THE CONVENTIONS OF THE ART OF DRAMA AND

THE CONVENTIONS OF THE ART OF DRAMA AND OTHER FORMS OF LITERATURE: � There is a big difference between a play and any other form of literature. A play is not really a piece of literature for reading. A true play is three-dimensional. It is literature that walks and talks before our eyes; the text of the play is meant to be translated into sights, sounds and actions which occur literally and physically on a stage; beautiful language was used to suggest sunrise, nightfall, or noon where nowadays lighting effects would be used (Boulton 3).

VISIBLE ACTION: THE PLOT � The plot of a play is the actual story. It is generally a mechanical exercise to summarize such a story, and a more interesting exercise to study the skill of its construction. In a play, however, both the outline and the details of the plot are governed by this key fact of the three-dimensional nature of drama; the plot must be of a kind that can be represented by ordinary human beings on a public stage.

� It is also necessary for the plot of the play to be very clear, so that the audience has no difficulty in following it at the necessary speed; so the plot of a play is generally either a very simple story or one, as in some comedies, in which, though the action is very complicated, enjoyment depends more on seeing the rush of complications than on an expectation of the full significance of all of them (38).

� A play must have twists and turns to keep interest until the end. It must develop from one crisis to another. The word CRISIS, as a literary term, does not necessarily mean something alarming or distressing, but merely a crisis of interest, an important event—a sense in which a proposal of marriage may be just as much a crisis as an avalanche (42). 1. THE CLARIFICATION OR INTRODUCTION This is the part of the play in which we learn who the chief characters are, what they are there for and what are the problems with which they start.

2 - Some starling development giving rise to new problems. We may call this THE FIRST CRISIS 3 - The first crisis will lead on to other actions, events or modifications of character which may in their turn have new consequences carrying the play further forward. Probably the whole plot now proceeds for some time from crisis to crisis. The crises may succeed one another as causes and effects, or some fresh crisis may arise from another cause. This may be called COMPLICATION

4 - The whole action is brought to a close by some final discovery, action, or decision. This is called the DḖNOUEMENT (untying of the knot) (43). � There is usually little difficulty in disentangling the main plot of a play with its Clarification, Clarification First Crisis, Crisis Complication, Complication and Dénouement; Dénouement but many good plays have a sub-plot, or several subplots, or occasionally two parallel plots of approximately equal importance, to complicate the action further, add interest or give relief (48).

ADAPTATIONS OF THE PLOT � Obviously every play has a 'source' in that the plot must have come from somewhere; plots do not happen by accident. History is a mine of good stories, and as it is continually being made it is never likely to be exhausted. Moreover, with imagination a playwright can create a whole play of passion and conflict out of a very few lines in a history book; any live history book or old chronicle contains dozens of sentences that could be themes for plays (64 – 65).

THE CONVENTINAL DIVISIONS � There are plays with no act or scene division. The most obvious example is the form of one-act play. The Greek drama has no act or scene divisions in the sense in which the modern drama uses them; the action is uninterrupted; but divisions of the action is made by the CHORUS reciting lyrics or invocations to the gods between the episodes. This kind of division is obviously suitable only for poetic drama (75 – 76).

� Acts and scenes are merely formal divisions of no great artistic importance; they allow the scene to be changed when necessary; they allow the cast a few moments of rest or time to change a costume. Act and scene divisions are not as essential to drama as plot; in a well-made play they closely follow the requirements of the plot (78). � Nowadays the 'exit lines' of actors and the 'curtain line' at the end of a scene are regarded as very important to the artistic structure of the play; this is a comparatively recent development. This is to carry over the suspense and excitement to the next act or scene, and, in the case of the 'exit line', to give the actor the chance to make a strong impression before going out (79).