Content-learning: A Step Back into the Past

In the first lecture of EDU 3217, I had learnt about the history of theatre, from the ancient Greek theatre to the modern drama. I found it interesting as I like history. Without further ado, let me review what I had learnt in the lesson.

To begin with, theatre started from Greek. From the lecture, I get to know more about Greek, besides the greatness of its philosophy that we had learnt in Form Four History subject. Other than its three great philosophers (Socrates, Plato and Aristotle), Greek has three famous tragedians too, namely Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripedes. They wrote mostly for religious festivals held at Acropolis. Thus, Greek plays are strongly connected with the idea of God and religion. Practically, the story is about the tragedy of a character (from legend or history), who undergo reversal of fortune. One special feature of Greek plays is their violent scenes occur off stage.

When Rome conquered Greece, Roman theatre emerges with heavy influence of Greek culture. An example of Roman tragedian is Seneca. However, during Constantine, the emergence of Christianity terminated all forms of theatre.

Nevertheless, the force of religion did not cause the death of theatre, for theatre came back through morality plays in Medieval Theatre. Its purpose is to spread Christian faith and condemn pagan rites. We are also introduced to Elizabethan Drama that involves famous playwrights, such as William Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson and Middleton.

Within the year of 1660 to 1668, the creation of Restoration Drama hastened the speed of theatre’s development to move from tragedy to comedy. Plays became more comical and the story revolved around the happenings in the court, instead of everyday life. Hence, they catered mainly for the court society. However, the prominence of drama was dwindled between 18th to 19th centuries.

In 20th century, modern drama emerged. It adheres to Freudian interpretation of life and realism. In addition, we had also learnt about the different types of drama, such as tragedy, comedy, tragicomedy and farce.

Last but not the least, we had been taught about the criteria of a good play, which I will explain further in depth in the future post, “Criteria of a Good Play”.

In conclusion, the lecture was beneficial and important to us as introduction to the course, EDU 3217 Teaching The Language of Drama, for it gave us a clearer picture about theater.