Phonetic expressive means and stylistic devices

Space is an important element in drama since the stage itself also represents a space where action is presented. The analysis of places and settings in plays can help one get a better feel for characters and their behaviour but also for the overall atmosphere.

Plays can differ significantly with regard to how space is presented and how much information about space is offered. (While in George Bernard Shaw’s plays the secondary text provides detailed spatio-temporal descriptions, one finds hardly anything in the way of secondary text in Shakespeare). The fact that the description of the stage sets in the secondary text is sometimes very detailed and sometimes hardly worth mentioning is another crucial starting point for further analysis since that can tell us something about more general functions of settings.

A more detailed stage set aims at creating an illusion of realism, i.e., the scene presented on stage is meant to be as true-to-life as possible and the audience is expected to succumb to that illusion. At the same time, a detailed set draws attention to problems of an individual’s milieu, for example, or background in general. This was particularly important in naturalist writing, which was premised on the idea that a person’s character and behaviour are largely determined by his or her social context.

By contrast, if detail is missing in the text or in production, that obviously also has a reason. Sometimes, plays do not employ detailed settings because they do not aim at presenting an individualised, personal background but a general scenario that could be placed anywhere and affect anyone. One can argue that this minimal set highlights the characters’ uprootedness and underlines the play’s focus on human existence in general.

The layout/overall appearance of the set is usually described in stage directions or descriptions at the beginning of acts or scenes. Thus, all the necessary stage props(i.e., properties used on stage such as furniture, accessories, etc.) and possibly stage painting can be presented verbally in secondary texts. The set can also be conveyed in the characters’ speech. (In Elizabethan times, for example, where the set was rather bare with little stage props and no background scenery, the spatio-temporal framework of a scene had to be provided by characters’ references to it. The setting was thus created rhetorically as word scenery).

The setting can be used as a means of indirect characterisation. A close look at the setting can thus contribute to a better understanding of the characters and their behaviour. The plot of a play is never presented in a vacuum but always against the background of a specific scenery and often the setting corresponds with what is going on in the storyworld. (Thus, the storm at the beginning of Shakespeare’s The Tempest not only starts off the play and functions as an effective background to the action but it also reflects the ‘disorder’ in which the characters find themselves at the beginning. The lack of peace and order in the social world is thus analogous to chaos and destruction in the natural world. Likewise, in Shakespeare’s King Lear, a storm signifies disorder when King Lear’s daughters Goneril and Regan turn their father out of doors although they had vowed their affection for him and had received their share of the kingdom in return).

One can say that rather than only functioning as a background or creating a certain atmosphere, these spaces become symbolic spaces as they point towards other levels of meaning in the text. The setting can thus support the expression of the world view current at a certain time or general philosophical, ethical or moral questions.

One important question one can ask, for example, is whether space is presented in detail or only in general terms. (Sometimes a bare stage indicates the play’s focus on the characters’ inner lives and consciousness, and technical devices and stage props are mainly used to emphasise or underline them. Put another way, the focus is on mental processes rather than on social factors). The stage and the represented setting usually have a purpose and one then has to ask how they correlate with what is presented in the actual text, to what extent they express concepts and ideas, etc.

5. Time in drama can be considered from a variety of angles. One can, for example, look at time as part of the play: How are references to time made in the characters’ speech, the setting, stage directions, etc.? What is the overall time span of the story? Another question one can ask in this context is: Which general concepts of time are expressed in and by a play?

One of the first distinctions one can make is the one between succession and simultaneity. Events and actions can take place in one of two ways: either one after another (successively) or all at the same time (simultaneously).

There are a number of possibilities to create a temporal frame in drama. Allusions to time can be made in the characters’ conversations; the exact time of a scene can be provided in the stage directions; or certain stage props like clocks and calendars or auditory devices such as church bells ringing in the background can give the audience a clue about what time it is. Word painting means that actors describe the scenery vividly and thus create or ‘paint’ a picture in the viewers’ minds.

