the symbolists reacted against the harshness of naturalism by using symbolism to convey meaning and as the expressionists reacted against realism for writing plays aimed at psychologically calling for social change . Some of their drama became quite didactic [ as in epic theater ] . Also , around this time the theater of the absurd emerged – a strange blend of satire , symbolism and dream imagery . Despite these reactions however , forms of realism have been carried into the modern theater as have a variety of other forms , and styles . The settings of modern plays incorporate a wider range of costumes , props , sets and other materials to convey the story to the audience.