DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMA

ANCIENT THEATRE

- evolved from religious rites (1200bc)

o cult, that worshipped Dionysus (God of human and agricultural fertility
 included intoxications(opilost), orgies, human/animal sacrifices
 dithyramb – key part of rites, ode to Dionysus performed by
chorus of men dressed as satyrs(myth. half human, Dionysos´
servant), played drum, flute, danced and chanted(pokřikovali)
• evolved(vyvinout se) into stories, drama and play form
o 600 and 500 BC dithyramb had evolved into tragedy
and satyr play
 543 BC Dionysan festivals changed into drama competitions
• place: amphitheatre (theatron:wooden spectator on
hillsides)
• performed at daytime, took most of the day, were spread out
over several days
• little or no makeup
o carried masks with exagerrated facial expressions
• no women
• little or no scenery
• most of the action took place in orchestra (the attention to
chorus, not to the actors)
o later moved to stage (as the attention moved to the
actors)
• Aristotle: Poetics (defined characteristic features of
tragedy)
• protagonist, antagonist, chorus (one or group of performes
who took part in action sometimes commented on it)
• deus ex machina ( god was lowered on to the stage by
mechanism so that he could get the hero out of difficulties or
untangle (vyřešit) the plot
Greece:
• tragedies: Aeschalus, Sophocles, Euripides
• comedies: Aristophanes, Menander
Rome:
• tragedies: Seneca
• comedies: Plautus, Terentius
• + gladiators game

ENGLISH THEATRE

1000 – 1500

- liturgy
o dialogue of the pries with the audience, attire, song
- Mystery cycles (mystéria)
 o York, Chester, Coventry, Newcastle
o to tell the stroy of teh Bible beginning with Creation, and ending with
Harrowing of Hell and Last Judgement
o the individual plays were performed by trade guilds(kočovná společnost)
on wagons
- Morality plays
o work of one man, developed from Mysteries, themes from legends,
dramatised allegories, fight between good and evil
- Interludes (Interludia)
o short secular(světský) plays
o associated with minstrels (stř. pěvec)

SIXTEEN CENTURY

- rise of professional actor

- religious → secular drama
- *theatre companies (under patronage of aristocrats)
o played at inn yards, homes of their patrons to the populace
- The Theatre, The Curtain, Rose, Swan, Blackfriars/černí mniši(indoor)
- Christopher MARLOWE, LYLY, KYD

SEVENTEENTH CENTURY (James I, Charles I, Charles II)

- William SHAKESPEARE, Ben JOHNSON, WEBSTER, MIDDLETON,

BEAUMONT, FLETCHER, DEKKER
o they dont appear on playbills(plakáty)
- Chamberlain´s Men, King´s Men, Admiral´s Man
- Inigo JONES
o waas first in England to use a proscenium arch (předscéna) and perspective
scenery, experimented with use of scenery changed by decorated
shutters(okenice), which ran in grooves(koleje) across the stage
- division between public and private theatres
- public: The Fortune, The Globe, The Red Bull, The Hope,
- private : Drury Lane
- masques (maškaráda)
o courtly(elegantní) entertaiment, combined genres, plot consisted of math.
and alleg. elements
- all theatres closed during civil war
- puritanism
- time of Restauration (1660) – Restauration comedy

EIGHTEEN CENTURY

- political influence
- genres: Ballad opera
 political / artistic agenda(program)
Comedy of manners
Pantomime
- Theatre licensing Act
  gave power of censoring over the plays to Lord Chamberlain (his
appointee Examiner of Plays)
 1773 – 1968
- theaters: London: Drury Lane, Covent Garden, provincial(venkovský): Lincoln,
Nottingham, Norwich, Bath York

NINETEENTH CENTURY

- genres: melodrama
 both the hero or heroine is placed in a situation of grave danger
which threathens to destroy them
 hero/ine is ordinary person albeit(ačkoli) is pure and innocent
 things happen because of its manifest injustice(očividná
nespravedlnost)
• impossible purity adn villainy, narrow escapes
 playing on nerves
 catharsis is impossible
- farce(fraška)
- poetic drama
- theatres: the Olympic, the Adelphi, the Surrey, Sadler¨s Wells, Lyceum
- use of gas lighting(1817)
o allowed actors to play inside the scenery rather than in front of it
- profession of an actor finally began to move out of the rogues and vababonds class
o great actor management
- music halls (kabarety)

