Tragedy(from gr. Tragos - goat and ode - song) - one of the types of drama, which is based on the irreconcilable conflict of an unusual personality with insurmountable external circumstances. Usually the hero dies (Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare's Hamlet). The tragedy occurred in ancient Greece, the name comes from a folk belief in honor of the god of wine, Dionysus. Dances, songs and stories about his suffering were performed, at the end of which a goat was sacrificed.
Comedy(from the gr. comoidia. Comos - cheerful crowd and ode - song) - a type of dramatic arbitrariness in which the comic is depicted social life, behavior and character of people. There is a comedy of situations (intrigue) and a comedy of characters.
Drama - a type of dramaturgy intermediate between tragedy and comedy (“The Thunderstorm” by A. Ostrovsky, “Stolen Happiness” by I. Franko). Dramas mainly depict the private life of a person and his acute conflict with society. At the same time, the emphasis is often placed on universal human contradictions, embodied in the behavior and actions of specific characters.
Mystery(from the gr. mysterion - sacrament, religious service, ritual) - a genre of mass religious theater of the late Middle Ages (XIV-XV centuries), widespread in the countries of Western Nvrotta.
Sideshow(from Latin intermedius - what is in the middle) - small comic play or a skit that was performed between the acts of the main drama. In modern pop art exists as an independent genre.
Vaudeville(from the French vaudeville) a light comic play in which dramatic action is combined with music and dancing.
Melodrama - a play with acute intrigue, exaggerated emotionality and a moral and didactic tendency. Typical for melodrama is a “happy ending”, the triumph of positive heroes. The melodrama genre was popular in the 18th and 19th centuries, but later acquired a negative reputation.
Farce(from the Latin farcio I begin, I fill) is a Western European folk comedy of the 14th - 16th centuries, which originated from funny ritual games and interludes. Farce is characterized by the main features of popular ideas: mass participation, satirical orientation, and rude humor. In modern times, this genre has entered the repertoire of small theaters.
As noted, methods of literary representation are often mixed within individual species and genres. This mixing is of two kinds: in some cases there is a kind of inclusion, when the main birth characteristics are preserved; in others, the generic principles are balanced, and the work cannot be attributed to either epic, clergy, or drama, as a result of which they are called adjacent or mixed formations. Most often, epic and lyric are mixed.
Ballad(from Provence ballar - to dance) - a small poetic work with a sharp dramatic plot love, legendary-historical, heroic-patriotic or fairy-tale content. The depiction of events is combined in it with a pronounced authorial feeling; the epic is combined with lyrics. The genre became widespread in the era of romanticism (V. Zhukovsky, A. Pushkin, M. Lermontov, T. Shevchenko, etc.).
Lyric epic poem- a poetic work in which, according to V. Mayakovsky, the poet talks about time and himself (poems by V. Mayakovsky, A. Tvardovsky, S. Yesenin, etc.).
Dramatic poem- a work written in dialogical form, but not intended for production on stage. Examples of this genre: “Faust” by Goethe, “Cain” by Byron, “In the Catacombs” by L. Ukrainka, etc.
Drama(Ancient Greek δρμα - deed, action) - one of the three types of literature, along with epic and lyric poetry, belongs simultaneously to two types of art: literature and theater. Intended for performance on stage, drama formally differs from epic and lyric poetry in that the text in it is presented in the form of characters’ remarks and author’s remarks and, as a rule, is divided into actions and phenomena. Drama in one way or another refers to any literary work constructed in a dialogical form, including comedy, tragedy, drama (as a genre), farce, vaudeville, etc.
Since ancient times, it has existed in folklore or literary form among various peoples; The ancient Greeks, ancient Indians, Chinese, Japanese, and American Indians created their own dramatic traditions independently of each other.
Literally translated from ancient Greek, drama means “action.”
The specificity of drama as a literary genre lies in its special organization artistic speech: unlike epic, there is no narration in drama and the direct speech of the heroes, their dialogues and monologues is of paramount importance.
Dramatic works are intended to be staged, and this determines specific features dramas:
- lack of narrative-descriptive image;
- “auxiliary” of the author’s speech (remarks);
- the main text of a dramatic work is presented in the form of replicas of the characters (monologue and dialogue);
- drama as a type of literature does not have such a variety of artistic and visual means as epic: speech and action are the main means of creating the image of a hero;
- the volume of text and time of action is limited by the stage;
- The requirements of stage art also dictate such a feature of drama as a certain exaggeration (hyperbolization): “exaggeration of events, exaggeration of feelings and exaggeration of expressions” (L.N. Tolstoy) - in other words, theatrical showiness, increased expressiveness; the viewer of the play feels the conventionality of what is happening, which was very well said by A.S. Pushkin: “the very essence of dramatic art excludes verisimilitude... when reading a poem, a novel, we can often forget ourselves and believe that the incident described is not fiction, but the truth. In an ode, in an elegy, we can think that the poet depicted his real feelings, in real circumstances. But where is the credibility in a building divided into two parts, one of which is filled with spectators who agreed etc.
The traditional plot outline for any dramatic work is:
EXPOSITION - presentation of heroes
TIE - collision
ACTION DEVELOPMENT - a set of scenes, development of an idea
CLIMAX - the apogee of the conflict
INTERCLOSURE
History of drama
The beginnings of drama are in primitive poetry, in which the later elements of lyricism, epic and drama merged in connection with music and facial movements. Earlier than among other nations, drama special kind poetry was formed among the Hindus and Greeks.
Greek drama, developing serious religious-mythological plots (tragedy) and funny ones, drawn from modern life(comedy), reaches high perfection and in the 16th century is a model for European drama, which until that time had artlessly handled religious and secular narratives (mysteries, school dramas and sideshows, fastnachtspiels, sottises).
