Drama genres

"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.

           

Tragedy was the first drama genre written in the history of western society. Tragedy according to Aristotle is “imitation of a high and perfect action, of a certain extension, with a language diversely decorated in each part, by means of action and not of narration, which leads, through compassion and fear, to the purification of these passions". Tragedy happens on the soaring of the royal families and takes place in a palace. The protagonist is usually a king (sometimes a fallen god like Prometheus) with a terrible fate. The prophecy says that Oedipus, king of Thebes, will kill his father and sleep with his mother. His parents, trying to escape the prophecy, give him away when he is just a baby, but the gods will always find the hero and fulfill his destiny, no matter what it is done to avoid it.

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.