Drama specific. Exploring dramatic works The value of a performance depends on the play being presented.

32. Features of a dramatic plot.

PLOT

Event focus unusually concentrated

It was the drama that gravitated towards such plots, where a sharp transition was made from one event to another with a bright, unexpected denouement. This is a circular plot.

Often, for an unexpected end, a recognition technique was used (the ancient Greek comedy "Oedipus Rex")

The principle of recognition lasted until the end of the 19th century; before the advent of the New Drama.

New Drama:

• The role of ring plots is weakened, sometimes they are abandoned
• The plot is constructed in such a way that even if the (suicide) murder of the hero occurs, it does not complete anything.
  • "The Seagull": Treplev commits suicide, while others sat and played loto
  • "3 Sisters": one of the latest events the murder of Tuzenbach in a duel; Irina cried, but the play ends with a conversation about work and a trip to Moscow

Drama is always talk.

• "Hamlet": a ghost tells about the betrayal of Claudius.
  • All events revolve around what exists in the plot.
    • Conversations are purely intellectual in nature about life, about society in general
    • And the drama of the 19th century. gravitates towards such intellectual disputes, keeping the audience on their toes.

Exposition (in a narrative work) Representation of what happened before the action began. A dramatic work is a prologue.

In the drama of the 17th century. exposure is no longer in use. But the need for input remains. This happens along the way. And it's called diffuse exposure.

Scattered exposure is when the circumstances that exist for understanding the action are revealed in conversations, thoughts of characters (can be described by one character).

There are some actions that cannot be performed on the stage (mainly due to technical means). It is difficult and sometimes impossible to depict mass battles; it's also hard to portray when the characters are floating down the river (but the East handles that).

Basically, in the early theater there are things that are not allowed to be shown on the stage, as this is "dangerous" for the viewer, since they can have an adverse effect on him.

Ancient Indian and ancient Greek theaters did not depict death, murder. Ancient Indian theaters also did not depict the utterance of a curse.

"Medea": the scene where, before leaving his wife, the husband strangles the children, was not shown on stage.

Thus, these actions are included in the plot, but not in the stage action.

Cornelius "Sid": Sid fights and wins, but he's not on stage. But Sid himself talks about this, since this victory plays a very important role - the persecution of him, the wedding, are cancelled.

A short or long message is possible, therefore, a dramatic text with dialogic speech may include elements of a narrative.

Early tragedy employs special devices that late tragedy renounces. A special figure messengers was used. They made special appearances on stage to report on events behind the scenes. In late theatre, these messages are shared among the characters, although this is not completely abandoned.

Although Shakespeare has many deaths, all this is shown on the stage, and fights are also shown.

Thus, these taboos are gradually disappearing. In the theater of the 19th and even 20th century. there were taboos on sex scenes.

The drama features character actions:

They have an inner world, experiences, reflections

And we see them only externally, in contrast to the narrative, where we see them from the inside and outside.

In theaters of early times, the figure of a confidant appears in dramas. They have almost zero plot role. Their main function is to listen to the outpourings of the heroes (their fears, worries). Often in early theatre, this is a servant or maid. These characters gradually disappear from the drama, although, for example, friends remain.

The drama, right up to Chekhov, is preserved in the form of an internal monologue, which is delivered in private - the speech of the character, which is presented as a reflection or an emotional experience. It can also be in the form of improperly direct speech (but in plays written not for the theater). The internal monologue is ambiguous, as it must be addressed to someone.

"Uncle Vanya" - a monologue during a thunderstorm:

Falls in love with Elena, but something did not work out, she got married

He talks about how wonderful it would be to be with her at that moment, etc.

The actor may look into the audience, as if laughing with him, or he may not look, as if we are just observers or eavesdropping on him.

Early theater often resorts to words aside (the actor turns to the side to convey an internal reaction).

ORGANIZATION OF SPEECH IN DRAMA

Dramatic text a chain of statements of characters.

• Only direct speeches are used, which are interrupted by a small number of remarks.
• Main form dialogue.

The dialogue is built from a series of relatively short lines.

• Monologues are also important, which are of two types:
  • Elongated monologues that give reflections of characters in which decisions are often made
  • Reversed monologues, for example, there are a lot of them in "Woe from Wit"

But the speech is really intended for the public. Monologues often go beyond the ongoing conversation.

The revolutionary era is the heyday, the most transmitting in terms of quest.