French playwrights, imitating the Greek ones, strictly adhered to certain provisions that were considered unchangeable for the aesthetic dignity of drama, such as: unity of time and place; the duration of the episode depicted on stage should not exceed a day; the action must take place in the same place; the drama should develop correctly in 3-5 acts, from the beginning (clarification of the initial position and characters of the characters) through the middle vicissitudes (changes of positions and relationships) to the denouement (usually a catastrophe); the number of characters is very limited (usually from 3 to 5); these are exclusively the highest representatives of society (kings, queens, princes and princesses) and their closest servants-confidants, who are introduced onto the stage for the convenience of conducting dialogue and delivering remarks. These are the main features of French classical drama (Cornel, Racine).
The rigor of the requirements of the classical style was no longer observed in comedies (Molière, Lope de Vega, Beaumarchais), which gradually moved from convention to depiction ordinary life(genre). Free from classical conventions, Shakespeare's work opened up new paths for drama. The end of the 18th and the first half of the 19th centuries were marked by the appearance of romantic and national dramas: Lessing, Schiller, Goethe, Hugo, Kleist, Grabbe.
In the second half of XIX century, realism takes over in European drama (Dumas the son, Ogier, Sardou, Palleron, Ibsen, Sudermann, Schnitzler, Hauptmann, Beyerlein).
In the last quarter of the 19th century, under the influence of Ibsen and Maeterlinck, symbolism began to take over the European stage (Hauptmann, Przybyszewski, Bar, D'Annunzio, Hofmannsthal).
Types of Drama
- Tragedy - genre work of art, intended for stage production, in which the plot leads the characters to a catastrophic outcome. The tragedy is marked by stern seriousness, depicts reality in the most pointed way, as a clot of internal contradictions, reveals the deepest conflicts of reality in an extremely intense and rich form that takes on meaning artistic symbol. Most tragedies are written in verse. The works are often filled with pathos. The opposite genre is comedy.
- Drama (psychological, criminal, existential) is a literary (dramatic), stage and cinematic genre. It became especially widespread in the literature of the 18th-21st centuries, gradually displacing another genre of drama - tragedy, opposing it mainly everyday story and a style closer to everyday reality. With the emergence of cinema, it also moved into this art form, becoming one of its most widespread genres (see the corresponding category).
- Dramas typically depict specifically the private life of a person and his social conflicts. At the same time, the emphasis is often placed on universal human contradictions, embodied in the behavior and actions of specific characters.
The concept of “drama as a genre” (different from the concept of “drama as a type of literature”) is known in Russian literary criticism. Thus, B.V. Tomashevsky writes:
In the 18th century quantity<драматических>genres are increasing. Along with strict theatrical genres, lower, “fair” genres are put forward: Italian slapstick comedy, vaudeville, parody, etc. These genres are the sources of modern farce, grotesque, operetta, miniatures. Comedy splits, distinguishing itself as “drama,” that is, a play with modern everyday themes, but without the specific “comic” situation (“philistine tragedy” or “tearful comedy”).<...>Drama decisively displaces other genres in the 19th century, in harmony with the evolution of the psychological and everyday novel.
On the other hand, drama as a genre in the history of literature is divided into several separate modifications:
Thus, the 18th century was the time of bourgeois drama (G. Lillo, D. Diderot, P.-O. Beaumarchais, G. E. Lessing, early F. Schiller).
In the 19th century, realistic and naturalistic drama began to develop (A. N. Ostrovsky, G. Ibsen, G. Hauptmann, A. Strindberg, A. P. Chekhov).
At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, symbolist drama developed (M. Maeterlinck).
In the 20th century - surrealist drama, expressionist drama (F. Werfel, W. Hasenclever), absurdist drama (S. Beckett, E. Ionesco, E. Albee, V. Gombrowicz), etc.Many playwrights of the 19th and 20th centuries used the word “drama” to designate the genre of their stage works.
- Drama in verse is the same thing, only in poetic form.
- Melodrama - genre fiction, theatrical art and cinema, whose works reveal the spiritual and sensory world of heroes in especially vivid emotional circumstances based on contrasts: good and evil, love and hate, etc.
- Hierodrama - in Old Order France (second half of the 18th century) the name of vocal compositions for two or more voices on biblical subjects.
Unlike the oratorio and mystery plays, the hierodramas used not the words of Latin psalms, but the texts of modern French poets, and they were performed not in churches, but at spiritual concerts in the Tuileries Palace. - In particular, “The Sacrifice of Abraham” (music by Cambini) and in 1783 “Samson” were presented to the words of Voltaire in 1780. Under the impression of the revolution, Desaugiers composed his cantata “Hierodrama”.
- Mystery is one of the genres of European medieval theater associated with religion.
- The plot of the mystery was usually taken from the Bible or Gospel and interspersed with various everyday comic scenes. From the middle of the 15th century, the mysteries began to increase in volume. The Mystery of the Acts of the Apostles contains more than 60,000 verses, and its performance in Bourges in 1536 lasted, according to evidence, 40 days.
- If in Italy the mystery died naturally, then in a number of other countries it was prohibited during the Counter-Reformation; in particular, in France - on November 17, 1548 by order of the Parisian parliament; in Protestant England in 1672, the mystery was banned by the Bishop of Chester, and three years later the ban was repeated by the Archbishop of York. In Catholic Spain, mystery plays continued until the middle of the 18th century, they were composed by Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, Calderon de la Barca, Pedro; It was only in 1756 that they were officially banned by decree of Charles III.
- Comedy is a genre of fiction characterized by a humorous or satirical approach, as well as a type of drama in which the moment of effective conflict or struggle between antagonistic characters is specifically resolved.
Aristotle defined comedy as “imitation of the worst people, but not in all their depravity, but in a funny way” (“Poetics”, Chapter V). The earliest surviving comedies were created in Ancient Athens and were written by Aristophanes.Distinguish sitcom And comedy of characters.
Sitcom (situation comedy, situational comedy) is a comedy in which the source of humor is events and circumstances.
