Theory of Literature. Comedy in literature is a multi-variant variety of dramaturgy Features of a play as a dramatic work

Dramatic works are organized by the utterances of the characters. According to Gorky, "the play requires that each acting unit be characterized by word and deed on its own, without prompting from the author" (50, 596). A detailed narrative and descriptive image is missing here. Actually, the author's speech, with the help of which the depicted is characterized from the outside, is auxiliary and episodic in the drama. These are the title of the play, its genre subtitle, an indication of the place and time of action, a list of characters, sometimes


accompanied by their brief summarizing characterization, preliminary acts and episodes of the description of the stage situation, as well as remarks given in the form of comments on individual replicas of the characters. All this constitutes a side text of a dramatic work. About the same, his text is a chain of dialogic remarks and monologues of the characters themselves.

Hence some limitation of the 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. “I ... perceive the drama,” noted T. Mann, “as the art of the silhouette and I feel only the told person as a voluminous, integral, real and plastic image” (69, 386). 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 plot time in the drama must fit within the strict framework of stage time. And the performance in the forms familiar to the 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 the play also 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 events reproduced by the playwright during the stage episode (see Chapter X) is not compressed or stretched; the characters of the drama exchange remarks without any noticeable time intervals, and their statements, as Stanislavsky noted, form a continuous, continuous line. If with the help of narration the action is imprinted 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 - the narrator. The action of the drama takes place as if before the eyes of the reader. “All narrative forms,” wrote F. Schiller, “transfer the present into the past; all dramatic make the past present" (106, 58).

The dramatic genre of literature recreates the action with


maximum immediacy. Drama does not allow summary characteristics of events and actions that would replace their detail. And she is, as Yu. Olesha noted, “a test of rigor and at the same time the flight of talent, a sense of form and everything special and amazing that makes up talent” (71, 252). Bunin expressed a similar idea about drama: “You have to compress thought into precise forms. And it's so exciting."

FORMS OF CHARACTER BEHAVIOR

Drama characters reveal themselves in behavior (primarily in spoken words) more prominently than characters in epic works. And this is natural. Firstly, the dramatic form disposes the characters to "long talk". Secondly, the words of the characters in the drama are oriented towards the wide space of the stage and the auditorium, so that the speech is perceived as addressed directly to the audience and potentially loud. "The theater requires ... exaggerated broad lines both in voice, recitation, and in gestures" (98, 679), wrote N. Boileau. And D. Diderot noted that "one cannot be a playwright without possessing eloquence" (52, 604).

The behavior of the characters in the drama is marked by activity, catchiness, showiness. It is, in other words, theatrical. Theatricality is the conduct of speech and gestures, carried out in the calculation of a public, mass effect. It is the antipode of intimacy and inexpressive forms of action. Behavior filled with theatricality becomes the most important subject of depiction in drama. Dramatic action is often performed with the active participation of a wide range of people. Such are many scenes in Shakespeare's plays (especially the final ones), the culminations of Gogol's The Inspector General and Ostrovsky's The Thunderstorm, and the pivotal episodes of Vishnevsky's Optimistic Tragedy. The viewer is especially strongly affected by episodes where there is an audience on the stage: the image of meetings, rallies, mass performances, etc. They leave a vivid impression and stage episodes showing few people if their behavior is open, not inhibited, spectacular. “How he acted out in the theater,” Bubnov (At the Bottom by Gorky) comments on the frenzied tirade of the desperate Klesh about the truth, which, by an unexpected and sharp intrusion into the general conversation, gave it a proper theatrical character.

However, playwrights (especially supporters of


realistic art) feel the need to go beyond theatricality: to recreate human behavior in all its richness and diversity, capturing private, domestic, intimate life, where people express themselves in word and gesture sparingly and unassumingly. At the same time, the speech of the characters, which, according to the logic of what is depicted, should not be spectacular and bright, is presented in dramas and performances as lengthy, full-voiced, hyperbolically expressive. A certain limitation of the possibilities of drama comes into play here: playwrights (as well as actors on the stage) are forced to elevate the “non-theatrical in life” to the rank of “theatrical in art”.

In a broad sense, any work of art is conditional, that is, not identical to real life. At the same time, the term convention (in the narrow sense) refers to ways of reproducing life, in which the discrepancy and even contrast between the forms depicted and the forms of reality itself are emphasized. In this respect, artistic conventions oppose "plausibility" or "life-likeness". “Everything should be essentially life-like, not necessarily everything should be life-like,” wrote Fadeev. “Among the many forms, there may be a conditional form” (96, 662) (i.e., "unlife-like." - V. X.).

