Chapter 3 The Play 後半授課教師：段馨君 副教授

國立交通大學人社系暨族文所

Aristotle’s poetics• Aristotle (384-322 B.C)• Tutor to the future Alexander the Great.• Poetics (c 335-323 B.C), the oldest surviving

treatise on drama.• The Poetics came to considered authoritative on

drama, especially tragedy.• The cause-to –effect arrangement of incidents,

progressing through complications and resolution• Internal consistency to be the basis of

believability.

Method of organizing dramatic action

• The most common sources of unit • cause-to –effect arrangement of events• Character• thought

• Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, Henrik Lbsen’s A Doll’s House, and Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days.

• The majority of plays from the past are organized through cause-too-effect arrangement of events. This is the organizational principle used in A Doll’s House.

Viedo link of A Doll’s House

Viedo link of Oedipus the

KingViedo link of

Happy Days

Method of organizing dramatic action

• Attempts to surmount the obstacle make up the substance of the play, each scene growing logically out of those that precede it.• Less often, a dramatist use a character as the source of unity.• They must also either tell a connected story or embody a theme.• Beckett’s Happy Days is unified in part because Winnie creates the

action, but ultimately the play’s unity comes from its theme.

Method of organizing dramatic action (cont’d)

• Similarly, A Doll’s House gains much of its sense of purpose from Nora Helmer, but the play is organized mainly through the structure of its incidents.• Many 20th – century dramatics organize play around thought,

with scenes linked through a central theme or set of ideas.• Beckett’s Happy Days.

Method of organizing dramatic action (cont’d)

• The contemporary drama of Beckett’s is nonlinear• composed more of fragments than of causally related incidents.

• Although a play usually has one major source of unity, it also uses secondary sources.• Other sources of unity • a dominant mood• visual style• distinctive use of language.

Method of organizing dramatic action (cont’d)

• The part of drama, according to Aristotle• 1. plot• 2. character• 3. thought• 4. diction• 5. music• 6. spectacle

Plot• Plot • the overall structure of a play.

• The beginning of a play establishes some or all of these:• the place, the occasion, the characters, the

mood, the theme, and the internal logic (the rules of the game) that will be followed.

• The beginning of a play involves • exposition, or the setting forth of information –

about earlier events, the identity and relationship of the characters, and the present situation.

Plot (cont’d)• The amount of exposition required about past

events is partly determined by the point of attack. • The moment at which the story is taken up.

• Shakespeare typically used an early point of attack. • For example, the King Lear.

• Greek tragic dramatists use late points, which require that many previous events be summarized for the audience’s benefit. • For example, In Oedipus the King.

Viedo link of King Lear

Viedo link of In Oedipus the

King

Plot (cont’d)• Events that begin before Oedipus’ birth • Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman is unusual in having a

late point of attack (beginning only one day before Willy’s death) but still showing, in flashbacks, events that range through many years.

• The point of attack in Happy Days can be called middle• because Winnie’s situation in Act Ⅰhas long existed but in

ActⅡis far more advanced; • the implication is that her situation would be similar no

matter the moment in time.

Viedo link of Miller’s Death

Plot (cont’d)• Playwrights motivate the giving of exposition in

many years.• In a musical play• exposition may be given in song and dance.

• In most plays• attention is focused early on a question, potential

conflict, or theme.• An inciting incident, an occurrence that sets the main

action in motion. • The inciting incident usually leads directly to a

major dramatic question around which the play is organized

Plot (cont’d)• Not all plays include inciting incidents or clearly identifiable

major dramatic questions.• The middle of a play• normally consists of rising action composed of a series of

complications.• The substance of most complications is discovery.

• Each complication normally has a beginning, middle, and end • its own development, climax, and resolution – just as the

play as a whole does.

Plot (cont’d)• The series of complications culminates in the climax,

the highest point of interest or suspense. • Accompanied by the crisis, that discovery or event that

determines the outcome of the action.• Not all plays have a clear-cut series of complication

leading to climax and crisis.• The final portion of a play, the resolution or denouement• extends from the crisis to the final curtain.

• Plays may also have subplots• events or actions of secondary interest are developed, often

providing contrast to or commentary on the main plot.

Character & characterization

• Characterization• anything that delineates a person or differentiates that person from others.