Comedy of characters (comedy of manners) - a comedy in which the source of the funny is the inner essence of the characters (morals), funny and ugly one-sidedness, an exaggerated trait or passion (vice, flaw). Very often, a comedy of manners is a satirical comedy that makes fun of all these human qualities. - Vaudeville- a comedy play with couplet songs and dances, as well as a genre of dramatic art. In Russia, the prototype of vaudeville was a small comic opera of the late 17th century, which remained in the repertoire of the Russian theater and to early XIX century.
- Farce- a comedy of light content with purely external comic techniques.
In the Middle Ages, farce was also called the form folk theater and literature, widespread in the XIV-XVI centuries in Western European countries. Having matured within the mystery, farce gained its independence in the 15th century, and in the next century it became the dominant genre in theater and literature. The techniques of farcical buffoonery were preserved in circus clowning.
The main element of the farce was not conscious political satire, but a relaxed and carefree depiction of urban life with all its scandalous incidents, obscenity, rudeness and fun. The French farce often varied the theme of a scandal between spouses.
In modern Russian, a farce is usually called profanation, an imitation of a process, for example, a trial.
This is an objective-subjective kind of literature (Hegel). This is an objective picture of the world and its subjective unfolding.
The generic form is dialogue. From point of view generic features the content of dramatic works should be characterized in turn from the position
A) conflict
Drama(Greek dráma, literally - action), 1) one of the three types of literature (along with epic and lyric poetry; see Literary gender ). Drama (in literature) belongs at the same time theater And literature : being the fundamental basis of the performance, it is also perceived in reading. Drama (in literature) formed on the basis of the evolution of theatrical art: bringing to the fore actors connecting pantomime with the spoken word, marked its emergence as a type of literature. Its specificity consists of: plot, i.e. reproduction of the course of events; dramatic tension of the action and its division into stage episodes; continuity of the chain of characters' statements; absence (or subordination) of a narrative beginning (see Narration ). Designed for collective perception, Drama (in literature) always gravitated towards the most acute problems and in the most striking examples it became popular. According to A. S. Pushkin, the purpose Drama (in literature) is to “... act on the crowd, on the multitude, to engage their curiosity” ( Complete collection soch., vol. 7, 1958, p. 214).
Drama (in literature) deep conflict is inherent; its fundamental basis is the intense and effective experience by people of socio-historical or “eternal”, universal human contradictions. Drama, accessible to all types of art, naturally dominates in Drama (in literature) According to V. G. Belinsky, drama is an important property of the human spirit, awakened by situations when the cherished or passionately desired, demanding fulfillment, is under threat.
Conflicts filled with drama are embodied in action - in the behavior of the heroes, in their actions and accomplishments. Majority Drama (in literature) built on a single external action (which corresponds to the principle of “unity of action” by Aristotle), based, as a rule, on the direct confrontation of the heroes. In this case, the action can be traced from strings before interchanges , covering large periods of time (medieval and eastern Drama (in literature), for example, “Shakuntala” by Kalidasa), or is taken only at its climax, close to the denouement (ancient tragedies, for example, “Oedipus the King” by Sophocles, and many Drama (in literature) modern times, for example, “Dowry” by A. N. Ostrovsky). Classical aesthetics of the 19th century. tends to absolutize these principles of construction Drama (in literature) Looking after Hegel Drama (in literature) as a reproduction of colliding volitional acts (“actions” and “reactions”), Belinsky wrote: “The action of the drama should be focused on one interest and be alien to side interests... There should not be a single person in the drama who would not be necessary in the mechanism of its course and development” (Complete collection of works, vol. 5, 1954, p. 53). At the same time, “... the decision in choosing a path depends on the hero of the drama, and not on the event” (ibid., p. 20).
The most important formal properties Drama (in literature): a continuous chain of statements that act as acts of behavior of the characters (i.e., their actions), and as a consequence of this - the concentration of the depicted in closed areas of space and time. Universal basis of composition Drama (in literature): scenic episodes (scenes), within which the depicted, so-called real, time is adequate to the time of perception, the so-called artistic. In folk, medieval and oriental Drama (in literature), as well as in Shakespeare, in Pushkin’s “Boris Godunov”, in Brecht’s plays, the place and time of action change very often. European Drama (in literature) 17-19 centuries is based, as a rule, on a few and very extensive stage episodes that coincide with the acts theater performances. An extreme expression of the compact development of space and time is the “unity” known from the “Poetic Art” of N. Boileau, which survived until the 19th century. (“Woe from Wit” by A. S. Griboyedov).
Dramatic works in the vast majority of cases are intended for production on stage; there is a very narrow circle dramatic works which are called reading drama.
Dramatic genres have their own history, the features of which are largely determined by the fact that historically, from antiquity to classicism inclusive, it was a two-genre phenomenon: either the mask cried (tragedy) or the mask laughed (comedy).
But in the 18th century a synthesis of comedy and tragedy-drama appeared.
Drama has replaced tragedy.
1)tragedy
2) comedy
4)farce play with a pronounced satirical orientation of a small volume
5)Vaudeville genre content is close to the genre content of comedy, in most cases humorous. The genre form is a one-act play with genres and verses..
6) tragicomedy is a frontal combination of depicted suffering and joy with the corresponding reaction of laughter and tears (Eduardo de Filippo)
7) dramatic chronicle. A genre close to the genre of drama that usually does not have one hero, and events are given in a stream. Bill Berodelkowski, Storm,
Largest quantity Comedy has historically had genre variants: Italian scientific comedy; comedy of masks in Spain; ,Cloak and sword, There was a comedy of character, situation, comedy of manners (everyday) buffoonery, etc.
RUSSIAN DRAMATURGY. Russian professional literary dramaturgy emerged at the end of the 17th and 18th centuries, but it was preceded by a centuries-long period of folk, mainly oral and partly handwritten folk drama. At first, archaic ritual actions, then round dance games and buffoon games contained elements characteristic of dramaturgy as an art form: dialogicity, dramatization of action, acting it out in person, depiction of this or that character (massing). These elements were consolidated and developed in folklore drama.