In dramatic works, where the behavior of the characters is theatrical, conventions are especially widely used. The imminent departure of the drama from life-likeness has been spoken about more than once. So, Pushkin argued that "of all kinds of compositions, the most implausible compositions are dramatic" (79, 266), and Zola called drama and theater "the citadel of everything conventional" (61, 350).

Drama characters often speak out not because they need it in the course of action, but because the author needs to explain something to readers and viewers, to make a certain impression on them. Thus, additional characters are sometimes introduced into dramatic works, who either themselves tell about what is not shown on the stage (messengers in ancient plays), or, becoming interlocutors of the main characters, encourage them to talk about what happened (choirs and their luminaries in ancient tragedies). ; confidantes and servants in the comedies of antiquity, the Renaissance, classicism). In the so-called epic dramas, the actors-characters from time to time turn to the audience, "get out of the role" and, as if from the outside, report on what is happening.


A tribute to convention is, further, the saturation of speech in the drama with maxims, aphorisms, and reasoning about what is happening. The monologues uttered by the heroes in solitude are also conditional. Such monologues are not actually speech actions, but a purely stage device for bringing out inner speech; there are many of them both in ancient tragedies and in the dramaturgy of modern times. Even more conditional are the “aside” remarks, which, as it were, do not exist for other characters on the stage, but are clearly audible to the audience.

It would be wrong, of course, to "reinforce" theatrical hyperbole for the dramatic genre of literature alone. Similar phenomena are characteristic of classical epics and adventure novels, but if we talk about the classics of the 19th century. - for the works of Dostoevsky. However, it is in the drama that the conventionality of speech self-disclosure of the characters becomes the leading artistic trend. The author of the drama, setting up a kind of experiment, shows how a person would express himself if he expressed his moods with maximum fullness and brightness in the words he uttered. Naturally, dramatic dialogues and monologues turn out to be much more voluminous and effective than those remarks that could be uttered in a similar life situation. As a result, speech in drama often takes on a resemblance to artistic-lyrical or oratorical speech: the heroes of dramatic works tend to express themselves as improvisers - poets or sophisticated orators. Therefore, Hegel was partly right, considering the drama as a synthesis of the epic beginning (eventfulness) and the lyrical (speech expression).

From antiquity to the era of romanticism - from Aeschylus and Sophocles to Schiller and Hugo - dramatic works in the vast majority of cases gravitated towards theatricalization of sharp and demonstrative. L. Tolstoy reproached Shakespeare for the abundance of hyperbole, because of which the possibility of artistic impression is allegedly violated. From the very first words, - he wrote about the tragedy "King Lear", - one can see an exaggeration: an exaggeration of events, an exaggeration of feelings and an exaggeration of expressions " (89, 252). L. Tolstoy was wrong in assessing Shakespeare's work, but the idea of ​​the great English playwright's commitment to theatrical hyperbole is completely justified. What has been said about "King Lear" with no less reason can be attributed to ancient comedies and tragedies.


days, the dramatic works of classicism, the tragedies of Schiller, etc.

In the XIX-XX centuries, when the desire for everyday authenticity of artistic pictures prevailed in literature, the conventions inherent in the drama began to be 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 Diderot and Lessing. Works of the largest Russian playwrights of the XIX century. and the beginning of the 20th century - by A. Ostrovsky, Chekhov and Gorky - are distinguished by the reliability of the recreated life forms. But even when the playwrights set on the plausibility of what was depicted, plot, psychological and actual speech hyperbole persisted. Even in Chekhov's dramaturgy, which showed the maximum limit of "life-likeness", theatrical conventions made themselves felt. Let's take a look at the final scene of The Three Sisters. One young woman broke up with a loved one ten or fifteen minutes ago, probably forever. Another five minutes ago found out about the death of her fiancé. And now they, together with the eldest, third sister, sum up the moral and philosophical results of what happened, thinking to the sounds of a military march about the fate of their generation, about the future of mankind. It is hardly possible to imagine this happening in reality. But we do not notice the implausibility of the ending of The Three Sisters, because we are used to the fact that the drama significantly changes the forms of people's life.

Dramatic works are organized by the utterances of the characters. According to Gorky, "the play requires that each acting unit be characterized by word and deed on its own, without prompting from the author" (50, 596). A detailed narrative and descriptive image is missing here. Actually, the author's speech, with the help of which the depicted is characterized from the outside, is auxiliary and episodic in the drama. These are the title of the play, its genre subtitle, an indication of the place and time of action, a list of characters, sometimes


accompanied by their brief summarizing characterization, preliminary acts and episodes of the description of the stage situation, as well as remarks given in the form of comments on individual replicas of the characters. All this constitutes a side text of a dramatic work. About the same, his text is a chain of dialogic remarks and monologues of the characters themselves.

