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What is drama in English literature?
Drama is the portrayal of fictional or non-fictional events through the performance of written dialogue. To define drama in simple terms, it simply means stories being brought to life by actors and events on a stage.
The definition of drama, according to Aristotle, is a poetic composition acted in front of audiences in a theatre. Through the combination of performance, music, dance, props, etc, the audience is able to feel like a part of the action. This is what makes the drama genre a unique genre of literature. Of course, you can also read drama in form of a written play. However, you will only get the full impression of what the author intended to show when it is performed. Drama can also be performed in films or on the radio.
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Types of drama in literature:
To understand what is drama in literature, an understanding of its different types is necessary. There are various types of drama, but only the four main types of drama will be examined below. They are comedy, tragedy, tragicomedy, and melodrama. These contain different characteristics of drama, which include, plot, characters, music, dialogue, etc. Also, most plays contain elements of some or all of these different genres.
Comedy
Comedy is a type of drama that aims to make the audience laugh. Its tone is light and it mostly has a happy ending. The classic conception of comedy came from the Ancient Greek theatre, where comedy first emerged as a form of drama. Comedy can be further divided into subcategories, for example, lampoon, farce, satire, black comedy, etc. Each type of comedy has its audience. Interestingly, such preferences may also depend on the cultural background of people.
Tragedy
Tragedy is a type of drama in which the protagonist or hero is brought down by his/her flaws. Murders, deaths, insanity, and pain are among the most common ideas in tragedies. Main characters usually have some kind of weakness or defect that causes their downfall. Tragedy first appeared in the theatre of Ancient Greece. Like comedy, it lived through the Roman Empire, Medieval times, Renaissance, and other eras. The aim of tragedy, as stated by Aristotle, is to create a release of certain emotions from the audience, to arouse in them sensations of pity and fear, so that they leave the theatre with an understanding of the ways of gods and men.
Tragicomedy
Tragicomedy is a special kind of drama that combines the features of tragedy and comedy. This means that it may be sad but will have a happy ending, or it may be serious with some elements of humor emerging throughout the whole play. Unlike comedy and tragedy, tragicomedy emerged a bit later, in the times of the Roman Empire. Roman dramatist Plautus was the first to write a tragicomedy and to use the term. In his play Amphitryon, he used the lightheartedness of comedy but chose gods and kings as the main characters. This was quite revolutionary of him. Before Plautus, there were strict rules about writing drama, it was either comedy or tragedy. These genres were never mixed.
Melodrama
Melodrama is the last one of the four types of drama we will look at today. It is a kind of drama in which everything is hyperbolized. Usually, themes depicted in melodramas are simple and without any unpredictable plot twists. There are quite a lot of stereotypes in such dramas. However, the main point of a melodrama is not to tell a story but to awaken feelings in the audience. Melodramas are mostly love stories with beautiful heroines, charming heroes, and scary villains.
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