The Moscow Art Theater, the avant-garde theater of Mierhold, the theater of Tair appear. The scene structure is changing. in France in the 18th century. the theater acquires extraordinary significance on the eve and during the French bourgeois revolution.

Changes:

The separation of the stage from the hall breaks

Actions are taken to the auditorium

Revolutionary plays appear

The theater strives for publicism (there is agitation of the viewer)

For example, Voltaire's plays are enlightening ideas for the public. In the theater there is always a consciousness of publicity, the possibility of direct appeal to the public.

for language teachers

FEATURES OF STUDYING DRAMA WORKS

Introduction

N. V. Gogol believed that the play lives only on the stage, N. A. Ostrovsky assumed that only with the stage embodiment does a dramatic fiction receive a completely finished formula. Indeed, drama occupies a special place in the system of literature, since it is both a full-fledged literary genre and a phenomenon that naturally belongs to the theater. Drama as a genus has a specific content, the essence of which was the awareness of the contradictions of reality, and therefore, when studying a dramatic work, it is necessary to take it into account. generic features:

drama in the general sense;

drama as a kind of literature and stage.

The specific features of drama as a genre are the absence of a narrator and a sharp weakening of the descriptive element. The basis of the drama is a visible action, and this affects the special correlation in it of the movement of events and the speeches of the characters. The statement of the characters and the arrangement, the ratio of parts are the most important ways of revealing the author's thoughts.

But not always, when reading a drama, the student has the opportunity to watch the work being studied in the theater. Therefore, as a reader, the student must have a well-developed, recreative and creative imagination. Behind the replica, the dialogue, he must hear, see the characters, imagine the situation, that is, when studying the drama, the reader-student needs active co-creation. But psychologists say recreative imagination different people are not developed to the same degree:

one group of students does not have any visual representations when reading; they try to remember, not imagine, the pictures created by the playwright;

for others, memory images arise by association in the process of gradual concretization of their personal memories, which are more or less similar to the image of the work;

there are students who strive to imagine artistic images as concretely as possible; they also compare them with image-memories, but at the same time they exclude details that do not correspond to the text from the memories that have arisen;

for some, the necessary ideas arise by themselves in the process of reading; they immediately see images without memories.

Thus, although the linguist does not have the opportunity to explore what type of recreative impression each student has, he must keep in mind these features of perception.

Teacher's task - to teach to read and understand a dramatic work as a literary one. It is clear that we are talking about a special reading, during which the reader must imagine life on the stage with all the conventions of the stage embodiment of the play: with backstage, scenery, curtain and ramp, with mise-en-scenes and a change of actors and phenomena.

The literary critic Vladimirov writes that the specificity of attitudes towards drama is such that it is more expedient not to read, but to “watch” even if we are left alone with the book.

The completeness of the perception of a dramatic work depends on a number of factors:

from the wealth of life experience and theatrical impressions,

from the level of figurative thinking,

on the degree of training of the imagination.

All this should also be taken into account by the language teacher.

The purpose of this work - to help language teachers in organizing and conducting lessons on the study of dramatic works.

Introductory classes

Purpose of the lesson: in addition to the preparation of perception and the correct deep understanding of the text, activate the recreative and creative imagination.

To do this, I select material for the lesson, information related to the life of the play on stage, with the first production in the theater, about the era, the environment that the writer reflects in his work.

For the purpose of a lively story, I definitely use photographs of scenes from performances, individual frames of filmstrips. In introductory classes, I resort to static visualization: there should be a feeling of a stopped moment.

I include my vision of the characters and the scene in the story, using oral verbal drawing for this. It is especially important to take this into account when studying the first dramatic works, when students do not yet have experience in studying a play or when studying drama in a survey, or when students encounter an unfamiliar peculiarity of the social environment.

drama reading

Reading drama is a methodological problem. It is inappropriate to offer some readers a drama long before studying it. You can not limit yourself to a creative reading house. The text should sound in the classroom. Reading the drama begins with a list of characters. Reading the poster in a group, I introduce the heroes of the play, comment on the place and time of the action, social status, age of the heroes. A brief description of the characters is possible, taken from the comments of the author himself.

The question of reading is being developed by methodologists: Demidova, Korst, Moldavskaya. He notes that reading a drama is an act of creativity, the process of the second birth of an image in the imagination of the reader of the play. In the 1st place is the expressive reading of the teacher, 1 action of the drama is necessarily read. In figurative study, individual phenomena are read. During the analysis, I participate with the students in reading by roles. After listening to 1 reading in class, students re-read at home and read to the end.