Hence some limitation of the 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. “I ... perceive the drama,” noted T. Mann, “as the art of the silhouette and I feel only the told person as a voluminous, integral, real and plastic image” (69, 386). 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 plot time in the drama must fit within the strict framework of stage time. And the performance in the forms familiar to the 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 the play also 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 events reproduced by the playwright during the stage episode (see Chapter X) is not compressed or stretched; the characters of the drama exchange remarks without any noticeable time intervals, and their statements, as Stanislavsky noted, form a continuous, continuous line. If with the help of narration the action is imprinted 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 - the narrator. The action of the drama takes place as if before the eyes of the reader. “All narrative forms,” wrote F. Schiller, “transfer the present into the past; all dramatic make the past present" (106, 58).

The dramatic genre of literature recreates the action with


maximum immediacy. Drama does not allow summary characteristics of events and actions that would replace their detail. And she is, as Yu. Olesha noted, “a test of rigor and at the same time the flight of talent, a sense of form and everything special and amazing that makes up talent” (71, 252). Bunin expressed a similar idea about drama: “You have to compress thought into precise forms. And it's so exciting."

FORMS OF CHARACTER BEHAVIOR

Drama characters reveal themselves in behavior (primarily in spoken words) more prominently than characters in epic works. And this is natural. Firstly, the dramatic form disposes the characters to "long talk". Secondly, the words of the characters in the drama are oriented towards the wide space of the stage and the auditorium, so that the speech is perceived as addressed directly to the audience and potentially loud. "The theater requires ... exaggerated broad lines both in voice, recitation, and in gestures" (98, 679), wrote N. Boileau. And D. Diderot noted that "one cannot be a playwright without possessing eloquence" (52, 604).

The behavior of the characters in the drama is marked by activity, catchiness, showiness. It is, in other words, theatrical. Theatricality is the conduct of speech and gestures, carried out in the calculation of a public, mass effect. It is the antipode of intimacy and inexpressive forms of action. Behavior filled with theatricality becomes the most important subject of depiction in drama. Dramatic action is often performed with the active participation of a wide range of people. Such are many scenes in Shakespeare's plays (especially the final ones), the culminations of Gogol's The Inspector General and Ostrovsky's The Thunderstorm, and the pivotal episodes of Vishnevsky's Optimistic Tragedy. The viewer is especially strongly affected by episodes where there is an audience on the stage: the image of meetings, rallies, mass performances, etc. They leave a vivid impression and stage episodes showing few people if their behavior is open, not inhibited, spectacular. “How he acted out in the theater,” Bubnov (At the Bottom by Gorky) comments on the frenzied tirade of the desperate Klesh about the truth, which, by an unexpected and sharp intrusion into the general conversation, gave it a proper theatrical character.

However, playwrights (especially supporters of


realistic art) feel the need to go beyond theatricality: to recreate human behavior in all its richness and diversity, capturing private, domestic, intimate life, where people express themselves in word and gesture sparingly and unassumingly. At the same time, the speech of the characters, which, according to the logic of what is depicted, should not be spectacular and bright, is presented in dramas and performances as lengthy, full-voiced, hyperbolically expressive. A certain limitation of the possibilities of drama comes into play here: playwrights (as well as actors on the stage) are forced to elevate the “non-theatrical in life” to the rank of “theatrical in art”.

In a broad sense, any work of art is conditional, that is, not identical to real life. At the same time, the term convention (in the narrow sense) refers to ways of reproducing life, in which the discrepancy and even contrast between the forms depicted and the forms of reality itself are emphasized. In this respect, artistic conventions oppose "plausibility" or "life-likeness". “Everything should be essentially life-like, not necessarily everything should be life-like,” wrote Fadeev. “Among the many forms, there may be a conditional form” (96, 662) (i.e., "unlife-like." - V. X.).

In dramatic works, where the behavior of the characters is theatrical, conventions are especially widely used. The imminent departure of the drama from life-likeness has been spoken about more than once. So, Pushkin argued that "of all kinds of compositions, the most implausible compositions are dramatic" (79, 266), and Zola called drama and theater "the citadel of everything conventional" (61, 350).

Drama characters often speak out not because they need it in the course of action, but because the author needs to explain something to readers and viewers, to make a certain impression on them. Thus, additional characters are sometimes introduced into dramatic works, who either themselves tell about what is not shown on the stage (messengers in ancient plays), or, becoming interlocutors of the main characters, encourage them to talk about what happened (choirs and their luminaries in ancient tragedies). ; confidantes and servants in the comedies of antiquity, the Renaissance, classicism). In the so-called epic dramas, the actors-characters from time to time turn to the audience, "get out of the role" and, as if from the outside, report on what is happening.