The pagan stage of Russian folklore dramaturgy has been lost: the study of folklore art in Russia began only in the 19th century, the first scientific publications great folk dramas appeared only in 1890-1900 in the journal "Ethnographic Review" (with comments by scientists of that time V. Kallash and A. Gruzinsky). Such a late start to the study of folk drama has led to the widespread belief that the emergence of folk drama in Russia dates back only to the 16th and 17th centuries. There is an alternative point of view, where the genesis Boats derived from the funeral customs of the pagan Slavs. But in any case, the plot and semantic changes in the texts of folklore dramas, which took place over at least ten centuries, are considered in cultural studies, art history and ethnography at the level of hypotheses. Each historical period left its mark on the content of folklore dramas, which was facilitated by the capacity and richness of associative connections of their content.
Early Russian literary dramaturgy. The origin of Russian literary drama dates back to the 17th century. and is associated with the school-church theater, which arises in Rus' under the influence school plays in Ukraine at the Kiev-Mohyla Academy. Fighting Catholic tendencies coming from Poland, the Orthodox Church in Ukraine used folk theater. The authors of the plays borrowed plots from church rituals, writing them into dialogues and interspersing comedic interludes, musical and dance numbers. In terms of genre, this drama resembled a hybrid of Western European morality plays and miracles. Written in a moralizing, pompously declamatory style, these works of school drama combined allegorical characters (Vice, Pride, Truth, etc.) with historical characters (Alexander the Great, Nero), mythological (Fortune, Mars) and biblical (Joshua, Herod and etc.). The most famous works - An action about Alexy, a man of God, Action on the Passion of Christ etc. The development of school drama is associated with the names of Dmitry Rostovsky ( Assumption drama, Christmas drama, Rostov performance etc.), Feofan Prokopovich ( Vladimir), Mitrofan Dovgalevsky ( Powerful image of God's love for mankind), George Konissky ( Resurrection of the Dead) and others. Simeon of Polotsk also started in the church and school theater
.Russian drama of the 18th century. After the death of Alexei Mikhailovich, the theater was closed and revived only under Peter I. However, the pause in the development of Russian drama lasted somewhat longer: in the theater of Peter's times, translated plays were mainly performed. True, at this time acts of a panegyric nature with pathetic monologues, choirs, musical divertissements, and solemn processions became widespread. They glorified the activities of Peter and responded to current events ( The triumph of the Orthodox world, Liberation of Livonia and Ingria etc.), but did not have much influence on the development of drama. The texts for these performances were more of an applied nature and were anonymous. Russian drama began to experience a rapid rise in the mid-18th century, simultaneously with the formation of a professional theater that needed a national repertoire.
To the middle of the 18th century. accounts for the formation of Russian classicism (in Europe, the heyday of classicism by this time was long in the past: Corneille died in 1684, Racine - in 1699.) V. Trediakovsky and M. Lomonosov tried their hand at classicist tragedy, but the founder of Russian classicism (and Russian literary dramaturgy in general) was A. Sumarokov, who in 1756 became the director of the first professional Russian theater. He wrote 9 tragedies and 12 comedies, which formed the basis of the theater repertoire of the 1750-1760s. Sumarokov also owned the first Russian literary and theoretical works. In particular, in Epistole on poetry(1747) he defends principles similar to the classicist canons of Boileau: a strict division of drama genres, adherence to "three unities". Unlike the French classicists, Sumarokov was based not on ancient subjects, but on Russian chronicles ( Khorev, Sinav and Truvor) and Russian history ( Dmitry the Pretender and etc.). Others worked in the same direction major representatives Russian classicism - N. Nikolev ( Sorena and Zamir), Y. Knyazhnin ( Rosslav, Vadim Novgorodsky and etc.).
Russian classicist drama had one more difference from French: the authors of tragedies also wrote comedies at the same time. This blurred the strict boundaries of classicism and contributed to the diversity of aesthetic trends. Classicist, educational and sentimentalist drama in Russia do not replace each other, but develop almost simultaneously. First attempts to create satirical comedy Sumarokov has already undertaken ( Monsters, Empty Quarrel, Covetous Man, Dowry by Deception, Narcissist and etc.). Moreover, in these comedies he used stylistic techniques of folklore interludes and farces - despite the fact that in his theoretical works he was critical of folk “merrymaking”. In the 1760s-1780s. The genre of comic opera is becoming widespread. They pay tribute to her like the classicists - Knyazhnin ( Misfortune from the carriage, Sbitenshchik, Braggart etc.), Nikolev ( Rozana and Love), and comedian-satirists: I. Krylov ( Coffee pot) etc. The trends of tearful comedy and bourgeois drama are emerging - V. Lukin ( A spendthrift, corrected by love), M. Verevkin ( That's how it should be, Exactly the same), P. Plavilshchikov ( Bobyl, Sidelet) etc. These genres contributed not only to the democratization and increase in the popularity of the theater, but also formed the foundations of the beloved psychological theater in Russia with its traditions detailed development multifaceted characters. The pinnacle of Russian drama of the 18th century. can be called almost realistic comedies V.Kapnista (Snitch), D. Fonvizina (Minor, Brigadier), I. Krylova (Fashion shop, Lesson for daughters and etc.). Krylov’s “joke-tragedy” seems interesting Trumph, or Podschipa, in which satire on the reign of Paul I was combined with a caustic parody of classicist techniques. The play was written in 1800 - only 53 years were needed for the classicist aesthetics, innovative for Russia, to begin to be perceived as archaic. Krylov also paid attention to the theory of drama ( Note on comedy "Laughter and grief", Review of the comedy by A. Klushin "Alchemist" and etc.).
Russian drama of the 19th century. By the beginning of the 19th century. the historical gap between Russian drama and European drama came to naught. Since that time, Russian theater has been developing in a general context European culture. The diversity of aesthetic trends in Russian drama is preserved - sentimentalism ( N. Karamzin, N. Ilyin, V. Fedorov, etc.) gets along with a romantic tragedy of a somewhat classicist kind (V. Ozerov, N. Kukolnik, N. Polevoy, etc.), a lyrical and emotional drama (I. Turgenev) - with a caustic pamphlet satire (A. Sukhovo-Kobylin, M. Saltykov-Shchedrin). Light, funny and witty vaudevilles are popular (A. Shakhovskoy, N. Khmelnitsky, M. Zagoskin, A. Pisarev, D. Lensky, F.Kony, V. Karatygin and etc.). But it was the 19th century, the time of great Russian literature, that became the “golden age” of Russian drama, giving birth to authors whose works are still included in the golden fund of world theatrical classics.
