DRAMATIC DESIGN:
ARISTOTLE & HUDSON
INTRODUCTION:
Can a tailor sew clothes without proper designs? Can an engineer build a building without any plans or designs? No.
Literature is written in different forms like poetry, drama, novel, short story, biography, travelogue etc. In case of drama, the dramatist has to follow some specific design or pattern to make the drama more effective and appealing.
ARISTOTLE’S CONCEPT OF DRAMATIC DESIGN:
Aristotle, the great Greek philosopher has discussed drama and its elements in his masterpiece critical treatise ‘The Poetics’. According to Aristotle, there are six fundamental aspects in drama which impart drama a good dramatic design.
1. PLOT:
Plot is a series of actions logically connected with one another. A plot must have following five stages:
2. CHARACTER:
Drama is to be enacted on the stage. The actions are performed on the stage. For this, we need the characters through which the dramatist presents his story. There are different types of characters like major and minor, round and flat etc.
3. THOUGHT:
No drama can exist without a serious thought or idea. In fact, the dramatist writes a drama only to convey some serious philosophy of life, his own point of view of life. Hence, thought or theme is highly important in any drama.
4. LANGUAGE:
Aristotle gave much emphasis on the use of proper flowery language in poetry. He believed that the language of the dramatist must be ornamental. He must use various figures of speech in all parts of the play. This makes the drama more interesting.
5. SPECTACLE:
Spectacle includes stage conditions, costumes, stage properties, sound and light effects etc. The dramatist has to write his drama considering the availability of all these things in his times.
6. SONG:
Music and song in the modern drama are as important as chorus was in the ancient drama. This element adds more charm, beauty and interest in drama. It relieves the tension of the drama.
W. H. HUDSON’S CONCEPT OF DRAMATIC DESIGN:
Apart from above important elements of drama as discussed by Aristotle, W. H. Hudson believes that three more things are required in drama in order to make the dramatic design more appealing and fruitful.
1. PARALLELISM:
The dramatist has to introduce some parallel action going on side by side with the main action, story or plot. The subordinate action enhances the effect of the main plot or story. For example, in Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, the main plot is the love story of Helena and Demetrius and Hermia and Lysander. But there are subordinate love stories of Oberon and Titania and Theseus and Hippolyta.
2. CONTRAST & CONFLICT:
The dramatist tries to present contrast and conflict among different forces in his drama. It can be a contrast between good and evil, rich and poor, protagonist and antagonist, powerful and powerless etc. It is rightly said that no conflict, no life. In drama too, this contrast and conflict adds more suspense and interest.
3. DRAMATIC IRONY:
The dramatist makes use of a device called ‘dramatic irony’. Here, the significance of the words (dialogues) or the action is clear to the audience, but the characters themselves are unaware of the consequences. The audience knows what is going to happen next whereas the characters are completely unknown about the end of the play. This creates laughter as well as suspense in drama.
CONCLUSION:
Hence, to sum up, we may say that as an engineer needs to draw a proper design before building a bridge, the dramatist too needs to follow proper pattern or design while writing his drama. A drama without any design is just like a journey without any destination or any knowledge about the paths. Plot, character, thought, language, spectacle, song, parallelism, contrast, conflict, irony – all these constitute proper dramatic design.
No comments:
Post a Comment