A gap in the played time of a piece of drama is called ellipsis, i.e., one leaves out bits of the story and thus speeds up the plot.

Another aspect to look at when analysing time in drama (as well as narrative) is the concept of order. How are events ordered temporally? Like narrative, drama can make use of flashback (analepsis) and flashforward (prolepsis). In flashbacks, events from the past are mingled with the presentation of current events, while in flashforwards, future events are anticipated. While flashforwards are not as common since they potentially threaten the build-up of the audience’s suspense (if we already know what is going to happen, we can at best wonder how this ending is brought about), flashbacks are frequently used in order to illustrate a character’s memories or to explain the outcome of certain actions.

Three terms which are often used in the context of discussions of chronology and order are the three basic types of beginnings: ab ovo, in medias res and in ultimas res. These terms refer to the point of time of a story at which a play sets in and they are thus closely related to the amount of information viewers are offered at the beginning of a play:

• ab ovo: the play starts at the beginning of the story and provides all the necessary background information concerning the characters, their circumstances, conflicts, etc. (exposition)

• in medias res: the story starts somewhere in the middle and leaves the viewer puzzled at first

• in ultimas res: the story begins with its actual outcome or ending and then relates events in reverse order, thus drawing the audience’s attention on the ‘how’ rather than the ‘what’ of the story. Plays which use this method are called analytic plays.

Plays by definition always already present the viewer with some action unless there is a narrative-like mediator (chorus, commentator, etc.). In that sense plays are usually always in medias res because they present viewers directly with an interaction among characters.

As with the presentation of space, aspects of time are rarely presented for their own sake but often imply further levels of meaning that might help one interpret a text. Thus, time can also be symbolic and stand for larger concepts.

While plays where the overall order is chronological suggest progress and development and thus perhaps also a more positive and optimistic image of mankind and history.

By contrast, non-chronological plots, for example, can be confusing, they may also create suspense or challenge the viewer’s ability to make connections between events. Furthermore, plays which present a story in its chronological order draw attention to the final outcome and thus are based on the question: ‘What happens next?’, whereas plays with a non-chronological order, which might even anticipate the ending, focus on the question: ‘How does everything happen?’

Detailed time presentations or, by contrast, a lack of detail may point towards the importance or insignificance of time for a specific storyline.

6. Characters play a dominant role in this genre and therefore deserve close attention. The characters in plays can generally be divided into major characters and minor characters, depending on how important they are for the plot. A good indicator as to whether a character is major or minor is the amount of time and speech as well as presence on stage he or she is allocated. As a rule of thumb, major characters usually have a lot to say and appear frequently throughout the play, while minor characters have less presence or appear only marginally. (Thus, for example, Hamlet is clearly the main character or protagonist of Shakespeare’s famous tragedy as we can infer from the fact that he appears in most scenes and is allocated a great number of speeches and, what is more, since even his name appears in the title (he is the eponymous hero). Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, by contrast, are only minor characters because they are not as vitally important for the plot and therefore appear only for a short period of time). Occasionally even virtually non-existent characters may be important but this scenario is rather exceptional.

Major characters are frequently, albeit not exclusively, multi-dimensional and dynamic (round character) while minor characters often remain mono-dimensional and static (flat character). Multi-dimensional characters display several (even conflicting) character traits and are thus reasonably complex. They also tend to develop throughout the plot (hence, dynamic), though this is not necessarily the case. (Hamlet, for example, is marked by great intellectual and rhetorical power but he is also flawed to the extent that he is indecisive and passive. The audience learns a lot about his inner moral conflict, his wavering between whether to take revenge or not, and we see him in different roles displaying different qualities: as prince and statesman, as son, as Ophelia’s admirer, etc).

