It refers to poetry in the form of drama, also known as poetic drama. The origin of drama poetry provides clues for its basic characteristics. The origin of western drama has two aspects, one is the festival in ancient Greece, and the other is the church ceremony in the middle ages. Greek drama evolved from the traditional chorus in commemoration of Dionysus. Later, a respondent and a questioner were added. These two people (or more) make up an actor. Later, they not only asked each other questions, but also took actions to imitate what happened. The question and answer between these actors originally appeared in the form of poetry. The reason is clear, because poetry itself, as a part of the celebration ceremony, existed before the drama came into being. On this basis, the Greek tragedy gradually developed.
The evaluation of any drama depends on its performance effect; Only by watching the performance of a play can we have an accurate understanding of it; This is especially true of poetry and drama. A complicated question is whether translating a poetic drama with prose will be seriously distorted; For example, which version of King Oedipus translated by Ye Zhi in prose or King Oedipus translated by Gilbert Murray in poetry is closer to Sophocles' original work? This kind of problem generally depends on the performance effect. A student troupe performed birds in Greek for non-Greeks, or a professional troupe performed Lucius Terrate translated into the audience's language. Who can better express the original intention of aristophanes's plays? Here, it is beneficial to emphasize the quality of the troupe itself and the main plays again. At present, famous theatrical troupes in Paris, Milan, London and Vienna have kept the works of Moliere, Gordoni, Shakespeare and Schiller in their plays. Their performances show their traditional style and experimental innovation to varying degrees. Drama is more dependent on constant evaluation than other arts; Every performance needs improvement and innovation. At the same time, since the invention of printing, drama has appeared in the form of books for people to read widely, and no matter how colorful the stage atmosphere designed by the director is, the most essential demand of drama poetry is its language.
Which poetic style is suitable for writing plays? The answer to this question varies from country to country and from time to time. Generally speaking, the tone of a work should be determined by the whole script, not just by some touching fragments. When King Lear learned that his daughter Cordelia had died, he cried sadly: "You will never come back, forever, forever!" " "The effect of this famous line depends on the effect of many plots in the whole play: he was headstrong at first, then angry in the wilderness, turned to pity and regret for Cordelia, and faced the tragic and horrible scene of his daughter's death. Taken out of context and out of the context of the plot, this line in King Lear is not very touching and not necessarily poetic; But the rhythm of the whole play made it rise to the peak of poetry. In contrast, it is a line in Ibsen's Ghost. At the end of Ghost, Oswald, who suffers from syphilis, becomes more and more mentally retarded. He muttered, "mom, give me the sun ... I want the sun, I want the sun." "Here, his mother, Mrs. Owen, wants to know whether she can be cruel enough to kill a person with poison. No matter how sympathetic the scene is, this line has rhythm, but it is not poetic; Because the whole play is written in prose, the expression is more practical. At the other extreme, at the end of the prodigal son's journey, a group of quartets issued such a warning: "For lazy and lazy people, the devil has found them a job to do;" Here you are, dear sir; Beautiful lady, find you a job. "This passage is obviously both poetic and suitable for stage performance. However, opera does not belong to the category of drama poetry, because opera belongs to the type of music as the medium of expression, and music replaces the repetition of language activities. Many operas rely on simple words to improve their performances. On the other hand, although the lines are full of poetry, they are not suitable for stage performances. For example, in Milton's Samson, Samson cried sadly for his blindness:
Ah, it's dark, it's dark, during the day.
Irretrievable darkness;
Without the sun, the sun will never appear again.
Although this line expresses Samson's grief, it lacks dramatic action when performing on the stage. After many experimental performances, Samson was proved unsuitable for stage performance. It is a play printed in books for people to read.
Pure drama poetry is very rare, and there are few works like King Oedipus, which fully conforms to Aristotle's definition of tragedy. Although there is no exact boundary between the various types of drama poems, they do have their own characteristics. In addition to the general nature of poetry, drama poetry plays a role in maintaining and strengthening the stage performance, which prose can not achieve, whether it is praising the sublime or satirizing the ugly when reading on the stage. Every performance, but also to establish a certain rhythm; If the actor's lines and actions can conform to the beat, the performance effect will be enhanced accordingly.