A certain place in the lesson should be occupied by listening to a recording of individual phenomena and monologues.

The play should be read at home, but in class I read the beginning or use the recording (for example, in lesson 1 on Thunderstorm). In the future, reading should be present in the lesson. Analysis is subject to reading. A logical transition to analysis can be a conversation in order to identify the features of the perception of a dramatic text (What is the play about? What is the conflict? For how long? What characters? Location?).

Expressive reading

Reading a play by one person (teacher) should be between dramatic reading, which is based on reincarnation into an image, and reading prose, in which the teacher does not reincarnate, but shows the image or talks about it.

The student must imagine what the teacher reads in the first lesson. The teacher must have good acting skills, abilities, diction to convey the essence of the action.

It is not necessary to involve students in reading the subsequent actions, but for this purpose, invite them to prepare a message about their hero.

How do you imagine the appearance of your hero?

His manner of dressing, speaking, holding on?

What is the inner world of the hero?

What is his attitude towards others?

How do other characters describe him?

What phrase(s) can be the key?

Before reading a particular scene, the student speaks with a message about the hero, then reads the scene, and this work ends with an exchange of listeners' opinions. ( Who did you like from the speakers?)

Reading by roles is possible only after getting acquainted with the general content of the play and in no case after the introductory lesson. When choosing a scene, I take into account the student's abilities and prepare him for expressive reading by roles, I prepare him during extracurricular time. Using the record, I reveal the attitude of the student to the performance of the roles of actors ( How do you imagine this scene? What can you say about the characters, character, lifestyle by listening to what they say and how they say it? What features of the hero did each of the heroes first of all want to reveal with their performance? Do the images they create match your idea of ​​a hero?).

Need to remember! That imagination should be based on historical and literary (everyday) phenomena, details, events, if this is not the case, it can turn into fruitless fantasizing.

It is generally accepted that 1 action of the drama should be analyzed during the lesson, since 1 action is an exposition, carries the beginning, what precedes. A detailed analysis of the 1st action makes it possible to subsequently organize the student's independent work on the 2nd, 3rd, 4th action. All scenes and acts cannot be analyzed with the same depth, therefore, the most important scenes in ideological and artistic terms are selected for analysis (for example, scenes associated with the climax of the drama: in The Cherry Orchard - 3 act) and must consider the final scenes. In the process of analysis, the student's field of vision should include not only the speech of the character, but also remarks, a poster, comments on it, a word as a sounding unit of speech. The speech of the hero is always intonationally colored and has a certain subtext. Only by opening it you can correctly hear the speech of the hero.

Stanislavsky spoke: “Without subtext, there can be no drama on stage. Subtext is an implicit but tangible inner life of the human spirit, which flows directly under the words of the text, all the while justifying and enlivening them...”

Techniques for activating the reader's imagination:

Recreating the atmosphere of the theater (Imagine the curtain has opened, what will you see on stage?).

Expressive reading of the scenes themselves by the teacher, prepared professional notes.

Oral verbal drawing (How do you imagine the hero at ... the moment? What did each of the officials think about when they went to the evening to the mayor?).

The director's commentary is a role-playing game for verbal drawing of costumes, scenery, actors' entrances, a group presentation method - the student needs to present episodes that are not in the text (What can be said by Gertrude and Claudius in their 1st meeting after the death of the King).

Creation of mise-en-scenes. It requires to imagine not one character, but to imagine his place on the stage, at a certain moment of the performance, next to other characters. Imagine the movements of the actions of persons in the scene (How would you place the officials in the 1st appearance of the "Inspector"? How do you see the exit of the Kabanov family?).

Use of visibility (photographs of performance scenes, actors). You should not limit yourself to a photograph of one actor or an illustration by one artist. It is more correct to involve photos of several actors of the same role. Use material about the work of an actor on a role with the involvement of film fragments.

Analysis of the play

The most correct way to analyze drama in the footsteps of the author (“observing the emergence and development of the conflict).

Difference between drama and epic:

the absence of repeated speech, which deprives the drama of the extra artistic possibilities inherent in the epic.

in the literary text of the drama, the emphasis shifts to the actions and speech of the characters.

drama gravitates toward such stylistic dominants as complexity and heteroglossia.

drama has a high degree of artistic conditions, is associated with theatrical action. The condition is as follows:

illusion of the "4th" scene

replicas aside

monologues of heroes alone with themselves.

increased theatricality of gesture-mimic and speech behavior.