TWENTIETH CENTURY

- theatres: Royal court, socialist Unity Theatre, Manchester Theatre Union

- revue (between wars)
- after WWII greater receptivity to continental dramatists, politically commited
theare
- experimentation with improvisation, dance drama, environmental theatre, musical
- 1946 – Ars Council foudned
o fostering(pěstoun) and funding the arts

AMERICAN THEATRE
- adaptations of English plays, performed by British companies
- 1830 – showboats
- mistrel show
o Jim Crow laws, racial stereotypes
- Harward university(George Pierce Baker)
- vaudeville (comic, musical and acrobatic turns)
- Broadway theatres × off – Broadway theatres (small, experimentation) × off – off
Broadway theatres
- musical
- happenings, environamental theatre
 TRAGEDY
- dramatic representations of serious and important actions, which evaluate in a
deasastrous conclusion for the protagonist
- Aristotle´s Poetics: many tragic plots, suggestive starting point, imitation of an
serious action
- catharsis (purification)
o pleasure of pity and fear

- Tragic hero
o evokes most effectively pity and terror (if he´s good or bad)
o not an ordinary being
o led by hamartia
• error judgement or tragic flaw(chyba)
• we reckognize similar possibilities of error in ourselves

- MEDIEVAL TRAGEDY
o person of hight status brought from prosperity to wretchendness by
unpredictable turn of fortune
o Elisabethan tragedy
 source: native religious drama
- Senecan tragedy
o Elisabethan age
 an academic tragedy
• immitation of antient model (+chorus) + rule of 3 unities

 revenge tragedy(tr. of blood)

• murder, revenge, ghosts
o elisabethan writers represented them on stage (to
satisfy horror)
o T. KYD : The Spanish Tragedy, SHAKESPEARE:
Hamlet

• many tragedies deviate from Aristotle´s norms: Mackbeth

• comic relief (revelant to tragic plot : gravediggers in
Hamlet)
- until 18. ct. in verse
o + popularisation of burgeois/domestic tragedy
o in prose presented middle or lower class protagonists
(common place or domestic(domácí) disaster)
- antihero
o petty(nepodstatný), passive (Godot´s tramps)

TRAGICOMEDY
- Elisabehtan and Jacobine dramatype
o intermingled both the standard characters
- serious action and tragic disaster turned out happily (Merchant of Venice)

COMEDY
 - as. with laughter
- work in which materials are selected and manged primarily to interest and amuse
- action turns out happily

Romantic comedy
- by Shakespeare
- love affair of beautiful and engaging heroine

Satiric comedy
- ridicules political/philosophical doctrines
- Jonson´s Volpone

Comey of manners
- dramas of MOLIÉRE
- deals with relations and intriques of upper class
- sparkle of dialogue
- fools, jelaous husbands, country bumpkins
o reakcí vznik SENTIMENTAL COMEDY
 revived(oživit) wit and gaiety(veselost)
 deleted indecency (nemravnost)
- revived by O. WILDE

Farce
- designed to provoke to hearthy laughter
- highly exagggerated/caricatured characters
- ludicrous(směšný) situations
o SITUATION COMEDY
 humour derives from situations: The Friends
o COMEDY OF HUMOURS
 developed by Jonson
 based on theory of four body liquids (imbalance of one will
produce four kind of disposition)

- HIGH COMEDY
o evokes intellectual laughter
- LOW COMEDY
o little intellectual appeal, l. arouses by jokes, gags, slapstick(fraška)