• The 1st level of characterization• physical or biological, defining gender, age, size, coloration, and general

appearance.• The 2nd level of characterization• societal

• It includes a character’s economic status, profession or trade, religion, family relationship

• all of the factors that place a character in a particular social environment.

Character & characterization (cont’d)• The 3rd level • psychological.• It reveals a character’s habitual responses, desires, motivation, likes, and dislikes – the inner working of the mind.

• The 4th level • moral.• It reveals what characters are willing to do to get what they want.

• Dramatic characters are usually both typified and individualized.• A playwright • Be concerned with making characters sympathetic or unsympathetic.

thought

• The 3rd basic element of a play is thought. • Include the themes, argument, and overall meaning of the action.

• Meaning in drama is usually implied rather than stated directly.• Greek playwrights made extensive use of the chorus, a group

representing some segments of society• just as those of later periods employed such devices as soliloquies,

asides, and other forms of statement made directly to the audience.

Thought (cont’d)• Other tools for projecting meaning are allegory

and symbol.• A symbol is an object, event, or image • also suggests a concept or set of relationship.

• Plays imply or state meaning• we should not conclude that there is a single correct

interpretation for each play.• Most plays permit multiple interpretations• as different productions of, and critical essays about,

the same play clearly indicates that.

diction

• Plot, character, and thought are the basic subjects of drama.• To convey these to an audience, playwrights have at their

disposal 2 means• sound and spectacle.

• Language is the playwright’s primary means of expression.• Language (diction) is the playwright’s primary tool.

Diction (cont’d)

• Diction serves many purposes. • It is used to impart information• to characterize, to direct attention to important plot elements, to reveal

the themes and ideas of a play, to establish tone or mood and internal logic, and to establish tempo and rhythm.

• The diction of every play, no matter how realistic, is more abstract and formal than that of normal conversation.

Diction (cont’d)

• The dialogue of nonrealistic plays deviates markedly from everyday speech.• The basic criterion for judging diction• its appropriateness to characters, situation, internal logic, and type of

play.

Music

• In addition to the sound of the actors’ voices, a play may also use music in the form of incidental songs and background music• as in musical comedy and opera • it may utilize song and instrumental accompaniment as integral

structural means.• Music may serve many functions. • it may compress characterization or exposition, it may lend variety,

and it may be pleasurable in itself.

spectacle

• Spectacle encompasses all visual elements of a production:• the movement and spatial relations of characters, • the lighting • settings • costumes • properties.

Form in drama

• Scripts are frequently classified according to form: • tragedy, comedy, tragicomedy, melodrama, farce, and so on.

• Form means the shape given to something for a particular purpose.• Tragedy and comedy have been considered the 2 basic forms.• Tragedy is a form associated especially with ancient Greece

and Elizabethan England.

Form in drama (cont’d)

• Henri Bergson argues that comedy requires “an anesthesia of the heart,”• It is difficult to laugh at anything about which we feel deeply.

• Not all plays are wholly serious or comic. • The two are often intermingled to create mixed effects, as in

tragicomedy, as serious play that ends happily.

Form in drama (cont’d)

• Perhaps the best known of the mixed types is melodrama, the favorite form of the 19th century and still the dominant form among television dramas dealing with crime and danger.

• Since World War Ⅱ, plays have been labeled “tragic farce,” “anti-play,” “tragedy for the music hall,”• a variety of other terms that suggest how elements from earlier

categories and from popular culture have been intermingled.

Style in drama

• Even plays of the same form vary considerably. One reason for this variety is style.• The drama written by neoclassicists have qualities that

distinguish them from those written by romantics, expressionists, or absurdists.• Style in theatre result from 3 basic influences• it is grounded in assumptions about what is truthful and valuable.• style results from the manner in which a playwright manipulates the

means of expression• style results from the manner in which the play is presented in the

theatre.

Style in drama (cont’d)+Typically, unity is a primary artistic goal.+ In recent times, postmodernism has intermingled different

styles + although this intermingling may itself be considered a style.

• Part one has introduced and discussed several basic issues • to the nature of theatre, to the role of audiences, to varied criteria for

judging theatrical performances, and to dramatic structure, form, and style.

• The chapters that follow explore how these issues have been manifested in the theatrical practices of diverse times and places, both past and present.