The construction of the image of the world is also specific: we learn about everything from the conversation of the heroes and the author's remarks.

The images of the character are drawn so boring, compared to the epic, but with bright and strong means.

Basic image creation techniques:

speech characteristic,

manner of speaking,

characterization of the hero through similar actions.

Auxiliaries:

hero characterization,

his characterization in the speech of other characters.

Psychologism is peculiar in the drama. The drama does not allow the author's psychological narration, the dialectics of the soul, the stream of consciousness.

The inner monologue of the hero is brought out, formed in external speech, and therefore the psychological world of the hero looks more rationalized and more simplified than in the epic. The greatest difficulty in the drama is the development of the complex, emotional states of the hero, the sphere of the hero's subconscious moods, the transfer of depth within the world.

In this sense, the drama of Chekhov, Ibsen, Maeterlinck is an example.

The main thing in the drama is the action, the development of the conflict, therefore, the analysis of the drama is expedient at the beginning with a certain conflict, tracing its movement in the future. The composition of contradictions is also subject to the development of the conflict. If we propose to divide dramatic works depending on the form of embodiment of the conflict into:

action plays (Fonvizin, Griboedov, Ostrovsky),

mood plays (Hauptmann, Chekhov, Maeterlinck),

debate plays (Shaw, Ibsen, Gorky).

Action plays.

The conflict is embodied in the plot, that is, in the system of actions and events. In "Groza" there is a conflict of two layers. External conflict - contradictions between rulers and subjects. On the other hand, the action moves thanks to the internal provisions of the conflict of Katerina. She wants to love, to live, to be free, but at the same time she realizes that this is a sin.

The action develops through chains of actions that change the initial situation. The dramatic tension and attention of the viewer is supported by interest in the development of the plot. It is easy to trace the storylines in the play: the plot, the development of the action, the climax (a series of climaxes)

In the plot, basically, the content of the work is also realized. Socio-cultural issues are revealed through action, and action is dictated by the lawful attitude prevailing in the environment.

The plot also expresses the tragic pathos of the play. Katerina's suicide highlights the impossibility of successfully resolving the conflict.

Mood plays.

Mood plays - Chekhov's plays. In them, dramatic actions are the conflicts of the hero with a way of life hostile to him, turning into a psychological conflict, which is expressed in the inner fearlessness of the characters, in a feeling of spiritual discomfort. This feeling is typical not for one, but for many, each of which develops its own conflict in life. The movement of the stage action is concentrated not in the plot, twists and turns, but in the change of emotional tone. An event goal only enhances a particular mood. Plays of this type have such a dominant feature as psychologism. Conflict development is not in the plot, but in compositional contradictions. And supporting compositions are not plot elements, but the culmination of psychological states. They come at the end of every action. In these plays, instead of a plot, there is a promulgation of the initial mood, conflict psychologism, state. Instead of a denouement - an emotional chord that will not destroy the contradictions ("Three Sisters"). All scenes are connected by a common mood. (1 act - the mood of bright hope (Irina's monologue), then it is drowned out by longing, anxiety and suffering).

The stage action is based on deepening the experiences of the characters. It is clear that the sisters will not be in the longed-for Moscow. All events have 1 goal - to strengthen the general impression of unfavorableness, fearlessness of being (a kind of subtext psychologism). In Chekhov's plays, stage psychologism is based precisely on this principle. The suffering of the characters is expressed in their monologues and remarks.

An important technique of psychology: discrepancy external and internal, it is expressed in meaningless phrases, laughter, tears, silence. An important role is played by the author's remarks, emphasizing the emotional tone of the phrase.

Debate plays.

Plays-discussions - plays by Gorky.

The conflict is deep, based on the difference in worldview attitudes: their problems, philosophical or ideological and moral.

B. Show: « Dramatic conflict is built around a clash

various ideals.

Another conflict is expressed in a collision, in a compositional contradiction, in individual statements of the characters. Therefore, priority should be given to heteroglossia.

In the conflict, a number of heroes are drawn in, which, with its own life position, is therefore also difficult to single out the main and secondary "+" and "-".