Mono-dimensional characters, on the other hand, can usually be summarised by a single phrase or statement, i.e., they have only few character traits and are generally merely types. Frequently, mono-dimensional characters are also static, i.e., they do not develop or change during the play. (Laertes, Ophelia’s brother, for example, is not as complex as Hamlet. He can be described as a passionate, rash youth who does not hesitate to take revenge when he hears about his father’s and sister’s deaths. As a character, he corresponds to the conventional revenger type, and part of the reason why he does not come across as a complex figure is that we hardly get to know him. In the play, Laertes functions as a foil (a character who represents a sharp contrast to the protagonist and thus serves to stress and highlight the protagonist’s distinctive temperament)for Hamlet since Hamlet’s indecisiveness and thoughtfulness appear as more marked through the contrast between the two young men).

According to Aristotle’s Poetics, characters in tragedies have to be of a high social rank so that their downfall in the end can be more tragic (the higher they are, the lower they fall), while comedies typically employ ‘lower’ characters who need not be taken so seriously and can thus be made fun of.

Sincetragedies deal with difficult conflicts and subject matters, tragic heroes are usually complex. According to Aristotle, they are supposed to be neither too good nor too bad but somewhere ‘in the middle’, which allows them to have some tragic ‘flaw’ that ultimately causes their downfall. Since tragic heroes have almost ‘average’ characteristics and inner conflicts, the audience can identify more easily with them, which is an important prerequisite for what Aristotle calls the effect of catharsis (literally, a ‘cleansing’ of one’s feelings), i.e., the fact that one can suffer with the hero, feel pityand fear, and through this strong emotional involvement clarify one’s own state of mind and potentially become a better human being.

Comedies, by contrast, deal with problems in a lighter manner and therefore do not necessarily require complex figures. Furthermore, types are more appropriate in comedies as their single qualities can be easily exaggerated and thus subverted into laughable behaviour and actions.

Characters can also be classified according to their membership to certain groups of characters both across the entire play as well as in individual scenes. In other words, questions like ‘Who belongs to whom?’ and ‘Which characters are friends or foes?’ are also essential in drama analysis. Usually, one can make the distinction between heroes and their enemies or protagonists and antagonists, and one can find characters who collaborate and support one another, while others fight or plot against each other.

Characters in drama are characterised using various techniques of characterisation. Generally speaking, one can distinguish between characterisations made by the author in the play’s secondary text (authorial) or by characters in the play (figural), and whether these characterisations are made directly (explicitly) or indirectly (implicitly). Another distinction can be made between self-characterisation and characterisation through others. The way these different forms of characterisation can be accomplished in plays can be schematised as follows:

	authorial	figural
explicit	descriptions of characters in author commentary or stage directions; telling names	characters’ descriptions of and comments on other characters; also self-characterisation
implicit	correspondences and contrasts; indirectly characterising names	physical appearance, gesture and facial expressions (body language); masks and costumes; stage props, setting; behaviour; voice; language (style, register, dialect, etc.); topics one discusses

Of course, the characterisation of figures usually works on several levels and combines a number of these techniques (gesture, behaviour, looks, etc).

The outward appearance of characters is often used as an implicit means of characterisation. (Melodramatic plays, for example, generally present the ‘goodies’ as fair and good-looking, while ‘baddies’ are of dark complexion, wearing moustaches, etc.)

Dramatic language is another important means of indirect characterisation in plays. Characters are presented to the audience through what they say and how they say it, their verbal interactions with others and the discrepancies between their talk and their actions. Dialect indicates what region or geographical area one comes from, while sociolect refers to linguistic features which give away one’s social status and membership in a social group.

Sometimes, character traits can already be anticipated by a character’s name. So-called telling names (explicit characterisation of a character through his/her name), for example, explicitly state the quality of a character (e.g., figures like Vice, Good-Deeds, Everyman, Knowledge, Beauty, etc. in the Medieval morality plays), or they refer to characters’ typical behaviour. (Thus, some of the characters in Congreve’s The Way of the World are identified as specific types through their names: Fainall = ‘feigns all’, Mirabell = ‘admirable’ and also ‘admirer of female beauty’, Witwoud = ‘would be witty’, and Millamant = ‘has a thousand lovers’).