A tribute to convention is, further, the saturation of speech in the drama with maxims, aphorisms, and reasoning about what is happening. The monologues uttered by the heroes in solitude are also conditional. Such monologues are not actually speech actions, but a purely stage device for bringing out inner speech; there are many of them both in ancient tragedies and in the dramaturgy of modern times. Even more conditional are the “aside” remarks, which, as it were, do not exist for other characters on the stage, but are clearly audible to the audience.

It would be wrong, of course, to "reinforce" theatrical hyperbole for the dramatic genre of literature alone. Similar phenomena are characteristic of classical epics and adventure novels, but if we talk about the classics of the 19th century. - for the works of Dostoevsky. However, it is in the drama that the conventionality of speech self-disclosure of the characters becomes the leading artistic trend. The author of the drama, setting up a kind of experiment, shows how a person would express himself if he expressed his moods with maximum fullness and brightness in the words he uttered. Naturally, dramatic dialogues and monologues turn out to be much more voluminous and effective than those remarks that could be uttered in a similar life situation. As a result, speech in drama often takes on a resemblance to artistic-lyrical or oratorical speech: the heroes of dramatic works tend to express themselves as improvisers - poets or sophisticated orators. Therefore, Hegel was partly right, considering the drama as a synthesis of the epic beginning (eventfulness) and the lyrical (speech expression).

From antiquity to the era of romanticism - from Aeschylus and Sophocles to Schiller and Hugo - dramatic works in the vast majority of cases gravitated towards theatricalization of sharp and demonstrative. L. Tolstoy reproached Shakespeare for the abundance of hyperbole, because of which the possibility of artistic impression is allegedly violated. From the very first words, - he wrote about the tragedy "King Lear", - one can see an exaggeration: an exaggeration of events, an exaggeration of feelings and an exaggeration of expressions " (89, 252). L. Tolstoy was wrong in assessing Shakespeare's work, but the idea of ​​the great English playwright's commitment to theatrical hyperbole is completely justified. What has been said about "King Lear" with no less reason can be attributed to ancient comedies and tragedies.


days, the dramatic works of classicism, the tragedies of Schiller, etc.

In the XIX-XX centuries, when the desire for everyday authenticity of artistic pictures prevailed in literature, the conventions inherent in the drama began to be 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 Diderot and Lessing. Works of the largest Russian playwrights of the XIX century. and the beginning of the 20th century - by A. Ostrovsky, Chekhov and Gorky - are distinguished by the reliability of the recreated life forms. But even when the playwrights set on the plausibility of what was depicted, plot, psychological and actual speech hyperbole persisted. Even in Chekhov's dramaturgy, which showed the maximum limit of "life-likeness", theatrical conventions made themselves felt. Let's take a look at the final scene of The Three Sisters. One young woman broke up with a loved one ten or fifteen minutes ago, probably forever. Another five minutes ago found out about the death of her fiancé. And now they, together with the eldest, third sister, sum up the moral and philosophical results of what happened, thinking to the sounds of a military march about the fate of their generation, about the future of mankind. It is hardly possible to imagine this happening in reality. But we do not notice the implausibility of the ending of The Three Sisters, because we are used to the fact that the drama significantly changes the forms of people's life.

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. "Drama I<...>I perceive, - noted T. Mann, - as the art of the silhouette and I feel only the told person as a voluminous, integral, real and plastic image. 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 K.S. Stanislavsky noted, form a continuous, continuous line. is captured 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, - they transfer 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 drama presents him with extraordinary, strange occurrences. The people demand strong sensations<..>Laughter, pity and horror are the three strings of our imagination, shaken by dramatic art. 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. “The comic genre is universal for antiquity,” remarked O. M. Freidenberg. The same is true to say about the theater and drama of other countries and eras. T. Mann was right when he called the "comedian instinct" "the fundamental principle of any dramatic skill."

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. "The theater requires<...>exaggerated broad lines both in voice, recitation, and in gestures,- wrote N. Boileau. And this property of stage art invariably leaves its mark on the behavior of the heroes of dramatic works. “How he acted out in the theater,” Bubnov (At the Bottom by Gorky) comments on the frenzied tirade of the desperate Klesch, who, by an unexpected intrusion into the general conversation, gave it theatrical effect. Significant (as a characteristic of the dramatic kind of literature) are Tolstoy's reproaches against W. Shakespeare for the abundance of hyperbole, because of which, as it were, "the possibility of an artistic impression is violated." "From the very first words,- he wrote about the tragedy "King Lear",- one can see an exaggeration: an exaggeration of events, an exaggeration of feelings and an exaggeration of expressions. L. Tolstoy was wrong in assessing Shakespeare's work, but the idea of ​​the great English playwright's commitment to theatrical hyperbole is completely justified. What has been said about "King Lear" with no less reason can be attributed to ancient comedies and tragedies, dramatic works of classicism, to the plays of F. Schiller and V. Hugo, etc.