The event target is the reason for the character's statement ("At the bottom")

The conflict is in the clash of different points of view on human nature, on lies and truth. This is a sublime but unreal conflict with the base real. The conflict begins in 1 act (from the point of view of the plot, the plot is no more than an exposition). Enters into conflict gross truth and lofty lies.

Satin protests to the disgusting "human words" sonorous, but meaningless: "organon, macrobiotics". Here Nastya reads "Fatal Love". The actor remembers Shakespeare. All this is in sharp contrast to the everyday life of a rooming house.

The truth of the fact . This position is cynical and inhumane in the play Bubnov. He states something formless (“The noise of death is not a hindrance”) and senselessly states his position in an argument about life. In act 1, the antipode of Bubnov-Luka also appears, preaching his philosophy of Love and compassion for one's neighbor, whatever he may be.

In the future, the conflict develops, drawing in new points of view, arguments, reasoning, parables. Sometimes in reference schemes the composition results in a direct dispute.

The conflict culminates in act 4.

The action itself is a discussion unrelated to the plot - a discussion of a person and his philosophy, turning into a dispute about a person in general, about law, about truth. The last action takes place after the completion of the plot and the denouement of the external conflict (Kostylev's murder), which is of an auxiliary nature in the play. Thus, the finale is not a plot denouement, it is connected with a discussion about truth and man, and the actor's suicide is, as it were, another replica in the dialogue of ideas. The finale is open, it is not intended to solve the dispute of philosophy going on the stage, it seems to invite the reader, the viewer to do it himself. The final thought about the unbearability of life without an ideal was approved.

Work on remarks

(When studying "Thunderstorm" - exercise: Compare the remarks that accompany the actions of Katerina and Barbara in the meeting scene (act 3, phenomenon 3-4). The purpose of the assignment: to deepen the knowledge of schoolchildren about Katerina. How do they characterize the state of mind and behavior of the heroine? When studying a play "At the bottom" exercise: look at the remarks in the last act of the play that accompany the actions of the hero, compare them with the words of the hero and, based on your observations, tell what is the state of mind of the hero?)

In the course of the analysis of the play, the position of the author is important. The position of the author is hidden, the author never directly expresses his point of view. In a play 2 main ways of expressing the author's consciousness: his position is manifested in the grouping of the actions of persons opposed to one another, in the selection of material for the play, in the essence of the conflict.

Auxiliary means: posters, remarks, instructions for the director. The position of the playwright is manifested in the choice of the title and genre of the play ("People without the sun" - "The bottom of life"; "At the bottom"). With all the fullness of the position, the author appears in the finale, which is why analysis is so important ( Why does the play not end with the 3rd act, as Chekhov advises, believing that the 4th act is not needed in it. What questions posed by Gorky were not resolved in Act 3, how are they resolved in Act 4? How act 4 allows you to reveal the position of the playwright). It is necessary to think over the organization of independent work. We are talking about a system of tasks of varying complexity: retelling the content of the phenomenon, analysis of monologues, dialogues, independence of speech, remarks, individual scenes of the drama; prepare reading by roles.

Final lessons

These classes have the following objectives:

Historical and functional understanding of the work and its heroes.

Demonstration of the student's ability to express reading by roles, processing the skills of reading a play. This expressive reading becomes a way of checking and understanding the depth of this or that character.

It is at the final stage that you have to watch a movie, a performance and discuss them. It is possible to stage fragments of a play, but when deciding to stage a play, it is necessary to clearly imagine the passage - whether it is within the power of the student.

At the final stage, it is recommended to involve the works of critics, literary scholars, compare points of view on one work or image, compare interpretations of the hero by different actors, compare Russian and foreign drama (Moliere's Misanthrope, Griboyedov's Woe from Wit, Belinsky and Schiller's views on the theater) . All this creates a problematic situation.

I widely use interdisciplinary connections using the following questions:

Does the development of the film match the action of the play?

What new scenes have been noticed, what is their meaning.

How the setting is shown.

Does this fit the writer's intent?

How actors interpret the main characters. Do you agree with the interpretation.

As a director and actor, they use stage directions and other author's instructions in creating images and other scenes.

What directorial, cameraman's finds have you noticed?

Drama is a literary genre (along with epic and lyrics), which involves the creation of an artistic world for stage embodiment in a performance. Like the epic, it reproduces the objective world, that is, people, things, natural phenomena.

