Classical Drama

 The dramatic art has, always, been closely associated with portraying and reflecting a society in its spirit. It is conditioned by the social environment/setting in which it is produced, and it tends to reproduce the social life in all of its intricacies. Thus, drama is perceived to be the constructor as well as reflector of the social realism. It has been the subject of serious academic scholarship for years and is regarded as a suitable literary genre to investigate the issues of critical importance related to moral, social and political aspects of a civilisation. It has been ranked as the highest form of creative and intellectual products which can be used as a suitable epistemological site to understand general structure and outlook of a society. This assertion gains weightage keeping in view the general propensity in human nature to represent its intellectual consciousness and abstract perceptions in the form of a concrete art for critical reception and appropriation of the community.

What is Drama?

The word drama, in the typical sense of the term, refers to ‘action or performance’. Greek philosopher Aristotle, in his seminal work “Poetics”, states that dramatic poets “represent people in action” as opposed to a third person narrative or a blend of a narrative and dialogue which we find common in a novel (a long story in written form), another significantly important genre and type of literature. The Greek term for drama is ‘dran’, which means ‘doing’, ‘action’, and ‘performance’. However, Aristotle says the verb ‘dran’ did not belong to Attic dialect spoken at Athens rather the verb ‘prattein’ was used to signify both action and/or performance. Additionally, both Aristotle and Plato viewed drama as an example of ‘mimesis’ which signifies ‘imitation’ or ‘representation’ but with a difference in viewpoint. Plato considered mimesis as a substandard or inferior form of representation which must be avoided in an ideal state as it is performing the role or putting oneself into the character of another which may serve to be morally inferior or even morally deteriorating. On the other hand, Aristotle, who was the passionate pupil of Plato, appreciated the artistic value of mimesis and regarded it as essential to human nature and fundamental to human learning besides being pleasure oriented. This suggests that historically drama originated or initiated in the form of stage or theatrical performances and actions as writing was a later creation. Thus, initially, drama was intended to be played in front of the audience and the success of a drama was heavily dependent on the presentation of the characters besides an interesting story and gripping plot (main part of drama). Moreover, ‘performance’ is not only restricted to Greek culture and civilization only, rather all human societies and various sociocultural groups exhibit a marked preference for performances which can be used in a wide range of social contexts.