Playwright

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A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes plays.

Contents

1 Etymology
2 History
2.1 Early playwrights
2.2 Aristotle's Poetics techniques
2.3 Neo-classical theory
2.4 Well-made play
2.5 Contemporary playwrights in the United States
2.5.1 New play development
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

Etymology

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The word "play" is from Middle English pleye, from Old English pl�g, plega, pl�ga
("play, exercise; sport, game; drama, applause". The word "wright" is an archaic
English term for a craftsman or builder (as in a wheelwright or cartwright). The
words combine to indicate a person who has "wrought" words, themes, and other
elements into a dramatic form�a play. (The homophone with "write" is coincidental.)

The first recorded use of the term "playwright" is from 1605,[1] 73 years before
the first written record of the term "dramatist".[2] It appears to have been first
used in a pejorative sense by Ben Jonson[3] to suggest a mere tradesman fashioning
works for the theatre.

Jonson uses the word in his Epigram 49, which is thought to refer to John Marston:

Epigram LXVIII � On Playwright

PLAYWRIGHT me reads, and still my verses damns,
He says I want the tongue of epigrams ;
I have no salt, no bawdry he doth mean ;
For witty, in his language, is obscene.
Playwright, I loath to have thy manners known
In my chaste book ; I profess them in thine own.

Jonson described himself as a poet, not a playwright, since plays during that time
were written in meter and so were regarded as the province of poets. This view was
held as late as the early 19th century. The term "playwright" later again lost this
negative connotation.
History
Early playwrights
The earliest playwright in Western literature with surviving works are the Ancient
Greeks. These early plays were for annual Athenian competitions among play
writers[4] held around the 5th century BC. Such notables as Aeschylus, Sophocles,
Euripides, and Aristophanes established forms still relied on by their modern
counterparts. For the ancient Greeks, playwriting involved po�esis, "the act of
making". This is the source of the English word poet.