CHARACTER TRAITS

1. Drama is the most ancient kind of literature, its main difference from others comes from the same antiquity - syncretism, when different types of art are combined in one (the syncretism of ancient creativity is in the unity of artistic content and magic, mythology, morality).

2. Dramatic works are conditional.

Pushkin said: "Of all kinds of compositions, the most implausible are dramatic ones."

3. Drama is based on conflict, an event enacted by action. The plot is formed by events and actions of people.

4. The specificity of drama as a literary genre lies in the special organization of artistic speech: unlike the epic, there is no narration in the drama and the direct speech of the characters, their dialogues and monologues are of paramount importance.

The drama is not only verbal (remarks "aside"), but also a staged action, therefore the speech of the characters (dialogues, monologues) is important. Even in ancient tragedy, choirs played an important role (singing the opinion of the author), and in the classics this role was played by reasoners.

"You cannot be a playwright without being eloquent" (Didero).

"The characters in a good play should speak in aphorisms. This tradition has been going on for a long time" (M. Gorky).

5. As a rule, a dramatic work involves stage effects, speed of action.

6. A special dramatic character: unusual (conscious intentions, formed thoughts), established character, in contrast to the epic.

7. Dramatic works - small in volume.

Bunin remarked on this occasion: "We have to compress the thought into precise forms. But it's so exciting!".

8. The illusion of the complete absence of the author is created in the drama. From the author's speech in the drama, only remarks remain - brief indications of the author on the place and time of the action, on facial expressions, intonation, etc.

9. The behavior of the characters is theatrical. In life, they don’t behave like that, and they don’t talk like that.

Let us recall the unnaturalness of Sobakevich's wife: "Feoduliya Ivanovna asked to sit down, saying, too:" Please! "And making a movement with her head, like actresses representing queens. Then she sat down on the sofa, covered herself with her merino shawl and no longer moved her eye or eyebrow, no nose."

TRADITIONAL SCHEME OF THE PLOT OF ANY DRAMATIC WORK: EXPOSURE - representation of heroes; LOAD - clash; DEVELOPMENT OF THE ACTION - set of scenes, development of the idea; CULMINATION - the apogee of the conflict; RESOLUTION.

The dramatic genre of literature has three main genres: tragedy, comedy and drama in the narrow sense of the word, but it also has such genres as vaudeville, melodrama, tragicomedy.

Tragedy (Greek tragoidia, lit. - goat song) - "a dramatic genre based on the tragic collision of heroic characters, its tragic outcome and full of pathos ..."

The tragedy depicts reality as a bunch of internal contradictions; it reveals the conflicts of reality in an extremely intense form. This is a dramatic work, which is based on an irreconcilable life conflict, leading to the suffering and death of the hero. So, in a collision with the world of crimes, lies and hypocrisy, the bearer of advanced humanistic ideals Danish prince Hamlet, the hero of the tragedy of the same name by W. Shakespeare, tragically perishes. In the struggle waged by tragic heroes, the heroic traits of human character are revealed with great fullness.

The tragedy genre has a long history. It arose from religious cult rites, was a stage performance of a myth. With the advent of the theater, tragedy emerged as an independent genre of dramatic art. The creators of tragedies were the ancient Greek playwrights of the 5th century. BC e. Sophocles, Euripides, Aeschylus, who left her perfect samples. They reflected the tragic collision of the traditions of the tribal system with the new social order. These conflicts were perceived and portrayed by playwrights mainly on mythological material. The hero of an ancient tragedy was drawn into an irresolvable conflict either by the will of an imperious fate (fate) or by the will of the gods. So, the hero of the tragedy of Aeschylus "Prometheus Chained" suffers because he violated the will of Zeus when he gave fire to people and taught them crafts. In the tragedy of Sophocles "Oedipus Rex" the hero is doomed to be a parricide, to marry his own mother. The ancient tragedy usually included five acts and was built in compliance with the "three unities" - place, time, action. Tragedies were written in verse and distinguished by loftiness of speech; its hero was a "high hero."

Comedy, like tragedy, originated in ancient Greece. The "father" of comedy is the ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes (V-IV centuries BC). In his works, he ridiculed the greed, bloodthirstiness and immorality of the Athenian aristocracy, stood up for a peaceful patriarchal life (“Horsemen”, “Clouds”, “Lysistrata”, “Frogs”).

