"Let the tragic and comic be mixed (…) will make one part serious,
another ridiculous, for this variety is very delightful.
Nature gives us a good example for she attains beauty
through such variety”
Lope de Vega
Talking about the definition of drama
is not an easy task. Have you ever seen Game
of Thrones and thought “this is such
a great drama!”? Or a Martin Hahn’s soap opera and have exclaimed “Hahn’s dramas are so original!” Talking about Star Wars and saying “I
love the drama involved”. The real question here “Is drama a specific kind of genre?”, the short answer is no. Drama
comes from latin Dramae, which means action, and it is the foundation of
theater plays and movies. Action is what makes the plot move. This means that drama
may be in any type of genre that may go from tragedy to science fiction.
Comedy according to Aristotle is the “imitation
of the most vulgar and defective people, in their ugliness and laughable form
of being. What is laughable and does not cause pain nor is fatal is human error
and clumsiness. Aristophanes was the most important comedian from Ancient
Greece. He was born after the Athenian golden age, so his comedies are critical
of the decadent democracy. His plays are full of puns, earthy jokes and
slapstick comedy. He also likes to poke fun at the Greek tragedies, especially
the ones from Euripides. In the clouds,
Aristophanes uses the technic reductio ab
ridiculum (appeal to ridicule) by
misrepresenting Socrates’ ideas and exaggerating them to mock him. 
The Roman Empire comedians copied the
Greek comedies, improving them, however, by removing chorus and adding musical
accompaniment as a simultaneous supplement to the plays’ dialogue. The action
of all scenes typically take place on the streets outside the dwelling of the
main characters, and plot complications are often a result of eavesdropping by
a minor character. The renassaince
did not escape from Rome’s influence. Plautus’s
comedy The pot of gold (Aulularia) serves of reference for
Moliére’s farce The Miser (L’Avare) and Shakespeare’s comedy Merchant
of Venice. In these plays, greedy men oblige their children to live within
their means even though they are wealthy men. 
One of the genres that cinema has
given to dramaturgy is science fiction. Star
Wars has been one of the greatest franchise in the history of Hollywood.
George Lucas creates a whole new universe in space, taking elements from epic
drama, melodrama, and tragedy. Luke Skywalker makes “the journey of the hero”, something that has been told in literature
since Homer’s Odyssey. From farmer
to hero, Skywalker has to go through many trials to become the chosen one who saves the galaxy. His fate is to fight and defeat his father Lord Vader, commander in
chief of the clone army and prime minister of the evil empire. Even though Luke
tries to escape his destiny by convincing his father to turn to the light side
instead of killing him, tragic heroes cannot escape fate. 
As you may see, all stories have
already been told since the Greeks, and what is the secret of writers? The
answer to this question is how. The
“what” never changes. There is some discussion on how many types of stories
exist. Some theorists say six, some say nine, and some others thirty-six, but
the possibility of how to write the same story in different ways is endless. You
think Shakespeare was very original writing Romeo and Juliet? Before him Fernando de Rojas, a medieval Spanish
dramatist, wrote “The tragicomedy of
Callixtus and Melibea”, and before him in the Roman Empire, Ovid wrote “Pyramus and Thisbe”. The
genres have evolved a lot and that is why it is so difficult to define what is
drama and what is not, it is almost an impossible job.