Fidra is a neoclassical tragedy written by French playwright Racine in the17th century, which was written in two lines popular at that time. It describes the eternal theme of love, referring to the mother's love for her adopted son. Racine is famous for using a few words, but he can fully explore complex topics with a few but accurate words. Therefore, it is necessary to describe complex psychological activities, and the simpler the external intervention, the better: let personality determine fate. It is necessary to show the inevitable outcome of the characters with clear logical evolution. The language used by Racine in Fidra is sad, elegant and detached, which not only describes the inner activities of individual characters, but also shows a certain type of personality. Within the scope of the theme, we try our best to use language to create various changes, so that poetry is harmonious and beautiful, with subtle charm. For example, when Fidra poured out his inner anguish to his close friends, he used Alexander lattice to express his deep affection and couldn't stop; She also strengthened the power of words through tiny gestures, and skillfully cooperated with the stage scene to express her feelings, thus enhancing the effect of lines. In contrast, when Robert Lowell translated Fidra into an English drama, he added unnecessary roles and excessive words, which made the revelation of this scene become a loud cry and failed to improve the artistic effect accordingly. Poetry is similar to architectural art, and it often wins with precision. The characteristic of French poetry is that it is deliberately refined in language, so that the passionate * * * will not rush and become vulgar curses. Fidra is an example.
Tragedy can evolve into other types. Sometimes the concise language in the play is difficult to express feelings, and the characters in the play are in trouble, which leads to the farce of the plot; For example, Dryden's heroic play Oren Zeebe. Sometimes, simple poetic language is difficult to express the strong exaggeration required by drama, and it needs the support of music to produce opera; For example, Verdi adapted from Schiller's original opera Don Carlos. Sometimes, in order to tell the audience the religious content directly, chorus and song and dance can be arranged in the play; This is the difference between Hippotos of euripides and Fidra of Racine. Sometimes, the protagonist of a poetic drama is an ordinary person, so poetry will adopt popular language commonly used by people; For example, the Spanish poet Lope de Vega's punishment was not revenge. This kind of drama can further evolve into a prose tragedy, such as Desire under the Elms by Eugene O 'Neill, a modern American playwright. Sometimes, the language of poetic drama is not suitable for stage performance, and it becomes a script for reading only, or further evolves into a ballet without language expression; For example, Jean Cocqueteaux adapted the ballet Fidra from Racine's works. The various evolutions listed above can also be combined to produce complex changes. But generally speaking, poetic language must play the role of forming and dominating the plot, otherwise it will break away from the routine of drama and produce new types.
If tragedy is to describe and analyze some incredible things, then comedy is to expose people's extravagance and false conceit. So the language of comedy is always exaggerated and grotesque. For example, Ben Jonson's The Fox describes three people visiting a rich man who pretended to be dead with gifts, and each of them tried to be the only heir. The characters in the play deceive themselves and others, and it is inevitable that they will be divorced from the facts and blow their own horn. In line with this, their unfounded wishes are ridiculous. Because Jonson can use blank poems freely, some scenes don't turn into shouting. Tragedy must cover up the uncontrollable fate of mankind; On the other hand, comedy must expose cheaters. In terms of tone, from aristophanes to Moliere, comedy terms are different. Comedy can also evolve into many types like tragedy. Similar to the evolution of tragedy into opera, comedy can also evolve into a type that pays more attention to images than poetry, such as 17 century mask drama and 20th century musical comedy. If the plot is family life and the language is popular, it will evolve into a folk comedy. Another example is that tragedy can evolve into ballet without language expression, and comedy can also evolve into mime, burlesque and circus acrobatics performed by clowns. However, these forms do not belong to the category of drama poetry at all.