DRAMA OF THE ABSURD

- the sense that human condition is essentially absurd and can be reflected only in
words that are tmeselves absurd
- BECKETT – plays project the irrationalism, helplesness, absurdity of life
o Waiting for Godot (tramps fruitlessly waiting for unindetified person who
may not exist)
 parody of traditional assumptions of western culture
 NOVEL
- more plots (plot line)
- AUSTEN, ELIOT
- prose romance: characters sharply discriminated as heroes or villains, protagonists
relatively isolated from social context : COOPER, RADCLIFFE
- TYPES OF NOVEL:
o A NOVEL OF INCIDENT
 source: picaresěue narrative, episodic in structure but certain unity
of action (Hornblower)
 greater interest in what happens next ( DEFOE, SMOLLET)
 lots of epizodes, hardly ever psychycal development
o NOVEL OF CHARACTER
 psychological depth, emphasis on protagonist´s motives, character
changes
 1st: Richardson: Pamela (epistorlary form/content in letters)
• Bildungsroman
o development of protagonist´s mind
o ELIOT, DICKENS
o subtype: artist-novel
 following hero since birth to death
• social novel
o influence of the social and economic condition,
recommends social/political reform
o DICKENS, STOWE
• historical novel
o setting and characters taken from history, hist. events
made crucial for narrative
o SCOTT, MITCHELL
• nonfiction novel
o novelist techniques used to depict(zobrazit) recent
happenings
o based on historical records and personal interviews
o CAPOTE, MAILER
o not account of truth
• regional novel
o emphasises(zdůraznit) the settings/customs/social
structure – effects the character´s temperament and
ways of feeling
o would not make sense if it was replaced
o HARDY, FAULKNER
• new novel (roman nouveau)
o leaves out starndard elements of novel
o novel=sequence of perceptions of
disintegrating(rozpadající se)mind
o postmodernism

• Gothic novel
 o gothic fiction
o heroin locked up in castle – knight
o cant be proper novel (unordinary situations)

novel × romance
- everydays plot - everything straight (good/bad)
- common problems - no psychological development
- - supernatural elements

NARRATIVE SITUATIONS
- authors presence/absence in the text
- author guids you, it would be confusing

1 . AUTHORIAL NARRATION
- like God, who creates his own universe
- author remains outside the fictional world
- two worlds
2. FIGURAL NARRATION
- only one world
- look over the shoulder
3. NEUTRAL NARRATION
- any authorial quidance
- no comments
- „Vila Vyvolených“
FIRST PERSON NOVEL
- through someone´s eyes
AUTHORIAL NOVEL
- perosnality of the narrater is discdernible(znatelný), but not as figure in the
fictional world
FIGURAL NOVEL
- world is seen throught the eyes of reflector (character withing the fictional
world itself)

POINTS OF VIEW
- narrative situations from different ankle

THIRD PERSON POINTS OF VIEW

OMNISCIENT P.O.V.
- narrator knows everything about the characters/events
- intrusive(rušivý) narrator(not only reports, also evaluates(vyhodnocuje), expresses
personal views
OBJECTIVE P.O.V.
- shows the action without introducing his judgement (unintrusive narrator), only
description

• LIMITED POINT OF VIEW

- narrator´s knowledge is confined(zabránit) to what is experienced, mirror
of consciousness
o LIMITED OMNISCIENT POV
- reflector´s thoughts may be told
 o LIMITED OBJECTIVE POV
- reflector´s thoughts must not be told

FIRST PERSON POINTS OF VIEW

- limits the matter of the narrative to what the first person narrator knows,
experineces or can find out about others
o only a witness and auditor of the matters he relates ( Joseph CONRAD:
The heart of darkness)
o partisipant in the story – a minor one (F.S. FIDGERALD: The Great
Gatsby)
o central character him/herself ( E. BRONTE: Jane Eyre)

* other narrative tactics:

- self conscious narrator (shatters(roztříštit) any illusion that he is telling something
that actually happened by pointing out discrepances(nesrovnalost)
- STERN: Tristram Shandy
- fallible / unreliable narrator (his interpretations, evaluations of the matters do not
coincide(shodovat se) with the implicit opinions and norms manifested by teh author)
- JAMES : The Turn of the Screw

IRONY

- eironea × alzoneia (in greek comedy )

- self deprecative dissimulation - boastful dissimulation of a stupid character
of a char. who spoke in understa
tement(skromné vyjádření)

- both depricative way of behaviour

- later: to blame(vinit) by ironical praise (chvála) or to praise (chválit) by
ironical blame (vina)
o saying the contrary of what one means / saying one thing but meaning
another