Characters represent one of the most important analytical categories in drama since they carry the plot. In other words: there cannot be a play without characters. Characters’ interactions trigger and move the plot, and their various relationships to one another form the basis for conflicts and dynamic processes. A lot of the terms used for techniques of characterisation in narrative are also applicable in drama but one needs to be aware of fundamental differences related to the different medium.

7. Dramatic language is ultimately always constructed or ‘made up’ and it often serves several purposes. On the level of the story-world of a play, language can of course assume all the pragmatic functions that can be found in real-life conversations, too: e.g., to ensure mutual understanding and to convey information, to persuade or influence someone, to relate one’s experiences or signal emotions, etc. However, dramatic language is often rhetorical and poetic, i.e., it uses language in ways which differ from standard usage in order to draw attention to its artistic nature. Dramatic language is multi-faceted and fulfils a number of functions within a play. As a consequence it can have various effects on the audience.

When analysing dramatic texts, one ought to have a closer look at the various forms of utterance available for drama.

In drama, in contrast to narrative, characters typically talk to one another and the entire plot is carried by and conveyed through their verbal interactions. Language in drama can generally be presented either as monologue or dialogue. Monologue means that only one character speaks while dialogue always requires two or more participants. A special form of monologue, where no other person is present on stage beside the speaker, is called soliloquy. (Soliloquies occur frequently in Richard III for example, where Richard often remains alone on stage and talks about his secret plans). Soliloquies are mainly used to present a character in more detail and also on a more personal level. In other words: Characters are able to ‘speak their mind’ in soliloquies. That characters explain their feelings, motives, etc. on stage appears unnatural from a real-life standpoint but this is necessary in plays because it would otherwise be very difficult to convey thoughts, for example. In narrative texts, by contrast, thoughts can be presented directly through techniques such as interior monologue or free indirect discourse.

(Consider the famous soliloquy from Hamlet:

To be, or not to be, that is the question:

Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles

And by opposing end them. To die – to sleep,

No more; and by a sleep to say we end

The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to: ‘tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;

To sleep, perchance to dream – ay, there’s the rub:

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause – there’s the respect

That makes calamity of so long life.

[…]

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pitch and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry

And lose the name of action. Soft you now,

The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons

Be all my sins remember’d.

(Hamlet, III, 1: 56-88)

In case of a monologue, other characters can be present on stage, either overhearing the speech of the person talking or even being directly addressed by him or her. The main point is that one person holds the floor for a lengthy period of time. (Hamlet’s soliloquy reveals his inner conflict to the audience. We learn that he wavers between taking action and remaining passive. The fact that he contemplates the miseries of life, death and the possibility of suicide shows him as a melancholic, almost depressed character. At the same time, his speech is profound and philosophical, and thus Hamlet comes across as thoughtful and intellectual. This example illustrates one of the main functions of language in drama, namely the indirect characterisation of figures).

Another special form of speech in drama is the so-called aside (a type of utterance in drama where the actor speaks away from other characters, either to himself, secretly to other characters or ad spectatores).. It is conspicuous that plays of the Elizabethan Agemake significantly more use of asides than modern plays, for example. One of the reasons certainly has to do with the shape of the stage.

Asides are an important device because they channel extra information past other characters directly to the audience. Thus, spectators are in a way taken into confidence and they often become ‘partners-in-crime’, so to speak,because they ultimately know more than some of the figures on stage. A linguistic device such as an aside can serve various purposes and needs to be analysed in context. (When asides are used in an extraordinarily extensive way, as is the case in the Revenger’s Tragedy, one may also ask why this is done).