The above is an overview of the development of drama itself. Let's talk about this development process roughly in chronological order. Western drama originated from the festive ceremony in ancient Greece, and tragedy originated from the celebration scene in memory of Dionysus. In ancient Greece, it was customary to hold drama competitions regularly, and the winning author could win prizes; From the large-scale open-air theater preserved so far, you can imagine the grand performance at that time. When the tragedy is staged, there is a chorus in the back and a masked actor in front. The scene is spectacular. The chorus is divided into three sections, and the melody is complex and changeable; The actor's dialogue mainly uses Alexander lattice. It is said that one of the three great tragic poets in Greece, * * *, wrote 282 works, but most of them have been lost, and only 3 1 plays have been circulated so far. These works show that the three poets have different styles and their own characteristics. Generally speaking, the works of Aeschylus, the first tragic poet, are simple in plot structure and stage action, but still show solemn and gorgeous scenes in poetry. Sophocles, the second tragic poet, adopted a more personal language, full of irony. When performing his works, we should fully understand the meaning of lines and actions with the development of the story, so as to improve the dramatic effect. Euripides, the third tragic poet, has more colorful tastes. He mainly describes psychology, describing the suffering and pain of tragic characters, especially women. However, people have different views on the behavior of some of his tragic characters, such as Arctius, which is still a controversial work.
When and where comedy originated is uncertain. Aristophanes * * * wrote 44 works, and only 1 1 has survived to this day. His works are very exaggerated in language and action, mocking people's humiliation and pursuing impossible extravagant hopes, such as flying into the sky on the back of a beetle. However, most of these plays end in happy scenes, so that those ridiculous people can satisfy their wishes in one way or another after experiencing unpredictable difficulties. Aristophanes was an early comic poet, and most of his works criticized the current shortcomings, so he adopted a realistic approach. Greek comedies in the middle period obviously followed this feature and still paid attention to the description of the real society. Late comedies, also known as new comedies, still maintain the characteristics of realism, but their main contents are family life and love stories. The representative of the new comedy is Minand; He wrote 105 comedies, and only two complete plays and four copies have survived to this day. His poems are beautiful, close to spoken English. He is good at highlighting the images of typical characters in his works and letting them express their characteristics through popular buzzwords. However, due to the limited popularity of these buzzwords, TV dramas that use them often become obsolete soon. Ancient Roman dramatists Plautus and Terence imitated Minand's works, and their plot structures were full of similar plots and contradictory purposes. Although the two playwrights have different styles, their creative themes are the same. They are all stories about clever slaves, lost children, boasters and willful and indulgent sons. Their language is very free and loose, divorced from the provisions of poetic method, and a large number of proverbs were used in their works, which made the translators of later generations extremely embarrassed. Generally speaking, most people who are interested in such works are social historians, not drama appreciators. Seneca, a Roman tragic writer, wrote nine works on the theme of Greek mythology, but they were mainly not for performances, only for a few people to read, so his fame was limited. His works have a greater influence on later generations than his achievements at that time. /kloc-in the 0/7th century, Roman dramatists had more influence on European drama creation than Greek dramatists.
The existing historical data show that after Europe entered the Middle Ages, almost all dramas disappeared. With the establishment of Christianity, drama developed from the religious ceremony of the church. An example of the early Christian era is the performance of Easter stories. After the "angel" asked questions, other laymen answered. This is the embryonic form of drama in the Christian period, and later developed into religious dramas such as "miracle drama" and "moral drama". These plays are mainly performed by the church and are very popular, but few works have been handed down. Later, due to the in-depth development of the Renaissance, profound changes have taken place in all aspects of society, and the face of drama has also taken on a new look. 15 and 16 centuries, from the court to the citizen class, there was a wide interest in the emerging drama, and talented dramatists and excellent actors appeared one after another, competing for novelty and beauty. These factors combined to make European tragedies and comedies present the most prosperous scene since the classical times in the 7th century. Writers and theaters all over the world not only imitate classic works, but also advocate innovation, transplantation and transformation, and strive to create beautiful dramatic poems in their own languages. This kind of inheritance and innovation are flourishing and intertwined, and it is difficult to simply summarize them with a certain tendency. Due to the different emphasis of creative activities, the tendency of French drama is mainly neoclassicism, while the situation in Britain is more complicated.