In XIX - XX 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 "philistine drama" XVIII century, the creators and theorists of which were D. Diderot and G.E. Lessing. Works by major Russian playwrights 19th century and early XX 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 actually verbal hyperbole persisted. Theatrical conventions made themselves felt even in Chekhov's dramaturgy, which was the maximum limit of "life-likeness". Let's take a look at the final scene of The Three Sisters. One young woman broke up with a loved one ten or fifteen minutes ago, probably forever. Another five minutes ago found out about the death of her fiancé. And now they, together with the eldest, third sister, sum up the moral and philosophical results of the past, thinking to the sounds of a military march about the fate of their generation, about the future of mankind. It is hardly possible to imagine this happening in reality. But we do not notice the implausibility of the ending of The Three Sisters, because we are used to the fact that the drama significantly changes the forms of people's life.

The foregoing convinces of the justice of A. S. Pushkin’s judgment (from his already cited article) that “the very essence of dramatic art excludes plausibility”; “Reading a poem, a novel, we can often forget ourselves and believe that the incident described is not fiction, but the truth. In an ode, in an elegy, we can think that the poet portrayed his real feelings, in real circumstances. But where is the credibility in a building divided into two parts, of which one is filled with spectators who have agreed etc" .

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 clearly 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). The playwright, setting up a kind of experiment, shows how a person would express himself if he expressed his moods with maximum fullness and brightness in the spoken words. And speech in a dramatic work often takes on a resemblance to artistic lyrical or oratorical speech: the characters here tend to express themselves as improvisers-poets or masters of public speaking. Therefore, Hegel was partly right, considering the drama as a synthesis of the epic beginning (eventfulness) and the lyrical (speech 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.

But this was not always the case. The emancipation of the drama from the stage was carried out gradually - over a number of centuries and ended relatively recently: in XVIII - XIX centuries World-wide significant examples of dramaturgy (from antiquity to XVII c.) at the time of their creation, they were practically not recognized as literary works: they existed only as part of the performing arts. Neither W. Shakespeare nor J. B. Molière were perceived by their contemporaries as writers. The “discovery” in the second half of the XVIII centuries of Shakespeare as a great dramatic poet. From now on, dramas began to be read intensively. Thanks to numerous publications in XIX - XX centuries dramatic works proved to be an important variety of fiction.

In XIX V. (especially in its first half) the literary merits of the drama were often placed above the scenic ones. So, Goethe believed that "Shakespeare's works are not for bodily eyes", and Griboedov called his desire to hear the verses of "Woe from Wit" from the stage "childish". The so-calledLesedrama(drama to read) 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, about which the author remarked: "My plays, unsatisfactory on stage, may be of some interest in reading."

The fundamental differences between Lesedrama and a play that is stage-oriented by the author does not exist. 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 20th century

The old truth remains in force: the most important, the main purpose of the drama is the stage. “Only when performed on stage,” A. N. Ostrovsky noted, “does the author’s dramatic fiction take on a completely finished form and produce exactly the moral action that the author set himself as a goal to achieve.”

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 playwright writer, 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 classical aesthetics XVIII - XIX centuries, in particular by Hegel and Belinsky, drama (primarily the genre of tragedy) was considered as the highest form of literary creativity: as the "crown of poetry." A whole series of artistic epochs has, in fact, manifested itself predominantly in the dramatic art. Aeschylus and Sophocles in the heyday of ancient culture, Moliere, Racine and Corneille in the time of classicism had no equal among the authors of epic works. Significant in this respect is the work of Goethe. All literary genres were available to the great German writer, but he crowned his life in art with the creation of a dramatic work - the immortal Faust.

In past centuries (up to XVIII centuries) 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. Cit. Quoted from: Reader on the history of the Western European theater / Comp. and ed. S. Mokulsky: In 2 volumes. 2nd ed. M.; L., 1953. T. 1. S. 679.

Tolstoy L.N. Full coll. cit.: V 90 t. M., 1950. T. 35. S. 252.

Pushkin A. S. Full coll. cit.: In 10 vols. T. 7. S. 212.

Goethe I.V. About art. pp. 410–411.

Turgenev I.S. Sobr. cit.: V. 12 t. M., 1956. T. 9. S. 542.

Ostrovsky A.N. Full coll. cit.: V 12 t. M., 1978. T. 10. S. 63.