Folk comedy has existed in Russia for a long time. An outstanding comedian of the Russian Enlightenment was D.N. Fonvizin. His comedy "Undergrowth" mercilessly ridiculed the "wild nobility" reigning in the Prostakov family. Wrote comedies I.A. Krylov (“Lesson to daughters”, “Fashion shop”), ridiculing admiration for foreigners.

In the 19th century examples of satirical, social realistic comedy are created by A.S. Griboyedov ("Woe from Wit"), N.V. Gogol ("Inspector"), A.N. Ostrovsky (“Profitable place”, “Our people - we will get along”, etc.). Continuing the traditions of N. Gogol, A. Sukhovo-Kobylin in his trilogy (“Krechinsky’s Wedding”, “Deed”, “Tarelkin’s Death”) showed how the bureaucracy “embraced” the whole of Russia, bringing it troubles comparable to the damage caused by the Tatars. the Mongol yoke and the invasion of Napoleon. Famous comedies by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin (“The Death of Pazukhin”) and A.N. Tolstoy ("The Fruits of Enlightenment"), which in some way approached tragedy (they contain elements of tragicomedy).

Tragicomedy renounces the moral absolute of comedy and tragedy. The attitude underlying it is associated with a sense of the relativity of the existing criteria of life. Overestimation of moral principles leads to uncertainty and even rejection of them; subjective and objective beginnings are blurred; an unclear understanding of reality can cause interest in it or complete indifference and even recognition of the illogicality of the world. The tragicomic worldview dominates in them at turning points in history, although the tragicomic beginning was already present in the dramaturgy of Euripides (Alcestis, Ion).

Drama is a play with a sharp conflict, which, unlike the tragic, is not so sublime, more mundane, ordinary and somehow resolved. The specificity of the drama lies, firstly, in the fact that it is built on modern, and not on ancient material, and secondly, the drama establishes a new hero who rebelled against his fate and circumstances. The difference between drama and tragedy lies in the essence of the conflict: tragic conflicts are insoluble, because their resolution does not depend on the personal will of the person. The tragic hero finds himself in a tragic situation involuntarily, and not because of a mistake he made. Dramatic conflicts, unlike tragic ones, are not insurmountable. They are based on the clash of characters with such forces, principles, traditions that oppose them from the outside. If the hero of a drama dies, then his death is in many ways an act of a voluntary decision, and not the result of a tragically hopeless situation. So, Katerina in A. Ostrovsky's "Thunderstorm", acutely worried that she had violated religious and moral norms, not being able to live in the oppressive atmosphere of the Kabanovs' house, rushes into the Volga. Such a decoupling was not mandatory; the obstacles to the rapprochement between Katerina and Boris cannot be considered insurmountable: the heroine's rebellion could have ended differently.

Dramatic works (other-gr. drama-action), as well as epic ones, recreate the series of events, the actions of people and their relationships. Like the author of an epic work, the playwright is subject to the "law of developing action." But there is no detailed narrative-descriptive image in the drama. Actually, the author's speech here is auxiliary and episodic. Such are the lists of actors, sometimes accompanied by brief characteristics, designation of time and place of action; descriptions of the stage situation at the beginning of acts and episodes, as well as comments on individual replicas of the characters and indications of their movements, gestures, facial expressions, intonations (remarks). All this constitutes side dramatic text. Basic its text is a chain of statements of characters, their replicas and monologues.

Hence some limited artistic possibilities of the drama. The writer-playwright uses only a part of the visual means that are available to the creator of a novel or epic, short story or short story. And the characters of the characters are revealed in the drama with less freedom and fullness than in the epic. At the same time, playwrights, unlike the authors of epic works, are forced to limit themselves to the amount of verbal text that meets the requirements of theatrical art. The time of the action depicted in the drama must fit into the strict framework of the stage time. And the performance in the forms familiar to the new European theater lasts, as you know, no more than three or four hours. And this requires an appropriate size of the dramatic text.

At the same time, the author of a play has significant advantages over the creators of short stories and novels. One moment depicted in the drama closely adjoins another, neighboring one. The time of the events reproduced by the playwright during the stage episode is not compressed or stretched; the characters of the drama exchange remarks without any noticeable time intervals, and their statements, as noted by K.S. Stanislavsky, make up a solid, continuous line. If the action is imprinted with the help of narration as something past, then the chain of dialogues and monologues in the drama creates the illusion of the present time. Life here speaks as if from its own face: between what is depicted and the reader there is no intermediary-narrator. The action is recreated in the drama with maximum immediacy. It flows as if before the eyes of the reader. “All narrative forms,” wrote F. Schiller, “carry the present into the past; all the dramatic make the past present.”