The first play of a new type was a comedy A. Griboyedova Woe from mind. The author achieves amazing mastery in developing all components of the play: characters (in which psychological realism is organically combined with a high degree of typification), intrigue (where love vicissitudes are inextricably intertwined with civil and ideological conflicts), language (almost the entire play is entirely proverbial, proverbs and idioms, preserved in living speech today).
about the true discovery of Russian drama of that time, which was far ahead of its time and determined the vector of further development of world theater, were the plays A. Chekhov. Ivanov, Gull, Uncle Ivan, Three sisters, The Cherry Orchard don't fit into traditional system dramatic genres and actually refute all theoretical canons of drama. There is practically no plot intrigue in them - in any case, the plot never has an organizing meaning, there is no traditional dramatic scheme: plot - twists and turns - denouement; There is no single “cross-cutting” conflict. Events constantly change their semantic scale: large things become insignificant, and everyday little things grow to a global scale.
Russian drama after 1917. After the October Revolution and the subsequent establishment of state control over theaters, a need arose for a new repertoire that corresponded to modern ideology. However, of the earliest plays, perhaps only one can be named today - Mystery-Buff V. Mayakovsky (1918). Basically, the modern repertoire of the early Soviet period was formed on topical “propaganda”, which lost its relevance within a short period.
A new Soviet drama, reflecting the class struggle, took shape during the 1920s. During this period, such playwrights as L. Seifullina ( Virinea), A. Serafimovich (Maryana, the author's dramatization of the novel Iron Stream), L. Leonov ( Badgers), K. Trenev (Lyubov Yarovaya), B. Lavrenev (Fault), V. Ivanov (Armored train 14-69), V. Bill-Belotserkovsky ( Storm), D. Furmanov ( Mutiny) etc. Their dramaturgy as a whole was distinguished by a romantic interpretation of revolutionary events, a combination of tragedy with social optimism. In the 1930s, V. Vishnevsky wrote a play, the title of which accurately defined the main genre of the new patriotic drama: Optimistic tragedy(this name replaced the original, more pretentious versions - Hymn to sailors And Triumphant tragedy).
The late 1950s - early 1970s are marked by strong individuality A. Vampilova. During his short life he wrote only a few plays: Farewell in June, Eldest son, Duck hunting , Provincial jokes (Twenty minutes with an angel And The case of the master page), Last summer in Chulimsk and unfinished vaudeville Incomparable Tips. Returning to Chekhov's aesthetics, Vampilov determined the direction of development of Russian drama in the next two decades. The main dramatic successes of the 1970s-1980s in Russia are associated with the genre tragicomedies. These were plays E. Radzinsky, L. Petrushevskaya, A. Sokolova, L. Razumovskaya, M. Roshchina, A. Galina, Gr.Gorina, A. Chervinsky, A. Smirnova, V. Slavkina, A. Kazantsev, S. Zlotnikov, N. Kolyada, V. Merezhko, O. Kuchkina and others. Vampilov’s aesthetics had an indirect but tangible influence on the masters of Russian drama. Tragicomic motives are palpable in the plays of that time written by V. Rozov ( Kabanchik), A. Volodin ( Two arrows, Lizard, movie script Autumn marathon), and especially A. Arbuzov ( My feast for the eyes, Happy Days unlucky person, Tales of Old Arbat,In this sweet old house, Winner, Cruel Games). In the early 1990s, playwrights in St. Petersburg created their own association, the Playwright's House. In 2002, the association Golden mask", Teatro.doc and the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater organized the annual festival "New Drama". In these associations, laboratories, and competitions, a new generation of theater writers was formed who became famous in the post-Soviet period: M. Ugarov, O. Ernev, E. Gremina, O. Shipenko, O. Mikhailova, I. Vyrypaev, O. and V. Presnyakov, K. Dragunskaya, O. Bogaev, N. Ptushkina, O. Mukhina, I. Okhlobystin, M. Kurochkin, V. Sigarev, A. Zinchuk , A. Obraztsov, I. Shprits and others.
However, critics note that a paradoxical situation has developed in Russia today: modern theater and modern drama exist, as it were, in parallel, in some isolation from each other. The most high-profile directorial quests of the early 21st century. associated with the production of classical plays. Modern dramaturgy conducts its experiments more “on paper” and in the virtual space of the Internet.
Dramatic works (other gr. action), like epic ones, recreate series of events, the actions of people and their relationships. Like the author of an epic work, the playwright is subject to the “law of developing action.” But there is no detailed narrative-descriptive image in the drama.
The actual author's speech here is auxiliary and episodic. These are lists of characters, sometimes accompanied by brief characteristics, designation of time and place of action; descriptions of the stage situation at the beginning of acts and episodes, as well as comments on individual remarks of the characters and indications of their movements, gestures, facial expressions, intonations (remarks).
All this constitutes the secondary text of a dramatic work. Its main text is a chain of statements by the characters, their remarks and monologues.
Hence some limitations of the artistic possibilities of drama. A writer-playwright uses only part of the visual means that are available to the creator of a novel or epic, short story or story. And the characters of the characters are revealed in drama with less freedom and completeness than in epic. “I perceive drama,” noted T. Mann, “as the art of silhouette and I perceive only the person being told as a three-dimensional, integral, real and plastic image.”
At the same time, playwrights, unlike authors of epic works, are forced to limit themselves to the volume of verbal text that meets the needs of theatrical art. The time of the action depicted in the drama must fit within the strict time frame of the stage.
And the performance in the forms familiar to modern European theater lasts, as is known, no more than three to four hours. And this requires an appropriate size of the dramatic text.
