Dr. Vijayalayan's Literature Notes

             Revenge play or revenge tragedy signifies a tragic subgenre that became popular in England during the final years of the 16 th century. Brought into vogue by the success of Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy , it subsequently went on to become perhaps the most prominent variety of tragedy during the renaissance. Some of its most renowned specimens include John Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge , William Shakespeare’s Hamlet , John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi and Cyril Tourneur’s The Revenger’s Tragedy .       Revenge plays basically derive their inspiration from the plays of the 1 st century Latin politician and philosopher Lucius Seneca, which are noted for their rampant violence and obsessive preoccupation with the theme of revenge. In fact, virtually all facets that have invariably come to be identified as typical features characterizing revenge plays, have their basic source in the tragedies of Seneca. Senecan tra...

       Drama has significantly evolved over time that not only has it considerably expanded in scope, but diversified into an ever increasing array of types and sub-types. The upshot is that it is practically impossible to devise a foolproof definition for it nor is there one available readily, which could account for its nature in a complete sense. The best we can hope for is a working definition that sets forth its essence, and in this regard, that purported by the English literary historian Arthur Compton Rickett most ideally suits the purpose. As he puts it, drama may be defined as an articulate story presented in action. A drama thus basically relates a narrative, which may be fundamentally understood as an event or string of events. However, unlike in a novel or epic, the narrative in a drama mandates to be performed or enacted not recounted. A narrative enacted nevertheless only signifies a pantomime, it truly becomes a drama only when supplemented with dialog...

  The Restoration Playwrights and their Important Plays   Playwright: John Dryden (1631-1700) Plays: The Wild Gallant /The Rival Ladies /The Indian Queen /The Indian Emperor /             The Maiden  Queen/  The Conquest of Granada /Marriage-a-la-Mode /Aureng-zebe /All for Love.   Playwright: William Wycherley ((1641-1716) Plays: Love in a Wood /The Gentleman Dancing Master /The Country Wife / The Plain Dealer.   Playwright: George Etherege (1636-1692) Plays: The Comical Revenge /She Would If She Could/ The Man of Mode   Playwright: William Congreve (1670-1729) Plays: The Old Bachelor /The Double Dealer /Love for Love /The Mourning Bride /             The Way of the World.   Playwright: John Farquhar (1677-1707) Plays: Love and a Bottle /The Constant Couple /Sir Harry Wildair/ The Inconstant/ The Twin Rivals.   Playwright: George Vanbrugh ...

  The Elizabethan Playwrights and their Important Plays Playwright: Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) Plays: Dido, the Queen of Carthage/Tamburlaine the Great Parts I and II/ The Jew of Malta/            Doctor Faustus/Edward II/The Massacre at Paris.   Playwright: John Lyly (1553/54-1606) Plays: Campaspe /Sapho and Phao /Endymion /Gallathea /Midas /Mother Bombie/              Love’s   Metamorphosis.   Playwright: George Peele (1556-1596) Plays: The Arraignment of Paris/Edward I/The Battle of Alcazar/The Old Wives’ Tale/             David and Bathsheba.   Playwright: Robert Greene (1558-1592) Plays: Alphonsus - King of Aragon/ Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay/ Orlando Furioso   Playwright: Thomas Kyd (1558-1594) Plays: The Spanish Tragedy/ Solyman and Perseda /Cornelia/ The Ur-Hamlet ...

  Restoration Theatre       After being restored as the monarch of England, one of the first things that Charles II, the son of the executed erstwhile king Charles I, did was to lift the ban placed on theatres by the parliamentarians. It is however noteworthy that when the theatres reopened, they were not the same as earlier. To begin with, theatres in England during the restoration became the exclusive property of the upper class, with little or no commoners attending the performances. The upshot was that the concept of a public theatre was no longer in place, with theatres becoming exclusively private affairs meant for a select few. Another significant change that took place with regard to the theatre was that women who thus far prohibited from acting on the stage, were now permitted to do so. Consequently, all the female roles that were hitherto played by young boys disguised as women, were now taken up by actual women. Over and beyond these two changes, ...

  Jacobean Theatre       Though the theatre as such did not undergo any significant change from Elizabethan times, it must be acknowledged that the quality of the plays produced during the Jacobean era were relatively inferior. Two factors may be pointed out as chief catalysts in this regard. The first is the fact that during the period demand for new plays increased quite drastically, and to cope with the pressure, playwrights began to frequently collaborate with each other. Though this move did pay rich dividend as far as enabling the plays to be completed much quicker, it took a toll on the overall merit of the work. The second factor is that unlike in Elizabethan times, when the performances were attended by people from both classes of the society, in the Jacobean era, the theatre came to be frequented for the most part by aristocrats. More tellingly, unlike the Elizabethans who were relatively enlightened and open in their tastes, the Jacobeans represen...

  Origin       The maxim ‘necessity is the mother of all invention’ epitomizes in a nutshell the basic circumstance underlying the origin of English drama. At the start of the medieval period in England, all rituals within the Catholic Church were exclusively carried out in what was its designated medium of communication, Latin. This naturally meant that the congregation which was for the most part uneducated, remained by and large oblivious to the proceedings that transpired during the services. A conscious need was therefore felt by the clergy to improvise a viable means by which the public could be made to understand the ideas and doctrines that were preached. The solution they came up with was to perform illustrative gestures that the audience could simply see and discern from. Subsequently these actions evolved into mute enactments, which could be historically taken to represent the initial phase in the development of English drama. It is thus important...

  The Study of Poetry was originally published as an introduction to an anthology of poems entitled The English Poets edited by T. H. Ward brought out in1880. As the very title suggests, the main objective of Matthew Arnold in writing it is to come up with an authentic method for judging the real worth of a poem. However, prior to doing so, Arnold clarifies why such a method is needed by setting forth the greatness of poetry, its essential nature, the erroneous ways it could be misjudged, before eventually concluding by offering a succinct survey of English poetry.   Greatness of Poetry       Charles Darwin in his renowned book on the idea of natural selection cast an indelible shadow over the Biblical view that humanity was created by God. He proved with evidence that every species of this world basically typifies a product of evolution, and in this regard declared that human beings originated from apes. This incited an intense backlash between r...