A Brief History of British Drama

【Abstract】British drama originated in the medieval churchs mass. There have been two periods of great drama in British history， the first in the Renaissance， Shakespeares age， and the second， confusingly called the “Renaissance of the British Drama，” featuring George Bernard Shaw and the New Drama. In the past 1，000 years， the development of the British drama has created many important genres.

【Key words】Brief History； British Drama

【作者簡介】晏丽（1984- ），女，汉族，陕西安康人，普洱学院，普洱学院外国语学院团总支书记，讲师，硕士研究生，研究方向：英美文学及文学理论研究。

1. In the 16th Century

The period as the English Renaissance， approximately 1500—1660， saw “a great number of great plays that were written and staged at the time”. The most famous example of the morality play， Everyman， and the two candidates for the earliest comedy in English Nicholas Udalls Ralph Roister Doister and the anonymous Gammer Gurtons Needle， all belong to the 16th century. During that time， there were the “University Wits”， “each and every one of whom was a man of genius， out with there brilliant creations， and would have all taken up a lot more space in literary history had there not towered above them all-time Shakespeare”. These “Wits” include Christopher Marlowe， Robert Greene， George Peele， Thomas Lodge， Thomas Nash and Thomas Kyd. Marlowes career was short but stormy. Greene wrote a good number of plays. Peele showed his skill at blank verse and wrote， among other things， Old Wives Tale， which helped to inspire Milton in his Comus. Kyd was known for his terrible tragedies of blood， massacre， treachery， and intrigue of the time. His Spanish Tragedy shares quire a few thematic and formal features with Shakespeares Hamlet. “Lodges Rosalynde gave the storyline for Shakespeares As You Like It”.

The work of the University Wits paved the way for the rise of Shakespeare， who had come out of his “dark period” and begun writing. Perhaps the most famous playwright in the world， William Shakespeare， wrote plays that are still performed in theatres across the world to this day. Other important playwrights of this period include Ben Jonson， and John Webster. Various types of plays were popular. Ben Jonson， for example， was often engaged to write courtly masques， ornate plays where the actors wore masks. “The three types that seem most often studied today are the histories， the comedies， and the tragedies”.

During the three decades （1599-1625）， the two collaborators， Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher， wrote good plays such as The Maids Tragedy and Philaster， and John Fletchers The Two Noble Kinsmen has been seen as one of the distinguished dramas. Most playwrights tended to specialize in one or another of these， but Shakespeare is remarkable in that he produced all three types. His 38 plays include tragedies such as Hamlet （1603）， Othello （1604）， and King Lear （1605）； comedies such as A Midsummer Nights Dream （1594—96） and Twelfth Night （1602）； and history plays such as Henry IV， part 1—2. “Some have hypothesized that the English Renaissance paved the way for the sudden dominance of drama in English society， arguing that the questioning mode popular during this time was best served by the competing characters in the plays of the Elizabethan dramatists”.

2. In the 17th Century

“When Charels Ⅱbecame king in 1600， the change in English literature was almost as great as the change in government. For one thing， the theaters opened again， and new dramatists therefore appeared”. New genres of the Restoration were heroic drama， pathetic drama， and Restoration comedy. Notable heroic tragedies of this period include John Drydens All for Love （1677） and Aureng-Zebe （1675）， and Thomas Otways Venice Preserved （1682）.

The Restoration plays that have best retained the interest of producers and audiences today are the comedies， such as George Ethereges The Man of Mode （1676）， William Wycherleys The Country Wife （1676）， John Vanbrughs The Relapse （1696）， and William Congreves The Way of the World （1700）. This period saw the first professional woman playwright， Aphra Behn， author of many comedies including The Rover （1677）. Restoration comedy is famous or notorious for its sexual explicitness， a quality encouraged by Charles II （1660–1685） personally and by the rakish aristocratic ethos of his court.

3. In the 18th Century

“By the end of the 17th century， the tradition of the Restoration comedy of manners weakened”.Early 18th-century England did not see prominent dramatists.

