Dramatic Genre

1. Dramatic Genre Mr. Bradley Robbins 6th Period

2. Definition of Tragedy • Tragedies are serious plays, usually depicting the downfall of the protagonist.

3. Freytag's Pyramid

4. Types of Tragedy • Revenge tragedy (tragedy of blood): the plot is centred on the tragic hero’s attempts at taking revenge on the murderer of a close relative; in these plays the hero tries to ‘right a wrong’

5. Types of Tragedy • Domestic tragedy: a play typically about middle-class or lower middle-class life, concerned with the domestic sphere

6. Types of Tragedy • Heroic tragedy: Mostly popular during the English Restoration, heroic tagedy or tragicomedy usually used bombastic language and exotic settings to depict a noble heroic protagonist and their torment in choosing between love and patriotic duties

7. Definition of Comedy • drama chiefly written to amuse its audience • a story ending in happiness

8. Types of Comedy • Romantic comedy: Based on Greek New Comedy and Roman commedia erudita, a composite genre which centres mostly on the vicissitudes of young lovers, who get happily united in the end

9. Types of Comedy • Comedy of humours: a form of drama typical at the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th century; based on the medieval and Renaissance belief that people’s actions are governed by their dominant bodily humour (blood, phlegm, bile or black bile), its characters are ruled by a particular passion or trait.

10. Types of Comedy • Satirical comedy: a form of comedy whose main purpose is to expose the vices and shortcomings of society and of people representing that society

11. Types of Comedy • Comedy of Manners - depicts a stylish society, mainly the middle and upper classes, its focus is on elegance, with characters of fashion and rank

12. Types of Comedy • Sentimental Comedy - appeared as a reaction against the immoral and licentious comedy of manners, which emphasised vices and faults of people; sentimental comedy focused on the virtues of private life, with simple and honourable characters.

13. Types of Comedy • Farce: a form of low comedy, whose intention is to provoke simple mirth in the form of roars of laughter (and not smiles); it uses exaggerated physical action, character and absurd situation, with improbable events, a complex plot, with events rapidly succeeding one another, pushing character and dialogue into the background.

14. Types of Comedy • Black comedy: (translated from the French comédie noire) a form of drama which displays cynicism and disillusionment, human beings without hope or convictions, their lives controlled by fate or unknown and incomprehensible powers

15. Other genres • Tragicomedy - used to refer to tragedies with a happy ending (also called ‘mixed tragedies’). Later it was also used for tragedies with comic subplots

16. Other genres • Problem plays - have a formal comic ending, and could therefore be classified as comedies, had not their serious tone and content defy such an approach. Also, a dramatic form which originated in France in the 19th century. The plays belonging to this genre deal with a specific problem and usually offer a solution.

17. Other genres • Masque: an elaborate form of courtly entertainment, combining poetic drama, song, dance and music • History play: also ‘chronicle play’, a play based on recorded history rather than myth or legend; in the centre there is often not an individual hero but rather the fate and the future of the nation

18. Quiz tomorrow!!! • STUDY, STUDY, STUDY!!!!!!