In comparison to monologues and asides, dialogue is by far the most frequently used type of speech in drama. In analysing dialogue, one can look at turn-taking and the allocation of turns ( the number of lines in a character’s speech in a play ) to different speakers. Do some characters have longer turns than others and, if so, why? One can also analyse how often a character gets the chance to speak through the entire play and whether he or she is interrupted by others or not. The distribution and amount of turns speakers are allocated in plays is an important feature to investigate in drama.

A special type of turn allocation occurs when speaker’s alternating turns are of one line each. This is called stichomythia and is often, albeit not exclusively, used in contexts where characters compete or disagree with one another.

Repartees are quick responses given in order to top remarks of another speaker or to use them to one’s own advantage. Through the quick turn-taking mechanism, the dialogue also appears livelier and in itself represents fast action.

The play with language entertains spectators and at the same time attracts and sustains their attention. A special type of wordplay is the so-called pun, where words are used which are the same or at least similar in sound and spelling (homonyms) but differ in meaning. (Oscar Wilde’s play The Importance of Being Earnest, for example, centres on the pun on the name Ernest and the adjective ‘earnest’, which denotes the character trait of being sincere and serious). Puns were also very common in Elizabethan plays and they were used both for comical and serious effects. (Consider, for example, Hamlet’s advice to Polonius concerning his daughter Ophelia:

Let her not walk i’th’sun. Conception is a blessing,

But as your daughter may conceive – friend, look

To’t. [...]

(Hamlet, II, 2: 184-186)

When Hamlet warns Polonius not to let his daughter “walk in the sun”, this can mean quite literally that she should not walk outside, e.g., in public places, but if one considers that the sun in Elizabethan times was also used as a royal emblem, the sentence can be read as an indirect warning not to let Ophelia come near Hamlet himself. Another pun is used with the words “conception” and “conceive”, which on the one hand refer to the formation of ideas and hence are positive (“blessing”) but on the other hand also mean that a woman becomes pregnant, which was not desirable for an unmarried woman. Thus, Hamlet implicitly advises Polonius to take care of his daughter lest she should lose her innocence and consequently her good reputation. The puns, albeit funny at first glance, convey a serious message).

Another concept to be mentioned in the context of play with language is wit (brief verbal expression which is intentionally contrived to create comic surprise, combining humour and intellect).

(Another author famous for his witty plays is the late nineteenth-century writer Oscar Wilde. Consider the following brief excerpt from his play The Importance of Being Earnest:

LADY BRACKNELL Good afternoon, dear Algernon, I hope you are behaving very well.

ALGERNON I’m feeling very well, Aunt Augusta.

LADY BRACKNELL That’s not quite the same thing. In fact the two things rarely go together. [ Sees Jack and bows to him with icy coldness. ]

ALGERNON [ To Gwendolen ] Dear me, you are smart!

GWENDOLEN I am always smart! Aren’t I, Mr Worthing?

JACK You’re quite perfect, Miss Fairfax.

GWENDOLEN Oh! I hope I am not that. It would leave no room for developments, and I intend to develop in many directions.

(The Importance of Being Earnest, I)

This short verbal exchange where four of the characters greet one another abounds in witty remarks and comments, which are meant to display the speakers’ cleverness. Lady Bracknell, for example, signals with her reply to Algernon that she is a knowledgeable woman, who has had some experience of the world. Gwendolen’s reply to Jack’s compliment shows her coquetry. She is fully aware of her effect on Jack and plays with her attractiveness. While language here portrays society and its behavioural codes at large, it also gives an indirect characterisation of individual characters).

8. Dramatic Sub-genres

Ever since Aristotle’s Poetics, one distinguishes at least between two sub-genres of drama: comedy and tragedy. While comedy typically aims at entertaining the audience and making it laugh by reassuring them that no disaster will occur and that the outcome of possible conflicts will be positive for the characters involved, tragedy tries to raise the audience’s concern, to confront viewers with serious action and conflicts, which typically end in a catastrophe (usually involving the death of the protagonist and possibly others). Both comedy and tragedy have, in the course of literary history, developed further sub-genres of which the following list provides only an initial overview.

