This course will consist of a sequence of essays based on a classroom lecture format not that of scholarly publications with copious footnotes supporting every assertion and with all sources dutifully acknowledged. The format I choose is one that should be friendly to students of drama interested in a discussion of the complex nature of dramatic texts. Naturally I have drawn upon previous scholarship and interpretation and I do try to make my arguments persuasive with good evidence from the texts of the plays.
The course is divided into four sections, following the format of my classes on dramatic literature at Carnegie Mellon University from 1986 to 2006.
- Greek (Athenian) Drama
- European Drama (Medieval to Spanish Golden Age)
- European Drama (Neoclassical to Romantic)
- Modern Drama – (Ibsen to 20th Century.)
This is a ‘traditional’ Western oriented course. There are many other areas of world drama - such as African-American, Native American, Arab-American, African, Asian and Middle Eastern theatre and drama, etc., etc., and such subjects as feminist, gay, and other areas of vital ‘minority’ theatre. I am interested in all these areas - but know that others are more competent to speak on these, have more interesting things to say, and say them with better authority than I can offer. Any adequate Drama Course would have to include much, which, though not outside my range of interest is outside my range of expertise. Such an ideal course would require a team effort.
This, therefore, does not claim to be an adequate course on drama, it deals only with that which I feel competent to speak and about which I believe I have something of interest to say. I hope, by this disclaimer, to forestall objections that the offered course omits a huge territory of rich and important work. My dramatists are, I must confess, mostly dead and, perhaps more deplorably, various shades of white. The theatre of the modern world, for better or for worse, has evolved from mostly western forms and practices. Brilliant and powerful alternative dramatic traditions have become exotic cultural survivals, which, although they might inspire experimental dramatists of the modern theatre, are relegated to the margins of modern cultural consciousness. In the modern world of cinema and television, where complex dramatic structure and texture are mostly disregarded, the past forms of drama are endangered and precious reminders of what, at its most ambitious, the art form is capable of achieving. This, admittedly, can be dismissed as ‘museum theatre’ out of touch with the cultural currents of the present, along with other anachronisms, like earlier classical music. For many, however, maintaining cultural memory is a society’s safeguard against becoming a one-dimensional humanity losing a sense of its identity and birthright, and vulnerable to the manipulations of the dominant ideologies - or slogans - of the moment. When we recognize how complexly and finely human consciousness can express itself we are critically armed against the debasements of the intellect we are daily subjected to in the political, commercial and cultural arenas of the modern world.
The course is “ text-oriented’. The boundaries between Drama and Theatre are highly porous. Although the history of one closely involves the other it is possible to study the history of major drama without giving much attention to the evolution of the theatre - its architecture and evolving technology – or to study the evolution of the theatre without mentioning a single major drama. My emphasis is on the cultural and ideological circumstances out of which drama arises: how drama carries a ‘Supertext’ of cultural implication which a text draws upon, by which it can be illuminated, and to which it contributes. It is a course on how to read a dramatic text: its terms of performance, its aesthetic structure and texture (e.g. plot, argument, metaphor, imagery) its relation to its culture’s major preoccupations.
Samuel Beckett claimed his art was not about ‘truth’ but about precision. I would add the best art seeks, not truth, but adequacy, for which precision would be essential. Art, such as drama, is at least as important a cultural game as sport. Our culture insists that sport devises for its games stringent rules that need to be obeyed. The best art, too, insists on difficulty and sets itself rules as stringent as in any other cultural activity. The condition of difficulty is the great interest in studying former artworks: in seeing what were the rules of the game the artists were playing and how well, how adequately and rigorously, they ‘pushed’ the rules to achieve the most impressive performance. The public, generally, treats sport far more seriously than art. It will vehemently protest if it sees essential rules broken and will show contempt for inadequate performance. We need to insist art is at least as important as sport and, if the rules are understood, as exciting and admirable as a well-played football match or game of chess.
An artwork addresses that instinct in us that responds to form – in art, logic, human beauty and sport. In a good drama we become aware of the formal stakes raised and how the emotional and intellectual pressure of the ‘material’ encompassed by the form increases the difficulty of adequate performance, making all the more wonderful our perception of the difficulty faced and overcome. I insist throughout the course that dramas are works of art, taking on genres and styles that make the dramatist’s performance difficult – and that difficulty is what art at its best is all about. Innovation in art is the artist’s setting him-or-herself challenging new difficulties and problems to solve. For this reason this course does not describe what the dramas are ‘saying’, but, like painting or music, what they are ‘doing’ – how a play organizes its elements into the richest and most compelling aesthetic experience. To liberate our aesthetic consciousness (which reconfigures the emotions and the intellect into new perceptions) is the great gift of art. I don’t believe art can teach us how to live; at most it prepares us to see life more adequately by, in William Blake’s phrase, opening the doors of perception. This will not make us happier because increased sensitivity and awareness makes us more vulnerable to distress at human atrocity and our inherently tragic human condition. But few of us would trade even tragic insight for complacent happiness.