Features of the study of dramatic works

1. Drama is a kind of literature. Signs and features of the dramatic kind.

Drama - one of the three types of literature, along with epic and lyrics, simultaneously belongs to two types of art: literature and theater.

Drama denotes one of the genres of the dramatic kind. Drama is for the stage. Stage means are the means of creating images. The main features of the drama: 1 Reproduces events external to the author (proximity to the epic).

2 dialogue.

3 objectivity.

4 masters the action

Dramatic action - emotionally volitional reactions of a person. Drama imitates action through action, not story (Aristotle).

5 The drama is characterized by acute conflict situations in which the characters reveal their characters. Drama was formed in ancient Greece, in Athens, in the works of Sophocles, Aristophanes, Aeschylus, and others. There was a breakdown in social relations, public consciousness. It took a form that would quickly master social conflicts. Dramatic works, like epic ones, recreate the series of events, the actions of people and their relationships. The playwright is subject to the law of developing action. But there is no detailed narrative-descriptive image in the drama. Accordingly, the author's speech here is auxiliary and episodic. These are the lists of actors (sometimes accompanied by a brief description), the designation of the time and place of action, remarks. All this is a side text of a dramatic project. The main text is a chain of characters' statements, their replicas, monologues. Hence a certain limitation of the worst possibilities of drama. The playwright writer uses only a part of the subject-pictorial means that are available to create a novel, epic, story, short story. => the nature of the characters is revealed in the drama with less freedom and fullness than in the epic. But the author of the play has significant advantages over the creators of short stories and novels. One moment depicted in the drama closely adjoins the next one. The time of the events played during the stage sequence is not compressed or stretched. Life here speaks as if from its own face: between what is depicted and the reader there is no intermediary-narrator. Drama is geared towards the demand of the stage. Theater is a mass art. It is not surprising that drama gravitates toward the external effective presentation of what is depicted. Her imagery is hyperbolic, catchy. And this property of stage art invariably leaves its mark on the behavior of the characters.

The basis of drama is action. Unlike the epic, where the action is described as having taken place, taking place in the past, the action in the drama unfolds in the present tense, takes place directly in front of the viewer, distinguished by activity, continuity, purposefulness, and compactness. In other words, the drama reproduces the very action performed by the characters, and does not tell about this action. The action is shown through the conflict that lies at the center of the dramatic work, which determines all the structural elements of the dramatic action (in particular, the composition of the play is subject to the disclosure of the conflict). Inextricably linked with each other, dramatic action and conflict are the main features of drama as a literary genre. The development of action and conflict is manifested in the plot organization of the work. In a classic drama, there is no breadth and diversity of plot, as in an epic work. The dramatic plot concentrates only key, milestone events in the development of action and conflict. In the works of the dramatic kind, the plot is distinguished by tension and rapidity of development, greater nakedness of the conflict. Dramatic conflict, reflecting specific historical and universal contradictions, revealing the essence of time, social relations, is embodied in the behavior and actions of the characters, and, above all, in dialogues, monologues, replicas. Dialogue in drama is the main means of developing action and conflict and the main way of depicting characters (the most important functions of dramatic dialogue). (In prose, dialogue is combined with the author's speech.) It reveals the external and internal life of the characters: their views, interests, life position and feelings, experiences, moods. In other words, the word in drama, being capacious, precise, expressive, emotionally saturated, a word-action, is able to convey the fullness of the characteristics of the characters. A form of speech characterization of the characters in the drama is also a monologue - the speech of the character, addressed to himself or to others, but, unlike dialogue, does not depend on reciprocal remarks. In prose, the monologue does not play the most important role, but it prevails in the lyrics. In the drama, the monologue reveals the ideals, beliefs of the characters, their spiritual life, the complexity of the character.

2. Methods and techniques for working on a dramatic work

At the initial stage of studying a dramatic work, simultaneously with the clarification of the main conflict, students first get acquainted with the characters, with what role they play in the struggle. You can ask about their groupings. The way to clarify the main conflict is paved, and the establishment of the boundaries of the play - how it began and how it ended, which helps to clarify the overall view of the play.

Great attention is paid to the appeal of the class to the time covered by the play. The time of the viewer and the time of the action of the play seem to be combined, but days, weeks, even years pass between the phenomena.

For example, the action "Woe from Wit" covers the time from morning to evening, although in the theater it is compressed to a few hours. Between III and 1U the actions of the "Thunderstorm" pass two weeks. Students should be taught that what is important in drama is not only what happens in the act itself in between acts.

For analysis in the classroom, the teacher must select the key phenomena that determine the development of the action. We must not forget the explanation of incomprehensible words; and historical and theatrical commentary, pre-select what to read yourself, and when to turn on the player.