The time of the events reproduced by the playwright during the stage episode is neither compressed nor stretched; characters in the drama exchange remarks without any noticeable time intervals, and their statements, as noted by K.S. Stanislavsky, form a continuous, continuous line.
If with the help of narration the action is captured as something in the past, then the chain of dialogues and monologues in the drama creates the illusion of the present time. Life here speaks as if on its own behalf: between what is depicted and the reader there is no intermediary narrator.
The action is recreated in drama with maximum immediacy. It flows as if before the reader’s eyes. “All narrative forms,” wrote F. Schiller, “transfer the present into the past; everything dramatic makes the past present.”
Drama is oriented towards the demands of the stage. And theater is a public, mass art. The performance directly affects many people, who seem to merge together in responses to what is happening in front of them.
The purpose of drama, according to Pushkin, is to act on the multitude, to engage their curiosity” and for this purpose to capture the “truth of passions”: “Drama was born in the square and was a popular entertainment. People, like children, demand entertainment and action. The drama presents him with unusual, strange incidents. People demand strong sensations. Laughter, pity and horror are the three strings of our imagination, shaken by dramatic art.”
The dramatic genre of literature is especially closely connected with the sphere of laughter, for the theater strengthened and developed in inextricable connection with mass celebrations, in an atmosphere of play and fun. “The comic genre is universal for antiquity,” noted O. M. Freidenberg.
The same can be said about theater and drama of other countries and eras. T. Mann was right when he called the “comedian instinct” “the fundamental basis of all dramatic skill.”
It is not surprising that drama gravitates towards an outwardly spectacular presentation of what is depicted. Her imagery turns out to be hyperbolic, catchy, theatrically bright. “The theater requires exaggerated broad lines both in voice, recitation, and in gestures,” wrote N. Boileau. And this property of stage art invariably leaves its mark on the behavior of the heroes of dramatic works.
“Like he acted out in the theater,” comments Bubnov (“At the Lower Depths” by Gorky) on the frenzied tirade of the desperate Kleshch, who, by unexpectedly intruding into the general conversation, gave it theatrical effect.
Significant (as a characteristic of the dramatic type of literature) are Tolstoy’s reproaches against W. Shakespeare for the abundance of hyperbole, which allegedly “violates the possibility of artistic impression.” “From the very first words,” he wrote about the tragedy “King Lear,” “one can see the exaggeration: the exaggeration of events, the exaggeration of feelings and the exaggeration of expressions.”
In his assessment of Shakespeare's work, L. Tolstoy was wrong, but the idea that the great English playwright was committed to theatrical hyperbole is completely fair. What has been said about “King Lear” can be applied with no less justification to ancient comedies and tragedies, dramatic works of classicism, to the plays of F. Schiller and V. Hugo, etc.
In the 19th-20th centuries, when the desire for everyday authenticity prevailed in literature, the conventions inherent in drama became less obvious, and they were often reduced to a minimum. The origins of this phenomenon are the so-called “philistine drama” of the 18th century, the creators and theorists of which were D. Diderot and G.E. Lessing.
Works of the greatest Russian playwrights of the 19th century. and the beginning of the 20th century - A.N. Ostrovsky, A.P. Chekhov and M. Gorky - they are distinguished by the authenticity of the life forms they recreate. But even when the Playwrights focused on verisimilitude, plot, psychological and actual speech hyperboles were preserved.
Theatrical conventions made themselves felt even in Chekhov’s dramaturgy, which showed the maximum limit of “life-likeness.” Let's take a closer look at final scene"Three Sisters" One young woman, ten or fifteen minutes ago, broke up with her loved one, probably forever. Another five minutes ago found out about the death of her fiancé. And so they, together with the elder, third sister, sum up the moral and philosophical results of the past, reflecting to the sounds of a military march about the fate of their generation, about the future of humanity.
It is hardly possible to imagine this happening in reality. But we don’t notice the implausibility of the ending of “Three Sisters”, since we are accustomed to the fact that drama significantly changes the forms of people’s life.
The above convinces us of the validity of A. S. Pushkin’s judgment (from his already cited article) that “the very essence of dramatic art excludes verisimilitude”; “When reading a poem or a novel, we can often forget ourselves and believe that the incident described is not fiction, but the truth.
In an ode, in an elegy, we can think that the poet depicted his real feelings, in real circumstances. But where is the credibility in a building divided into two parts, one of which is filled with spectators who have agreed?
The most important role in dramatic works belongs to the conventions of verbal self-disclosure of heroes, whose dialogues and monologues, often filled with aphorisms and maxims, turn out to be much more extensive and effective than those remarks that could be uttered in a similar situation in life.
Conventional remarks are “to the side”, which seem to not exist for other characters on stage, but are clearly audible to the audience, as well as monologues pronounced by the characters alone, alone with themselves, which are a purely stage technique for bringing out inner speech (there are many such monologues as V ancient tragedies, and in the dramaturgy of the New Age).
The playwright, setting up a kind of experiment, shows how a person would speak if he expressed his moods with maximum completeness and brightness in the spoken words. And speech in a dramatic work often takes on similarities with artistic, lyrical or oratorical speech: the characters here tend to express themselves like improvisers-poets or masters of public speaking.
Therefore, Hegel was partly right when he viewed drama as a synthesis of the epic principle (eventfulness) and the lyrical principle (speech expression).
Drama has, as it were, two lives in art: theatrical and literary. Constituting the dramatic basis of performances, existing in their composition, a dramatic work is also perceived by the reading public.
But this was not always the case. The emancipation of drama from the stage was carried out gradually - over a number of centuries and was completed relatively recently: in the 18th-19th centuries. World-significant examples of drama (from antiquity to the 17th century) at the time of their creation were practically not recognized as literary works: they existed only as part of the performing arts.
Neither W. Shakespeare nor J.B. Moliere were perceived by their contemporaries as writers. A decisive role in strengthening the idea of drama as a work intended not only for stage production, but also for reading, was played by the “discovery” of Shakespeare as a great dramatic poet in the second half of the 18th century.