But John Gay was an exception. To make a living， he tried his luck at different sources： publication， patronage， odd jobs at court， and the theater. But his real fame came from the delightful ballad-opera， The Beggars Opera （1728）. Besides John Gay， Oliver Goldsmith and Richard Brinsley Sheridan to write plays that could be counted as an indispensable part. Goldsmith was a playwright， novelist， poet and essayist. His reputation， however， rested mostly upon his masterpiece， She Stoops to Conquer （1773）. His first play， The Good Naturd Man （1768）， was not successful and did not show his talent in comedy. But She Stoops to Conquer ranked him among the best English dramatists of the 18th century. “The play has been regarded as one of the most beloved comedies of all time”. Sheridans dramatic career was short but amazingly brilliant. His plays， especially The Rivals and The School for Scandal were the best in his time and have since become famous world classics. Sheridan wrote his plays before he was thirty and left politics after that. “The Rivals and The School for Scandal are in historical perspective two of the three best comedies to come out of the 18th century， the other being Goldsmiths She Stoops to Conquer”. “The School for Scandal made him famous and rich， and entitled him to place in the Poets Corner of Westminster Abbey”.

4. In the 19th Century

A change came in the Victorian era with a profusion on the London stage of farces， musical burlesques， extravaganzas and comic operas that competed with Shakespeare productions and serious drama by the likes of James Planché and Thomas William Robertson. In 1855， the German Reed Entertainments German Reed Entertainments began a process of elevating the level of （formerly risqué） musical theatre in Britain that culminated in the famous series of comic operas by Gilbert and Sullivan and were followed by the 1890s with the first Edwardian musical comedies. “W. S. Gilbert and Oscar Wilde were leading poets and dramatists of the late Victorian period”. Wildes plays， in particular， stand apart from the many now forgotten plays of Victorian times and have a much closer relationship to those of the Edwardian dramatists such as Irishman George Bernard Shaw and Norwegian Henrik Ibsen. Although many wrote for the theater， including Alfred Tennyson and Matthew Arnold， English drama did not show signs of improvement until 1860s when some commendable thought modest efforts began to appear. There were T.W. Robert， trying to bring life and realism to the stage in such works Caste； Henry Arthur Jones who began to put on the “problem play”； and Arthur Pinero who delineate real life situations in his works and becoming a bridge between the past and the new age of which George Bernard Shaw was the the legitimate representative. In the era of comedy， the verbal wit experienced a revival in the comedies of W.S. Gilbert and A. S. Sullivan. Oscar Wilde made his presence well felt with his comedies around the time. But British drama did not quite regain its value until George Bernard Shaw came on the scene.

5. Contemporary Play

The decades of the 1930s and 1940s were a dull and uninspired period for English drama. “The theater was either flooded with stereotyped social plays， or with some left-oriented and political dramas that were not well balanced in their thematic and artistic concerns： they reflected the wretched existence of the lower classes well enough， but somehow neglected the formal aspect of the dramatic art”. Postmodernism had a profound effect on English drama in the latter half of the 20th Century. This can be seen particularly in the work of Samuel Beckett （most notably in Waiting for Godot）， who in turn influenced writers such as Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard.

Samuel Beckett was a monumental figure in postwar English theater. “He was instrumental in revitalizing the fine dramatic traditions by bringing in an existentialist and absurdist element and ushering in the era of the drama of the absurd in recent literary history”.He was well known as an absurd dramatist as well as a novelist of no negligible standing. As a playwright， he helped bring the drama of the absurd into existence in the 1950sand 1960s， and has been regarded as the most important post-Shaw playwright in recent literary history. His plays include Waiting for Godot， Endgame and Embers. John Osborne is a preeminent English playwright. He has written over twenty plays. His famous play， Look Back in Anger， caught and expressed the mood of his time so well， as J.D. Salingers The Catcher in the Rye and William Goldings Lore the Flies do respectively for their time， that it has become a landmark of a kind in recent history. Harold Pinter was one of the most gifted playwrights to come out of the 1950s and 1960s. For over forty years now he has written prolifically on various subjects. His major plays such as Birthday Party， The Caretaker， The Homecoming have all become classics. Tom Stoppard was “sensitive to the profound influence of the tradition of the absurd dramas of the older generation such as Beckett and Eugene Ionesco， and wrote to continue it in his own manner in the English theater”. The play that made his name as an absurd dramatist was his comedy， Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. His major works include Arcadia， Indian Ink and The Invention of Love. One of the screenplays is the Oscar winning Shakespeare in Love（1998）.

Today the West End of London has a large number of theatres， particularly centered on Shaftesbury Avenue. A prolific writer of music for musicals of the 20th century， Andrew Lloyd Webber， has dominated the West End for a number of years， and his works have traveled to Broadway in New York and around the world， as well as being turned into film. The Royal Shakespeare Company operates out of Stratford-upon-Avon， producing mainly but not exclusively Shakespeares plays.