Conventions Of Drama

Through the centuries, the conventions of drama have been altered in many different ways. These conventions are the setting, plot, characters and staging. The main factor which has been a dominant force during the changes of conventions has been the society. The society present during the time in which a play was written had a direct influence on the plot and characters. This is because drama is defined as a representation of life.

Four plays which have been selected from Greek, Elizabethan, Restoration and Modern times can be analysed to show and represent the changes of drama. These plays are “Oedipus the King';, “Macbeth';, “The Way of the World'; and “A Doll’s House';.

The early origins of drama came from the Greek. Drama in Greece,450BC was not readily available to the society. Plays were only put on twice a year during great religious celebrations. At these festivals, where the plays were performed competitively, the main focus of theme was about the Gods. These Gods were superior to everyone and represented wealth and power. The fact that they were immortal signified their importance and dominance. Greek drama was also based on the aspects of tragedy and dramatic irony. The tragedy meant that the play often ended with a noble person being destroyed by the Gods. The noble person was led by his own downfalls or flaws which often resulted in his death. This is evident in the story of “Oedipus the King'; where Oedipus tries to outwit the prophecy which the Gods predicted, but fails to do so and ends up in exile. The interesting technique of the dramatic irony in Greek plays meant that the audience had prior knowledge of the play and knew the events that will take place before the characters. The staging of plays in Greece took place in huge amphitheatres the size of large sports stadiums. These were used to accommodate the whole city. Despite the enormous amount of people watching the plays, the acoustics in the amphitheatre were excellent, so good that you could hear a pin drop. All the characters acting in the play had to wear bold and bright masks on their face which concealed their own features. The main purpose of these masks was to help the audience distinguish the type of character from their expression. Such elaborate masks were used because of the large number of people sitting nea...

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... the interests of ordinary people.

The role of women in drama has evolved in a way which could still be improved. They have gone from being the Goddesses of love and desire, to characters played by men, to characters only suitable to be played by middle class women to eventually characters played by all women but having no authority or power. This construction has been influenced by the men who have written the plays because they fear that the women characters may become too superior and that audiences won’t enjoy such a play. The construction of weak females has also been influenced by general society which simply accepts that women are useless and don’t deserve any role other than to seduce men and serve their desire.

Overall drama seeks to represent the truth about life. It does not fully complete this task because it is only able to construct versions of life which are symbolic. Drama is not the same as life because it has developed its own language and conventions for picturing reality. Drama can never be the absolute truth because different values are always being represented by different ideologies and different people may read these in different ways.