Dr. Vijayalayan's Literature Notes

  Irish Theatre While Wilde and Shaw were spearheading the resurgence of drama in England during the 1890s, a similar attempt was underway in Ireland. Three artists, Lady Gregory, William Butler Yeats, and Edward Martin, conceived in 1898 a plan for setting up an Irish theatre that exclusively staged plays by Irish playwrights as an attempt to win recognition for Irish dramatists. The idea eventually materialised the following year in 1899 when the Irish Literary Theatre was set up. The theatre which remained professionally alive for three years focused on staging plays by Irish artists giving expression to the unique Irish literary flavour, artistry, folklore and the legendary past of the country. The avowed objective of these plays was to lay the foundations for setting in motion a distinct Irish dramatic tradition, whose identity was not confused with or subsumed into that of the English. In 1901 however the theatre folded, primarily owing to lack of funds, but this provided a...

  1.        The first phase in the evolution of English drama is the medieval era, which roughly spans the time period from the 9 th to the 16 th century. During this phase, drama developed in terms of two stages. The first entitled the stage of medieval religious drama, comprises of two types of plays namely the mystery and the miracle. The second called the stage of medieval secular drama, is constituted by similarly two types of plays, the morality and the interlude. The basic difference between the two stages could be explained thus. In the first stage, plays were exclusively religious in both conception and purpose, were performed and organized by only formal members of the catholic church, and were strictly enacted within the premises of the church. In the second stage, plays became more secular in scope and theme, were performed and organized by members of various trade guilds, and were enacted in a variety of secular locales as market place a...