1. VERBAL IRONY
- the meaning that a speaker implies(naznačovat) differs (lišení se) sharply from the
meaning that is expressed
- Pride and Prejudice: Elisabeth about Mr. Darcy („ Mr. Darcy has no
defect(nedostatek). He owned(přivlastnit si) it to himself without
disguise(přestrojení).“)
2. STRUCTURAL IRONY
- invention of a naive hero/narrtor, who contrasts his views with the
„knowing“reader
- authorial presenced is implied(naznačena) behind the naive narrator/hero
- Swift: A Modest Proposal („well-meaning“ exonomist)
3. DRAMATIC IRONY
- ivolves a situation in which audience/reader shares with author knowledge of
circumstances, but the character is ignorant of them and unknowlingly acts in a very
inappropriate(nevhodný) way because of it
- Sophocles: Oedipus Rex
 4. COSMIC IRONY
- „irony of the fate(osud)“
- destiny manipulates incidents so as to lead the protagonist to false hopes and
his/her own downfall
- Hardy: Tess of D´Urbervilles
5. ROMANTIC IRONY
- author builds up an illusion of representing reality only to shatter(narušit) them by
revealing(odhalení) that the author is the arbitrary(libovolný) creator and
manipulator of all actions and characters
- Sterne: Tristram Shandy
6. NON VERBAL IRONY
- honouring and punishing the nobility(šlechta) of Siam with a gift of sacred white
elephant

SATIRE
- a form of attack throught mockery(výsměch)
- derogating(zlehčovat) subject by making it ridiculous
- laughter is used as a weapon (it derides(posmívat se))
- corrective(náprava) of human vice, errors, folly (pošetilost)

FORMAL / DIRECT SATIRES

HORATIAN SATIRE
- moves to wry (otrávit) amusement rather than to indignation (pobouření) at teh
spectacle of human folly(pošetilost)
- Pope: Moral Essays
JUVENALIAN SATIRE
- speaker is a serious moralist, uses a dignified(důstojný) style to criticise errors and
vices, that are dangerou and ridiculous
- Swift: A Modest Proposal
INDIRECT SATIRE (within some other literary form: drama/novel...)
- any narrative or literary vehicle (novel = most frequent device) can be adapted to
teh purposes of indirect satire
- Heller: Catch 22

other subtypes:
Comedy of Humours (Ben Johnson)
Comedy of Manners (W. Wycherley)
Satire of Parody and Irony (Alexander Pope)
Flytings (verbal combats (boj) of wits(důvtip) in the Middle Ages)

ALLEGORY (speaking in other terms)

- has to make sense
- through mirror (reality – mirror- allegory)
- SPENSER: Faerie Queene: verse romance
o young queen Una (=one=church – allegory for Elisabeth) → dragon
(allegory for Pope) → knight (St. George) slizes the dragon
- strange names – napovídají nám, že to je alegorie
- everything is ordered
o historical (Faerie Queene)
o allegory of ideas (medieval)
• Everymen (plays of morals)
o + kinderend, Money + Beauty + Good Deeds(dobré
skutky)
- subtypes of allegory:
o FABLE
 beast fable
 animals represent human vices/virtues
o PARABLE - podobenství
 Bible – Parable of Prodigal Son(marnotratný syn)
• father lends him money, he spends it on drinking and he
ends up looking after pigs, he doestn want to come home,
doestn watn to be bad son and father finally accepts him
o EXEMPLUM
 story, that has to represent some idea
 only in religious context
 uses stories of sacrily origin
• strom, který je ve tvaru kříže, měla by se na nich věšet
manželka (=středověké převtělení ďábla)

SYMBOL
- meanings can be diversed(odlišný), no one knows the only and right meaning
 red rose=love/affection/jealousy (Wicked Queene and Snowhite)
- CONVENTIONAL
o cross for Christianity = universally reckognized
- PERSONAL
o make for themselves
o take symbol (for Melville: Moby Dick) and safe it for themselfes

allegory × symbol
- presents pair of subjects - presents the image alone, remains indefinite in
(image + concept) its reference(odkaz)
- specific in its sentence

STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS
- unbroken flow of preceptions, thougths, feelings in the waking(probuzený) mind
- narrative method in modern fiction
- reproduced without narrator´s intervention(zásah)

MYTH
- narrative of uncertain origin shared by particular cultural group
- helps to explain religious beliefs
- related to social rituals, natural motifs
- J. FRAZER – wanted to explain myths by reference to rituals (fertility and life)
- N.FRYE – gives all myths an appropriate place in the cycle of season
• comedy belongs to summer, tragedy to autumn, winter to
irony/satire, spring to romance