In the 19th century (especially in its first half) the literary merits of the drama were often placed above the stage ones. Thus, Goethe believed that “Shakespeare’s works are not for the eyes of the body,” and Griboyedov called his desire to hear the verses of “Woe from Wit” from the stage “childish.”
The so-called Lesedrama (drama for reading), created with a focus primarily on perception in reading, has become widespread. Such are Goethe's Faust, Byron's dramatic works, Pushkin's small tragedies, Turgenev's dramas, about which the author remarked: “My plays, unsatisfactory on stage, may be of some interest in reading.”
There are no fundamental differences between Lesedrama and a play that is intended by the author for stage production. Dramas created for reading are often potentially stage plays. And the theater (including modern) persistently searches and sometimes finds the keys to them, evidence of which is the successful productions of Turgenev’s “A Month in the Country” (primarily this is the famous pre-revolutionary play Art Theater) and numerous (although not always successful) stage readings of Pushkin’s small tragedies in the 20th century.
The old truth remains in force: the most important, main purpose of drama is the stage. “Only during stage performance,” noted A. N. Ostrovsky, “the author’s dramatic invention receives a completely finished form and produces exactly that moral action, the achievement of which the author set himself as a goal.”
Creating a performance based on a dramatic work is associated with its creative completion: the actors create intonation-plastic drawings roles played, the artist designs the stage space, the director develops the mise-en-scène. In this regard, the concept of the play changes somewhat (more attention is paid to some of its aspects, less attention to others), and is often specified and enriched: the stage production introduces new semantic shades into the drama.
At the same time, the principle of faithful reading of literature is of paramount importance for the theater. The director and actors are called upon to convey the staged work to the audience as fully as possible. Fidelity of stage reading occurs when the director and actors deeply comprehend a dramatic work in its main content, genre, and style features.
Stage productions (as well as film adaptations) are legitimate only in cases where there is agreement (even relative) of the director and actors with the range of ideas of the writer-playwright, when stage performers are carefully attentive to the meaning of the work staged, to the features of its genre, the features of its style and to the text itself.
In the classical aesthetics of the 18th-19th centuries, in particular in Hegel and Belinsky, drama (primarily the genre of tragedy) was considered as the highest form of literary creativity: as the “crown of poetry.”
A whole series of artistic eras actually showed themselves primarily in dramatic art. Aeschylus and Sophocles in their heyday ancient culture, Moliere, Racine and Corneille at the time of classicism had no equal among the authors of epic works.
Goethe's work is significant in this regard. For the great German writer, everything was available literary genera, he crowned his life in art with the creation of a dramatic work - the immortal “Faust”.
In past centuries (until the 18th century), drama not only successfully competed with epic, but also often became the leading form of artistic reproduction of life in space and time.
This is due to a number of reasons. Firstly, it played a huge role performing arts, accessible (as opposed to handwritten and printed books) to the widest strata of society. Secondly, the properties of dramatic works (depiction of characters with clearly defined features, reproduction of human passions, attraction to pathos and the grotesque) in “pre-realistic” eras fully corresponded to general literary and general artistic trends.
And although in the XIX-XX centuries. The socio-psychological novel, a genre of epic literature, has moved to the forefront of literature; dramatic works still have a place of honor.
V.E. Khalizev Theory of literature. 1999
Andreev L. Human life. Thought (comparative analysis of the play “Thought” with story of the same name). Ekaterina Ivanovna. (The concept of panpsychism).
Anuj J. Antigone. Medea. Lark. (Woman's Theme)
Arbuzov A.N. Tanya. Tales of Old Arbat.
Aristophanes. Clouds. Lysistrata. (Absolute comedy)
Beckett S. The sound of footsteps. Waiting for Godot. (Stream of Consciousness Drama)
Brecht B. The Threepenny Opera. Mother Courage and her children. (Epic Drama)
Beaumarchais. Marriage of Figaro. (The ideal canon of a classicist play)
Bulgakov M.A. Days of the Turbins. Run. Zoya's apartment.
Volodin A. Five evenings. Elder sister. Lizard.
Vampilov A. Eldest son. Last summer in Chulimsk. Duck hunting.
Goethe I.-G. Faust. (“The Eternal Drama” or the Ideal “Play-to-Read”)
Gogol N.V. Inspector. Marriage. Players. (Mystical symbolism of the phantasm of reality)
Gorin G. A plague on both your houses. The House That Swift Built. (Game reminiscence)
Gorky M. At the bottom. Bourgeois. ( Social drama)
Griboyedov A. Woe from the mind. (The ideal canon of classicism)
Euripides. Medea. (Women's theme)
Ibsen H. Ghosts. Dollhouse. Peer Gynt. ("New Drama")
Ionesco E. Bald singer. Rhinoceros. (Anti-play and anti-theater)
Calderon. Worship of the cross. Life is a dream. Steadfast Prince.
Cornel P. Sid. (Tragedy ideal hero)
Lermontov M.Yu. Masquerade. (Romantic Tragedy Drama)
Lope de Vega. Dog in the manger. Sheep source. (Genre polyphonism)
Maeterlinck M. Blind. Miracle of Saint Anthony. Blue bird.
Moliere J.-B. A tradesman among the nobility. Tartuffe. Don Juan. Scapin's tricks.
Ostrovsky A.N. Dowryless. Snow Maiden. Forest. Guilty without guilt. Warm heart. (“Superfluous people of Russia” on the stage of the Russian theater)
Pushkin A.S. Boris Godunov. Little tragedies.
Radzinsky E. Theater of the times of Nero and Seneca. Conversations with Socrates.
