Literature Drama Analysis: Tragedy and Other Serious Drama

Hi Artists,
Sudah memasuki bulan Drama nih. Pasti mau main drama atau disuruh analysis bagian-bagian drama ya? hehee
But luckily you are here, Jadi Bli Made mau bagi sedikit mengenai One topic which part of drama. yup Tragedy and other serious drama. Namanaya aja uda Tragedi ya pasti tragis banget nasib peminnya. Anyway udah gak sabar mau cekidot, monggo langsung di baca semoga terinspirasi menjadi artis tragedy selanjutnya melampui anak buah mbak susana hehehee.

(The Story of Tree team)

Tragedy and Other Serious Drama

On this chapter will be focused about the tragedy and other serious drama. We know that there are several types of drama but one of the best known is drama tragedy or serious drama which invented on thirteenth century and become popular until right now.

            Tragedy drama is a form of drama based on human suffering that invokes an accompanying catharsis or pleasure in audiences. While many cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, the term tragedy often refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of Western civilization. hat tradition has been multiple and discontinuous, yet the term has often been used to invoke a powerful effect of cultural identity and historical continuity—"the Greeks and the Elizabethans, in one cultural form; Hellenes and Christians, in a common activity," as Raymond Williams puts it. so it can be said that tragedy assumes that the universe is different to human concerns, and often cruel or malevolent. Sometimes the innocent appear to suffer while the evil prosper.

            While serious drama emphasizes the somber aspect of life, and the highest form of such drama is considered to be tragedy. An example as the play is Antigone by the Greek dramatist Sophocles. Tragedy is divided into two types of drama the first one is traditional tragedy while the other is modern tragedy which both of them are classified as serious drama. For the further information about the traditional and modern tragedy will be explained bellow.

Traditional tragedy

            In his “Poetics,” Aristotle identifies the elements of classical tragedy, based primarily on the work of the playwrights Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles. Traditional tragedy is the imitation of a single action, in which a hero of high status falls from fortune to misfortune. Was produced are Grace in the fifth century B.C on England in last sixteenth and early seventeenth and in France in seventeenth century. The fall must occur because of a “tragic flaw,” or some error or shortcoming in an otherwise good protagonist, and not by vice or depravity. The purpose of tragedy, in Aristotle’s view, is to provoke pity and terror in the audience, leading to a catharsis, or cleansing of these emotions. And traditional tragedy characterize into differences 5 types they are:

a.       Commonly the hero or heroin of the play is an extraordinary person: a king, a queen, a general, or a nobleman or it can be said that those character is a person of stature. The example in Greek drama are Antigone, Electra, Oedipus, Agamemnon, Creon, and Orestes. They are royal families.

b.      The second characteristics is the central figures of the play are caught in a series of tragic circumstances: Oedipus without realizing it, murders his father and marries his mother. In traditional tragedy, the universe seems determined to trap the hero or heroin in a fateful web.

c.       The situation become irretrievable, which there is no turning back, no way out. The figures of tragedy find themselves in a situation from each there is no honorable avenue of escape.

d.      The hero or heroine accepts responsibility for hi ot her action and also shows a willingness to suffer and an immense capacity for his and her action must be true because true whether the character are praiseworthy and they can endure calamilities and fight back.

e.       The language that used is verse which those language that using as communication is explained briefly.

Modern Tragedy

            Whereas in classical tragedy, the protagonist is of noble or prestigious standing, modern tragedy is more likely to focus on the “common man.” A modern audience is expected to relate to, rather than look up to, the protagonist; and while the classical tragic hero’s death is an event to be collectively mourned onstage, the modern tragic hero often dies unrecognized as a hero. The modern tragedy is also more likely to focus on society, rather than fate or fortune, as that which oppresses the hero. However, the modern tragedy retains a highly solemn tone and focus on matters of grave and ultimate importance, features common to tragedy throughout its history. It can be said that a play in which something truly sad happens and which inspires pity and fear in the audience. Modern tragedy also a tragedy where the characters are the modern people the face a difficult challenge on certain issues in society, those issues will lead the tragedy happens. Modern tragedy has their own characteristics they are focuses less on fate amd supranatural forces, focuses more to the environment and the choices that have made, focuses to non verbal expression and more on expression through subtext.  There are two important elements of modern tragedy that have not changed they are; the intensity and the contribution of many characters.