Sub-genres of comedy	Sub-genres of tragedy
- Romantic Comedy	- Senecan Tragedy
- Satiric Comedy	- Revenge Tragedy / Tragedy of Blood
- Comedy of Manners	- Domestic / Bourgeois Tragedy
- Farce	- Tragicomedy
- Comedy of Humours
- Melodrama

The End

Types of Comedy

Sometimes, scholars distinguish between high comedy, which appeals to the intellect (comedy of ideas) and has a serious purpose (for example, to criticise), and low comedy, where greater emphasis is placed on situation comedy, slapstick and farce. There are further sub-genres of comedy:

Romantic Comedy:

A pair of lovers and their struggle to come together is usually at the centre of romantic comedy. Romantic comedies also involve some extraordinary circumstances, e.g., magic, dreams, the fairy-world, etc. Examples are Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream or As You Like It.

Satiric Comedy:

Satiric comedy has a critical purpose. It usually attacks philosophical notions or political practices as well as general deviations from social norms by ridiculing characters. In other words: the aim is not to make people ‘laugh with’ the characters but ‘laugh at’ them.

Comedy of Manners:

The comedy of manners is also satirical in its outlook and it takes the artificial and sophisticated behaviour of the higher social classes under closer scrutiny. The plot usually revolves around love or some sort of amorous intrigue and the language is marked by witty repartees and cynicism.

Farce:

The farce typically provokes viewers to hearty laughter. It presents highly exaggerated and caricatured types of characters and often has an unlikely plot. Farces employ sexual mix-ups, verbal humour and physical comedy, and they formed a central part of the Italian commedia dell’arte. In English plays, farce usually appears as episodes in larger comical pieces, e.g., in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew.

Comedy of Humours:

Ben Jonson developed the comedy of humours, which is based on the assumption that a person’s character or temperament is determined by the predominance of one of four humours (i.e., body liquids): blood (= sanguine), phlegm (= phlegmatic), yellow bile (= choleric), black bile (= melancholic). In the comedy of humours, characters are marked by one of these predispositions which cause their eccentricity or distorted personality.

Melodrama:

Melodrama is a type of stage play which became popular in the 19^th century. It mixes romantic or sensational plots with musical elements. Later, the musical elements were no longer considered essential. Melodrama aims at a violent appeal to audience emotions and usually has a happy ending.

Types of Tragedy

Senecan Tragedy:

A precursor of tragic drama were the tragedies by the Roman poet Seneca (4 BC – 65 AD). His tragedies were recited rather than staged but they became a model for English playwrights entailing the five-act structure, a complex plot and an elevated style of dialogue.

Revenge Tragedy / Tragedy of Blood:

This type of tragedy represented a popular genre in the Elizabethan Age and made extensive use of certain elements of the Senecan tragedy such as murder, revenge, mutilations and ghosts. Typical examples of this sub-genre are Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta, Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus and Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy. These plays were written in verse and, following Aristotelian poetics, the main characters were of a high social rank (the higher they are, the lower they fall). Apart from dealing with violent subject matters, these plays conventionally made use of dumb shows or play-within-the-play, that is a play performed as part of the plot of the play

Domestic / Bourgeois Tragedy:

In line with a changing social system where the middle class gained increasing importance and power, tragedies from the 18^th century onward shifted their focus to protagonists from the middle or lower classes and were written in prose. The protagonist typically suffers a domestic disaster which is intended to arouse empathy rather than pity and fear in the audience.

Tragicomedy:

The boundaries of genres are often blurred in drama and occasionally they lead to the emergence of new sub-genres, e.g., the tragicomedy. Tragicomedies, as the name suggests, intermingle conventions concerning plot, character and subject matter derived from both tragedy and comedy. Plays with multiple plots which combine tragedy in one plot and comedy in the other are also occasionally referred to as tragicomedies

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