/kloc-In the middle of the 6th century, Goethe Podaak, the first official tragedy in Britain, came out. The play adopts the style of blank verse. This poetic style later became the basic form of English drama poetry, but the scripts written with it at that time seemed clumsy and stiff when they were performed on the stage. Marlowe, a poet, greatly improved blank verse, making it a soft and comfortable expression tool. His play Timur, with a loud and magnificent voice, shows the ambition of a conqueror, emphasizing that human ambition is not to limit one's own desires, but to dominate everything. Although Elizabethan poetry was relatively free, writers all followed the formal rules of grammar, rhetoric and logic formulated according to the classical tradition during the Renaissance. However, these restrictions later turned the works of some second-rate writers into popular dramas, attracting audiences with sensational stage movements and words. This tendency has been revealed in Kidd's seneca-colored Spanish tragedy. Shakespeare inherited the creative activities of early playwrights, but shine on you was better than Lan, showing great creativity. This kind of creativity has indeed reached a surprisingly perfect level, which dwarfs many accomplished writers. He has a good command of language. He has broken all kinds of commandments and made many improvements. At that time, there were other writers who wrote Hamlet stories based on Danish historical legends, but only his Hamlet stood out in the drama world, showing its outstanding talent. His tragedies are vast, creating all kinds of characters and showing the inner world, thoughts and feelings of all walks of life. He also skillfully made some scattered comments on the plot through some characters, making the plot more colorful. Shakespeare's poetry is also manifested in that he gives different languages to all kinds of characters in the tragedy, from formal comments to street slang, which are suitable for their respective identities, while maintaining the poetic harmony of the whole play. Shakespeare's creative activities continue to develop and never stop, and it is difficult to summarize his creative characteristics in any one work. However, in the use of language, his poetry rhythm is more and more free, and his vocabulary is more and more simple; Some prose sentences used in drama are realistic and humorous, and their subtleties are really beyond the expression of poetry.
Shakespeare's comedies also have great achievements, from Falstaff's noisy scenes in pubs to various scenes, which are all true and credible. He is good at writing comedies adapted from legendary stories. Apart from his early works, he rarely created the bizarre comedies that Ben Jonson liked to write. Jonson's comedy plot is divorced from reality and the language is confusing, which is hard to believe. But few other writers can match Jonson's ability to master languages. Therefore, even in the era of James I, comedy no longer pays attention to exaggerated poetry, but gradually turns to realistic style and prose skills. Tragedy after Shakespeare tends to show family trivia, focusing on describing morbid psychology. Except for Webster and Ford, most playwrights' poems are full of sadness and sentimentality. Dramatic poetry has declined. 1642 After the National Assembly passed a decree to close the theater, the play was suspended for nearly 20 years. However, this interval cleared the way for the birth of the new drama. The style of drama during the restoration of monarchy is quite different from the original. Almost all comedies are written in prose, and most of them are aimed at exposing the ills of the upper class. The tragedy was influenced by France to a certain extent, instead of using blank poems, it adopted foreign double-line poems. This kind of poetic style is subject to many restrictions, which requires simplified terminology and cannot continue to describe grand scenes. This kind of drama rarely makes psychological description, but talks about love, honor and other issues, or makes lengthy arguments and uses unexpected repetition in the plot, thus making the actions of the characters in the drama appear dull and unnatural. The root of these abuses is mainly influenced by French poetry, but the French drama at this time is fruitful.
/kloc-After the middle of the 0/7th century, a number of playwrights, such as Gao Naiyi, appeared in France. His major works include Sid, Horace and Meday. His creation in double-line poems is very suitable for describing themes such as love and honor, which makes the contrast strong, profound and vivid. Racine reached the pinnacle of this style. His major works include Andromaque, Fidra and estelle. He is good at analyzing the feelings of characters, but some critics think that he portrays characters too lofty and writes too delicately. On the other hand, Moliere became a model of beautiful writing, famous for propagating common sense, describing people who violated social norms and writing humorous and relaxed dialogues. His works include Bold Man, Wife's School, Miser and Hypocrite, etc. It involves various social and moral issues, but it is easy to understand. They satirize serious and profound themes through daily familiar pictures, with witty remarks, fluent poems and no boring preaching feeling. /kloc-Spanish drama creation in the 0/7th century also showed a prosperous scene, with Lope de Vega and Calderon as the main playwrights. They mainly use their own language to create, dare to innovate, abandon rules and regulations, develop and use various styles, and integrate with the plot. Vega wrote more than 1800 plays in his life. Calderon is an important dramatist in Spain after Vega, which has an important influence on the development of Spanish drama. European drama flourished in17th century, but declined in18th century. Only some sad works that choose the theme of the classical era or describe family life appear affectation in language and emotion.