Racine J. Phaedra. ("Psychological Tragedy")
Rozov V.S. Forever alive. (“Pathos without pathos”)
Pirandello L. Six characters in search of an author. (“Theatricality of the play”)
Sophocles Oedipus the King. Oedipus at Colonus. Antigone. (" golden ratio"dramas)
Stoppard T. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. (Tragedy little man)
Sukhovo-Kobylin A.V. Krechinsky's wedding. Case. Death of Tarelkin. (Dramaturgy of Russian cosmism)
Turgenev I.S. A month in the village. Freeloader. (Nuances of psychologism)
Chekhov A.P. Gull. Three sisters. Uncle Ivan. The Cherry Orchard. (Comedy human life)
Shakespeare W. Hamlet. King Lear. Macbeth. A dream in a summer night.
Shaw B. Pygmalion. The house that breaks hearts.
Aeschylus. Persians. Prometheus Chained. ("tragic myth")
V. TOPICS AND QUESTIONS ON THE COURSE “THEORY OF DRAMA”
(indicating personalities)
1. The balance of figurative and expressive principles in drama: the dialectic of “epic” and “lyros” (“musicality” as rhythm and polyphony). Personalities: Hegel, Belinsky, Wagner, Nietzsche.
2. Action as an internal and external form of drama: “imitation of action by action.” Personalities: Aristotle, Brecht.
3. External and internal architectonics of a dramatic work: act-picture-phenomenon; monologue-dialogue-remark-pause.
5. Imaginative and event-based modeling of action in drama. Personalities: Aeschylus, Sophocles, Shakespeare, Pushkin, Chekhov.
6. The nature of dramatic conflict: external and internal conflict.
7. Typology of dramatic conflict.
8. Ways to organize a dramatic conflict along the line: image - idea - character ( actor).
9. Collision and intrigue in the plot development of the play.
10. Structure-forming and structurally meaningful elements of the plot: “vicissitudes”, “recognition”, “motive of choice” and “motive of decision”.
11. Dramatic character: image - hero - character - character - role - image.
12. Character and deep levels of action development: “motive”, “actant models”, “typical” and “archetypal”.
13. Discourse and character: levels and zones of dramatic expression.
14. Poetics of dramatic composition: structural analysis.
15. The problem of the relationship between the compositional elements of drama and the effective (event-based) analysis of the play.
16. Genre nature of drama: comic and tragic.
17. Evolution of the genre: comedy. Personalities: Aristophanes, Dante, Shakespeare, Moliere, Chekhov.
18. Evolution of the genre: tragedy. Personalities: Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Seneca, Shakespeare, Calderon, Corneille, Racine, Schiller.
19. Integration processes in mixed dramatic genres: melodrama, tragicomedy, tragic farce.
20. Evolution of the genre: drama - from “satire” and “naturalistic” to “epic”. Personalities: Diderot, Ibsen, Chekhov, Shaw, Brecht.
21. Evolution of the genre: symbolist drama - from “liturgical” to “mystical”. Personalities: Ibsen, Maeterlinck, Andreev.
22. General evolution of the genre: from drama to “anti-drama” of existentialism and absurdity. Personalities: Sartre, Anouilh, Beckett, Ionesco, Pinter, Mrozhek.
23. Form, style and stylization in dramatic art: era - direction - author.
24. Text, subtext, context in drama. Personalities: Chekhov, Stanislavsky, Nemirovich-Danchenko, Butkevich.
25. “Monodramatic” principle of unfolding action in a classical tragedy. Personalities: Sophocles (“Oedipus the King”), Shakespeare (“Hamlet”), Calderon (“The Steadfast Prince”), Corneille (“Cid”), Racine (“Phaedra”).
26. The free principle of self-developing action in a dramatic work. Personalities: Shakespeare (“King Lear”), Pushkin (“Boris Godunov”).
27. Dramatic character in a comic situation: sitcoms, comedies of errors, comedy of characters. Personalities: Menander, Terence, Shakespeare, Moliere, Gozzi, Goldoni, Beaumarchais.
28. Principles of action development in comedy: tempo-rhythmic organization of the play. Personalities: Shakespeare (“The Taming of the Shrew”), Moliere (“The Tricks of Scapin”), Beaumarchais (“The Marriage of Figaro”).
29. Paradoxes and contradictions in the drama of romanticism (Musset).
30. “Fantastic realism” in Russian drama: from the grotesque to the phantasmagoria of “cosmism”. Personalities: Gogol (“The Inspector General”), Sukhovo-Kobylin (“The Death of Tarelkin”).
31. Comparative analysis research method naturalism (Zola, Daudet, Boborykin) and artistic method Russian " natural school"(Gogol, Turgenev, Sukhovo-Kobylin).
32. Organization of action in symbolist drama. Personalities: Maeterlinck (“Sister Beatrice”), Andreev (“Life of a Man”).
33. Retrospective organization of action in analytical drama. Personalities: Sophocles (“Oedipus the King”), Ibsen (“Ghosts”).
34. Principles of constructing an epic drama (the concept of a double system). Personalities: Brecht (“Mother Courage and her children”).
35. The relationship between theme and idea in intellectual drama. Using the example of analysis works of the same name: “Medea” by Euripides and Anouilh; "Antigone" by Sophocles and Anouilh.
37. Principles of interaction between plot and plot in Griboedov’s comedy “Woe from Wit.” (Using the example of V.E. Meyerhold’s production of “Woe to Wit.”)
38. Compositional principles in the drama of the absurd. Personalities: Beckett (“Waiting for Godot”), Ionesco (“The Bald Singer”).
39. Myth, fairy tale, reality in Schwartz’s plays. "Dragon", "Ordinary Miracle".
40. Myth, history, reality and personality in Radzinsky’s plays (“Theater of the Times of Nero and Seneca”, “Conversations with Socrates”).
41. Internal conflict as a way of poeticizing heroism and everyday life in Soviet drama. Personalities: Vishnevsky (“Optimistic Tragedy”), Volodin (“Five Evenings”), Vampilov (“Duck Hunt”).
42. Play theater in Gorin’s plays (“The House That Swift Built”, “A Plague on Both Your Houses”, “The Jester Balakirev”).
43. Dramatic transformations " feminine theme"(from the tragedy of Euripides to the plays of Petrushevskaya, Razumovskaya, Sadur).