The methods and techniques of working on the drama are varied.

1. "Point of view from the audience", installation on visual perception. Schoolchildren should imagine themselves mentally seeing the play, for this purpose it is useful to use fragments of memories of performances.

2. It is important to encourage students to IMAGINE what is happening on the stage in order to propose a situation: “Imagine you are sitting on the stage” (before the beginning of the 1st act of “Thunderstorm”).

Answer: the wide expanses of the Trans-Volga region, the expanses of the Volga, which make Kuligin exclaim: the view is extraordinary, the beauty - the soul rejoices! or “How do you imagine the mayor at the moment when he enters Khlestakov’s room?”

Another technique that encourages students to penetrate the text of the play is the creation of imaginary mise-en-scenes, i.e. schoolchildren are invited to think about how they would arrange the characters at a certain moment of the action, to imagine their positions, gestures, movements.

For example, before the beginning of Act IV "At the Bottom", Gorky indicates where, in what position each of the characters is at the moment when the curtain opens. But in the course of the development of the action, the location of the characters on the stage changes, in what cases, why and how does this happen? Mark those scenes."

The core of work on each act is the consistent observation of the development of the action, of the internal logic of this development in the given act. The students' observation of the development of the action must be inseparable from the penetration into the characters of the characters. This is facilitated by questions: “Tikhon and Varvara turn to Kabanikha with “you”, and Katerina with “you”. Why?

In the analysis of drama, the subject of constant attention is speech character, its originality, since the character of the character, his social face, state of mind reveals speech. Listening, for example, to how Katerina tells her mother about her life, we will be able to judge her as well. "I lived ... like a bird in the wild ... here everything seems to be from captivity." We understand how good it was for her, how she watered the flowers, how fondly she remembers all this. In her speech, there are many words and expressions related to religious ideas and everyday life: temples, I pray, angels, it smells of cypress, because she grew up in a patriarchal family, she cannot be otherwise.

In how a speech sounds, the person to whom it is addressed also plays a big role. The speech of the Governor sounds different when he addresses Lyapkin-Tyapkin, Strawberry, or Khlopov.

It must be remembered that the selection of words and their sound - intonation is directly associated with the SUB-TEXT. To reveal the subtext means to reveal the essence of the play, the relationship between the causes of the character's actions and their external manifestation. If students are taught to understand subtext, then we bring up a good reader and viewer.

It should not be forgotten that when analyzing a play, the speech of the characters is of great importance, and the remarks of the authors, the poster and the remark to it (this is often skipped by students when reading) For this purpose, the following tasks are important: does this in "The Inspector General" or "What does the remark say in the second act of The Thunderstorm in the scene of Katerina's farewell to her husband."

Expressive reading is of great importance in the work on the play. At the same time, the student moves from the position of the viewer to the position of the performer.

The author, his attitude to what is happening - the main question when faced with the study of any work. In a dramatic work, the position of the author is hidden more than in works of another kind. For this purpose, the teacher will have to: draw the attention of students to the comments made by the author for the actors and invite them to think about how the writer relates to his characters? Or he offers to answer the question: “How does Ostrovsky make the viewer, watching the 3rd act, justify Katerina?”

In the process of analyzing the observations received, the teacher should generalize for this purpose important summarizing questions, such as: “What have we learned about the life of the county town? What were the officials of the city like? What is the nature of the measures taken in Gorodniche? or "What is common in the characters of Dikoy and Kabanikh, and what are their differences? Why is the conflict between Katerina and the world of Kabanova inevitable?"

At the final lessons, in a generalized form, those questions arise that the students were looking for answers in the process of analyzing the drama.

The final lesson, in fact, begins already with work on the last act of the play, when the conflict is resolved and the author-playwright, as it were, sums up. For this purpose, expressive reading of students is of particular importance: this is a test of the depth of their understanding of the characters of the characters.

Reading by roles also shows the degree of students' understanding of a dramatic work. The teacher can approach the distribution of roles in different ways. Homework for such a lesson can be a written or oral compilation of the characteristics of the hero, whose role the student will play.

At the final lessons - competitions of readers of individual scenes, the stage history of the drama, watching the film adaptation, and discussing it.

    Questions of the theory of literature

In connection with the study of drama, the student must master a number of theoretical and literary concepts. A number of them should be included in the active vocabulary of schoolchildren: act, action, phenomenon, monologue, dialogue, list of characters, remarks. As they penetrate into the drama, the vocabulary of schoolchildren is replenished: conflict, plot, exposition, plot, climax, denouement, genres: comedy, drama, tragedy .; play, play. The performance is not an illustration in a play, but a new work of art created by the theater, interpreting the plays of the playwright in its own way.