19th century is the era of romanticism. People pay more attention to drama creation and emphasize the restoration of Shakespeare's creative tradition. This tendency is particularly evident in Britain and Germany. One of the principles of romantic creation is to break through the shackles of traditional formats and advocate writers' free creation. This tendency makes the fresh and natural emotional expression in dramatic poems contradictory and uncoordinated with the dramatization of bizarre plots. Therefore, almost every romantic poet has engaged in or tried to write, but his achievements are not great. Although their writing attitude is very serious, their works lack originality, and there are too many abstract arguments, which often go beyond the boundaries of stage performance, while the action description is slow and powerless. /kloc-almost all the major British poets in the 0/9th century tried to create plays, but according to the appreciation standards of the 20th century, their works lacked performance value. French poets also devoted themselves to drama creation, but their achievements were not great. Hugo's poetic dramas, like most romantic dramas, have a strong opera color, especially his play Ernane, which is actually equivalent to an opera script. In Germany, a variety of dramatic works appeared in the Romantic era, but the exposition of expressing philosophy in the script exceeded the psychological depiction, which was particularly evident in the works of Goethe and Schiller. Generally speaking, romantic writers don't like poetic comedies with allegorical purposes. This kind of comedy often turns into farce in the hands of popular writers. Serious drama has formed a social problem drama written in practical prose.
In the 20th century, many poets tried to revive poetic drama, but two opposite tendencies still hindered the development of dramatic poetry: the contradiction between expressing subtle feelings and expressing abstract thoughts. Influenced by the Japanese musical Nenglie, Ye Zhi, a British poet, likes to use fantastic materials and language. The poetic drama Land of Desire is his famous work. Austrian poet Hofmannsthal's early creative direction was similar to that of Ye Zhi, and later he collaborated with German composer Strauss to create operas. His major works are * * * and the Woman without Shadow. Neither of the two poets has written pure dramatic poems. On the other hand, T·S· Eliot, an English poet, imitated the creation method of Elizabethan era and almost repeated the historical process of drama development through his own drama creation practice. His early poetic drama The Rock is a religious drama in ancient costume, in which the chorus part uses irregular melody. In his later plays, he combined the theme of ancient Greek tragedy with the modern background. His language uses an improved blank verse style, striving to be natural and fluent, and avoiding stiff affectation. Christopher Frye's creative path is similar. His religious comedy "This * * * can't be burned" has many poetic chapters. However, the structure of his poems is relatively loose and lacks compact and powerful meter, which is not suitable for the requirements of tragedy. Therefore, his poetic tragedy "Darkness is Bright enough" can't fully express the theme and weaken the touching power. In the experiment of reforming traditional poetic drama, some poets tried to connect the songs and dances in the drama with ordinary prose based on jazz words; But the result was not successful, just writing some musical comedies. In this reform, W·H· Auden and C isherwood collaborated to create works, and their excessive pursuit of language wit highlighted the defects of the works. T·S· Eliot made a similar attempt, but it didn't work either. In his plays, the spoken language is common and trite, and the formal language is too blunt and ironic to express the theme.
Judging from the current situation, the overall poetic realm of drama performance relies less and less on language expression, but more and more on special stage skills. One trend of art in the 20th century is to make full use of the unique materials used in various arts as the content of expression. Therefore, painting emphasizes color and lines without expressing a certain theme, music abandons theme melody, and sculpture develops to volume and space. This tendency may also have an impact on traditional Chinese opera poetry. Due to this tendency, the emotional expression related to various arts has also changed. Short stories are used to express the impromptu feelings expressed in past lyric poems in many ways. On the other hand, since James, novels have also turned to describe the theme of drama. Major novelists in the 20th century also inserted epic contents into their works. What kind of drama can be used is still a question. Modern "Absurd Drama" is destructively influenced by Dadaism and post-existentialism, and takes prose as the means of expression, but opposes the use of traditional language and middle-class cliches in drama works. Other playwrights tried to save dramatic poetry from extinction, but all of them had little effect and lacked plan and direction. At present, there is still no turning point in drama poetry; Drama failed to find an effective medium to replace poetry, and poets failed to create magnificent and eternal poems for drama.