Dramatic Elements and Innovations in Theater History Essay

Theatre or play dates back to the medieval year during the time when playwrights like Sophocles, Aristophanes, and Aeschylus among others did their works. Analyzing the difference between the medieval playwriting and the Elizabethan, as well as Restoration plays, is pertinent in understanding the history of theatre.

Playwriting has undergone some changes. There are some noticeable differences. Plays including Meneachmi (Plautus and Riley 27), Phaedra, Tartuffe, and Henry V have remarkable changes. Their main structure is significantly influenced by medieval plays like Antigone (Sophocles 605) and Bacchae (Euripides 6). Aristotle, studying ancient plays, proposed some characteristics of these plays to help understand how they affect recent works.

Plot: Aristotle assigned huge importance to the plot. Ancient plays were mainly on myths but with a historical fact. For instance, Phaedra is the queen of Athens in the play Phaedra (Racine 3) while King Henry is the King of England in Henry V (Shakespeare 86). The plot develops from the chorus in ancient plays -Antigone (Sophocles 605) while in recent plays like Henry V; it is built from the character’s speech.

Thought: ancient plays (Antigone, Lysistrata, and Bacchae) communicated certain believes like a confrontation between gods, or gods and humans or humans against humans but with the influence of gods (Aristophanes 12). Recent plays like Henry V and Phaedra communicate political, societal, and religious messages even though some medieval ones do the same. Their messages were not the core themes of the play (Shakespeare 87; Racine 12).

Character: in Antigone, King Creon refuses to grant Antigone’s brother a decent burial (Sophocles 635). Phaedra falls in love with Hippolytus, the son of her husband. Antigone gives her life for the love of her brother while Phaedra threatens to kill herself when repulsed by Hippolytus, she offers him the kingdom later (Racine 32). These plays portray a psychoanalytical interpretation of issues.

Diction and Spectacle: the language used by plays in the medieval and Elizabethan eras is social, formal, and argumentative while some are more expressive and classicist (Aeschylus 3). Songs appear at varying levels in both ancient and recent plays.

Works Cited

Aeschylus. Agamemnon. Oxford: Clarendone press, 1881. Print.

Aristophanes. Lysistrata. New York: Theater 61 press, 1992. Print.

Euripides. Bacchae. Translated Ian Johnston of Malaspina University-College. Arlington: Richer Resources publications, 2008. Print.

Plautus, Bob, and Riley, Thomas. Menaechmi; Or, the Twin-Brothers. Stillwell: Digireads.com Publishing, 1987. Print.

Racine, Jean. Phaedra. Kila, MT: Kissinger Publishing, 2004. Print.

Shakespeare, William. King Henry V. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Print.

Sophocles. Antigone. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice, 2002. Print.