Revealing for ourselves the theory of dramaturgy, we seem to find ourselves in a universe that operates according to laws that surprise with their beauty and mathematical accuracy. Dramaturgy is based on the main law, the essence of which lies in the harmonic unity. Drama, like any work of art, must be a holistic artistic image.

Dramaturgy is the theory and art of constructing dramatic works.

In what other meanings is this word used? What are its foundations? What is dramaturgy in literature?

Concept definition

There are several meanings of this concept.

  • Firstly, dramaturgy is the plot-compositional basis (plot-figurative concept) of an independent cinematic or theatrical work. Their basic principles are historically changeable. Such phrases as dramaturgy of a film or performance are known.

  • drama theory. It was interpreted not as an action that had already taken place, but as an ongoing one.
  • And thirdly, dramaturgy is a collection of works of a particular era, some people or writer.

An action is a known change in a certain time period. A change in dramaturgy corresponds to a change in fate. In comedy she is joyful, in tragedy she is sad. The time span may vary. It can be several hours (as in the French classical drama) or span many years (as in William Shakespeare).

Stages of dramaturgy

  • The exposition puts the reader, listener or viewer into action. Here is the first acquaintance with the characters. This section reveals the nationality of people, this or that era and other points. The action can start quickly and actively. Or maybe, vice versa, gradually.
  • Tie. The name speaks for itself. A key element of dramaturgy. The appearance of conflict or the acquaintance of the characters with each other.
  • Development of actions and images. gradual tension.
  • The climax can be bright and impressive. The highest point of the piece. Here there is an emotional outburst, intensity of passions, the dynamics of the plot or the relationship of the characters.
  • Interchange. Ends an action. It can be gradual or, conversely, instantaneous. It can abruptly end the action or become the finale. This is the summary of the essay.

Secrets of Mastery

To comprehend the secrets of literary or stagecraft, you should know the basics of dramaturgy. First of all, it is a form as a means for expressing content. Also in any form of art there is always an image. Often this is an imaginary version of reality, depicted through notes, canvas, word, plastic, etc. When creating an image, the author must take into account that the main accomplice will be the viewer, reader or listener (depending on the type of art). The next major element in drama is action. It implies the presence of contradiction, and it necessarily contains conflict and drama.

The drama is based on the suppression of free will, the highest point is a violent death. Old age and the inevitability of death are also dramatic. Natural disasters become dramatic when people die in the process.

The work of the author on the work begins when the theme arises. The idea solves the issue of the chosen topic. It is not static or open. If it stops developing, then it dies. Conflict is the highest level of manifestation of dramatic contradictions. For its implementation, a plot is needed. The chain of events is organized into a plot, which details the conflict through the concretization of the plot. There is also such an event chain as intrigue.

Dramaturgy of the second half of the 20th century

Modern drama is not just a certain period of historical time, but a whole burning process. It involves playwrights of entire generations and various creative directions. Representatives such as Arbuzov, Vampilov, Rozov and Shvarts are innovators of the genre of socio-psychological drama. Modern drama does not stand still, it is constantly updated, developing and moving. Among the huge number of styles and genres that have engulfed the theater since the late 50s of the 20th century and up to our time, the socio-psychological play clearly predominates. Many of them had deep philosophical overtones.

For several decades, modern drama has been trying to overcome established stereotypes, to be closer to the real life of the hero in solving his problems.

What is dramaturgy in literature?

Dramaturgy is a special kind in literature that has a dialogic form and is intended to be embodied on the stage. In fact, this is the life of the characters on the stage. In the play, they come to life and reproduce real life with all the ensuing conflicts and contradictions.

The necessary moments for the written work to come to life on stage and evoke certain emotions in the audience:

  • The art of dramaturgy and directing must be inextricably linked with inspiration.
  • The director must be able to read dramatic works correctly, check their composition, and take into account the form.
  • Understanding the logic of a holistic process. Each subsequent action should flow smoothly from the previous one.
  • The director has the method of artistic technique.
  • Work for the result of the entire creative team. The performance must be carefully thought out, ideologically rich and clearly organized.

Dramatic works

There are a huge number of them. Some of them should be listed as an example:

  • "Othello", "A Midsummer Night's Dream", "Romeo and Juliet" by Shakespeare.
  • "Thunderstorm" Ostrovsky.
  • "Inspector" Gogol.

Thus, dramaturgy is the theory and art of constructing dramatic works. It is also the plot-compositional basis, the totality of works and the theory of drama. There are levels of dramaturgy. beginning, development, climax and denouement. To comprehend the secrets of drama, you need to know its basics.


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