Topic 4 of 6 · Form 5
Drama: Shakespeare and modern drama
Structure (acts, scenes, exposition, climax, resolution), dialogue and subtext, soliloquy and aside, stage directions, dramatic irony, symbolism in staging, and the audience's experience.
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Dramatic form
Structure (acts, scenes, exposition, climax, resolution), dialogue and subtext, soliloquy and aside, stage directions, dramatic irony, symbolism in staging, and the audience's experience.
Shakespeare
Tragedy (tragic hero, hamartia, catharsis), comedy and history plays; blank verse and prose; imagery patterns; Elizabethan and Jacobean contexts (kingship, order, religion, gender).
Modern drama
Realism and naturalism (Ibsen, Miller), epic theatre (Brecht), the absurd (Beckett), postcolonial drama (e.g. Soyinka, Fugard, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and Ngũgĩ wa Mirii).
Writing about drama
Refer to performance: how lines might be spoken, how staging creates meaning, and how audiences then and now might respond.
Check yourself
- What is hamartia?
- Why might Shakespeare switch from verse to prose?
- What is the purpose of Brecht's alienation effect?
Show answers
- The tragic hero's flaw or error.
- To show a change in status, mood or mental state, or for comic scenes.
- To make the audience think critically rather than identify emotionally.
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