Heroic Drama

            Heroic drama is a type of play popular during the Restoration era in England, distinguished by both its verse structure and its subject matter. The subgenre of heroic drama evolved through several works of the middle to later 1660s; John Dryden's The Indian Emperour (1665). The term "heroic drama" was invented by Dryden for his play, The Conquest of Granada (1670). For the Preface to the printed version of the play, Dryden argued that the drama was a species of epic poetry for the stage, that, as the epic was to other poetry, so the heroic drama was to other plays. Consequently, Dryden derived a series of rules for this type of play. First, the play should be composed in heroic verse (closed couplets in iambic pentameter). Second, the play must focus on a subject that pertains to national foundations, mythological events, or important and grand matters. Third, the hero of the heroic drama must be powerful, decisive, and, like Achilles, dominating even when wrong. Other heroic dramatists were Nathaniel Lee (The Rival Queens) and Thomas Otway, whose Venice Preserved is a fine tragedy that transcends the usual limitations of the form. We also owe indirectly to heroic tragedy two very amusing parodies of the type: the Duke of Buckingham's The Rehearsal and Henry Fielding's The Tragedy of Tragedies, or the Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great. In the story of theater, the group of plays I am heroic drama occupies a large and important niche, cutting as it does, across Asia and western civilization, and cross periods from the Greek golden age to the present.

Bourgeois or Domestics Drama

            Bourgeois is refers to people of the middle or lower middle class rather than the aristocracy, and domestics means that the plays often deal with the problem of the family or the home rather than great affair of state. It can be said that expresses and focuses on the realistic everyday lives of middle or lower classes in a certain society, generally referring to the post-Renaissance eras, The characters, their lives, and the events that occur within the show are usually classified as 'ordinary' events, lives, and characters, but this does not limit the extent of what domestic drama can represent. Domestic drama does, however, take the approach in which it “concerns people much like ourselves, taken from the lower and middle classes of society, who struggle with everyday problems such as poverty, sickness, crime, and family strife . Bourgeois tragedy is a form that developed in 18th-century Europe. It was a fruit of the Enlightenment and the emergence of the bourgeois class and its ideals. It is characterised by the fact that its protagonists are ordinary citizens. The first true bourgeois tragedy was an English play, George Lillo's The London Merchant; or, the History of George Barnwell, which was first performed in 1731. Usually, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's play Miss Sara Sampson, which was first produced in 1755, is said to be the earliest Bürgerliches Trauerspiel in Germany. From these beginnings, bourgeois or domestics drama developed through the balance of the eighteenth century and the whole of the nineteenth, until it received a place of prominence in the works of Ibsen, Strindberg, and more recents writer such as Arthur Miller and etc.

Melodrama   

            Melodrama was produced in eighteenth century on Greek and at the end of eighteenth century was developed in France. As the name Melodrama came from two words they are Melos-Drama melos means music or song while drama means drama so melodrama is used to increase emotions or to signify characters. Melodrama is exaggerated theater which come to use the term melodramatic as an expression of disapproval. Melodrama has much in common with all form of serious drama, and in many case, the difference lies more in degree and emphasizes than anything else and melodrama deal with sensational and romantics topics that appeal to the emotions. Melodrama generally strives in fright or horror. This types of melodrama usually ends in different two types or ways the first ways is the victim are maimed or murdered and the second ways is after the dangerous episodes, the victim is finally rescued.

            Melodrama has divided into five types, the first one is disaster melodramas which this drama focus on natural disaster like earthquake, tsunami, landslide and etc. then animal melodramas is about animal, third one is nautical melodramas which about English popular in the 1820’s until 1830’s mostly about navy, army and sailor. Then the fourth one is domestic melodrama is about more serious subject matter they are adultery and romantics. And the last one is sensation melodrama which emerging from sensation novel in 1860’s and 1870’s especially about love and murder novel. The plot if the melodrama explained started with ample tension, horror, mistery, climax at the end of the act and signifies that the evil is punished and good character is rewarded. The character of the melodramas also classified as the fuction they are the high level are the hero and the heroin itself which has good manner and character and the bad one called Viallin and the lower level is viallin accomplish or the useless character.

            In melodrama emphasize is on suspense and excitement, the good and bad character are clearly known and the main character is always living in danger. So melodrama is dedicated to results and will sacrifice reality and logic in order to achieve them. So in melodrama we identify strongly with the character and we know that in the end.

            In conclusion, tragedy and the other serious drama was invented in  Greek at late of thirteenth century which become popular and influenced by some famous artist and writer on this world. Tragedy itself has divided into two types they are traditional tragedy which was a conventional or common tragedy which the story is familiar while the modern tragedy already developed into the modern and new one with so many tragedy dramas invented such as melodrama, domestic drama, and heroic drama those three called serious drama and still exist until right now.