Characteristics of the American Drama1890 - 10 sivua |
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Alexandre Dumas American audience American drama American plays amused Angier Aristophanes artistic assertion beautiful century character characteristics claimant clowns comedies of incidents comedy and tragedy conceptions critics disrepute drama in England drama of to-day dramatic effect dramatists drame Elizabethan emotional English and American English drama English types epochs Familistère farces Fils flattery formal rules France French classic French comédie French drama French genius French playwrights French writer Germany Godin Godin's Goethe Greek drama higher class Horse-play imitations influence Italy Latin Let us consider literary literature melodrama Milton mingling Musset native natural instincts never OVERDUE FEE paysages poésie Poetic preface principle of dramatic romantic movement romantic tragedy Romanticism began satire scenes and incidents sense sentiments Shakespeare Shakespearian drama social Socrates spirit sprang strong Sunday theatre thought three unities thrust tion traditions Tragedy and comedy tragic type of drama types of plays Victor Hugo wanted art
Suositut otteet
Sivu 702 - This is mentioned to vindicate tragedy from the small esteem, or rather infamy, which in the account of many it undergoes at this day, with other common interludes; happening through the poets' error of intermixing comic stuff with tragic sadness and gravity, or introducing trivial and vulgar persons; which by all judicious hath been counted absurd and brought in without discretion, corruptly to gratify the people.
Sivu 701 - But, besides these gross absurdities, how all their plays be neither right tragedies nor right comedies, mingling kings and clowns, not because the matter so carrieth it, but thrust in clowns by head and shoulders to play a part in majestical matters, with neither decency nor discretion; so as neither the admiration and commiseration, nor the right sportfulness, is by their mongrel tragi-comedy obtained.
Sivu 701 - So falleth it out, that having indeed no right comedy, in that comical part of our tragedy, we have nothing but scurrility, unworthy of any chaste ears : or some extreme show of doltishness, indeed fit to lift up a loud laughter, and nothing else : where the whole tract of a comedy should be full of delight, as the tragedy should be still maintained in a well-raised admiration.
Sivu 709 - And yet ruin awaits the man who tries to produce it in America. It would not be tolerated. What, then, are the requirements of the American drama '! We have seen that two main types of plays have come down to us through the French, and we have considered some of the leading peculiarities of the American audiences. Combining these two ideas, we may arrive at the following characteristics as being in the main those most likely to prove successful in American plays : — 1. Strong melodramatic situations....
Sivu 708 - The amusement must be laughable, but nothing more. Nor will it suffer itself to be instructed or amused in what it calls an immoral way. It likes to see virtue rewarded and vice sent to the penitentiary. [ ] This shrinking from the immoral precludes the discussion of what are known as delicate questions — in brief of the one question which forms the central motive of so many French dramas. Adultery may, indeed, be hinted at in American plays, as it may even form an important element of the plot,...
Sivu 707 - American playwright and the demands upon him by his audience. In America the theatre is a play-house, the play is a show. Splendid as has been the history of the drama, sacred as are the associations which cluster about the names of the great dramatists, — for the great body of the higher class of English-speaking peoples, theatrical performances are still placed, as they were in the period of dominant Puritanic influence, on a par with bear-baiting and rope walking, — actors are still rated...
Sivu 707 - ... introduced heedlessly at the expense of artistic moderation and naturalness. Adding to this quality the social element borrowed from the French drame, we may set down as one prevalent type of American plays the social melodrama. The other principle type is derived, as I have said, from the French comtdie, a word which is susceptible of a great variety of meanings but which I am here using to include what corresponds in France to our comedy of incidents, and comedy of manners. As examples of the...
Sivu 706 - The foreign element of deep and na'ive feeling is almost crowded out of sight, and the French genius again finds characteristic expression. Turning now, after this long introduction, to the dramas of England and America at the present time, let us consider what French forms we find developed into English types. Two, and two only : The melodrama and the com^die.