Drama is stage oriented. Theater is a public, mass art. The performance directly affects many people, as if merging into one in response to what is happening before them. The purpose of the drama, according to Pushkin, is to act on the multitude, to occupy its curiosity” and for this purpose capture the “truth of passions”: “Drama was born on the square and constituted the amusement of the people. The people, like children, require entertainment, action. The dramatic genre of literature is especially closely connected with the sphere of laughter, for the theater was consolidated and developed in close connection with mass festivities, in an atmosphere of play and fun. It is not surprising that drama gravitates towards an outwardly spectacular presentation of what is depicted. Her imagery turns out to be hyperbolic, catchy, theatrical and bright, hence the hyperbole and exaggeration. In the 19th and 20th centuries, when the desire for worldly authenticity prevailed in literature, the conventions inherent in the drama became less obvious, often they were reduced to a minimum. At the origins of this phenomenon is the so-called "petty-bourgeois drama" of the 18th century, the creators and theorists of which were D. Diderot and G.E. Lessing. Works of the largest Russian playwrights of the 19th century. and the beginning of the 20th century - A.N. Ostrovsky, A.P. Chekhov and M. Gorky - are distinguished by the reliability of the recreated life forms. But even when the playwrights set their sights on plausibility, plot, psychological, and actual verbal hyperbole persisted. Theatrical conventions made themselves felt even in Chekhov's dramaturgy, which was the maximum limit of "life-likeness".

The most important role in dramatic works belongs to the conventions of speech self-disclosure of the characters, whose dialogues and monologues, often saturated with aphorisms and maxims, turn out to be much more extensive and effective than those remarks that could be uttered in a similar life situation. Replicas “aside” are conventional, which, as it were, do not exist for other characters on the stage, but are well audible to the audience, as well as monologues uttered by the characters alone, alone with themselves, which are a purely stage technique for bringing out inner speech (there are many such monologues as in ancient tragedies, and in the dramaturgy of modern times). And speech in a dramatic work often acquires similarities with artistic, lyrical or oratorical speech. Therefore, Hegel was partly right, considering the drama as a synthesis of the epic (eventfulness) and the lyrical (verbal expression).

Drama has, as it were, two lives in art: theatrical and literary. Constituting the dramatic basis of the performances, existing in their composition, the dramatic work is also perceived by the reading public.

Lesedrama - drama for reading), created with the installation primarily on perception in reading. Such are Goethe's Faust, Byron's dramatic works, Pushkin's little tragedies, Turgenev's dramas.

There are no fundamental differences between the Lesedrama and the play, which the author is oriented towards stage production. Dramas created for reading are often potentially stage dramas. And the theater (including the modern one) stubbornly seeks and sometimes finds the keys to them, evidence of which is the successful productions of Turgenev’s “A Month in the Country” (first of all, this is the famous pre-revolutionary performance of the Art Theater) and numerous (though far from always successful) stage readings Pushkin's little tragedies in the 20th century.

The creation of a performance based on a dramatic work is associated with its creative completion: the actors create intonation-plastic drawings of the roles they play, the artist designs the stage space, the director develops the mise-en-scenes. In this regard, the concept of the play changes somewhat (more attention is paid to some of its sides, less attention to others), it is often concretized and enriched: the stage production introduces new elements into the drama. semantic shades. At the same time, the principle of paramount importance for the theater is reading fidelity literature. The director and actors are called upon to convey the staged work to the audience with the maximum possible completeness. Fidelity in stage reading takes place where the director and actors deeply comprehend the dramatic work in its major content, genre, style features. Stage productions (as well as film adaptations) are legitimate only in those cases where there is agreement (even if relative) between the director and actors and the circle of ideas of the writer-playwright, when the stage figures are carefully attentive to the meaning of the staged work, to the features of its genre, the features of its style and to the text itself.

In past centuries (up to the 18th century), drama not only successfully competed with the epic, but often became the leading form of artistic reproduction of life in space and time. This is due to a number of reasons. First, the theatrical art played a huge role, accessible (unlike handwritten and printed books) to the widest strata of society. Secondly, the properties of dramatic works (the depiction of characters with pronounced features, the reproduction of human passions, the attraction to pathos and the grotesque) in the "pre-realist" era fully corresponded to general literary and general artistic trends.