20. Yüzyılda Gelenek Ve Yenilik İngilizce Drama (Seri B)

In establishing England’s long lasting tradition of drama playwrights almost always deviated from the norms represented in foreign models that influenced them. The elements of native English drama as well as innovations by specific English playwrights interfered with the norm so as to produce a novel approach to the writing of plays in almost every period that marks the development of English drama since Shakespeare’s time. Shakespeare violated the unities of time, place and action, and never stuck to the unity of genre. Restoration drama produced a highly novel use of typically English witty dialogue cleverly imposed upon the familiar classical plot structure of comedy of manners, while in the 18th century, the unpromising native genres like heroic drama and sentimental comedy were parodied by other playwrights of the time. In the late 19th century Oscar Wilde updated the traditional form of comedy of manners by a subversive use of its cliches. In early 20th century Shaw came up with his realistic comedy of ideas by leaving out Ibsen’s melodramatic plot structures and blending his realistic drama of discussion with the Old Comedy of Ancient Greece represented by the work of Aristophanes. Post-war English drama enjoyed John Osborne’s and Arnold Wesker’s skillful use of the good old rhetoric in modern dress. Harold Pinter in turn blended the theatre of the absurd with elements of neonaturalism, while John Arden in ‘Sergeant Musgrave’s Dance’ juxtaposed Shakespearean discourse against the Brechtian. Peter Shaffer and Carol Churchill defamiliarised the stage by replacing the ‘familiar’ with the ‘unexpected’ through novel approaches to their subject matter. Finally, in postmodernising English drama, Tom Stoppard made full use of the tradition that had reached his time through a ‘playful’ treatment of all the novel attitudes that had produced the ‘playful’ quality of English playwriting.