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Attempt any five questions. All questions carry equal marks.

1. Had it not been for the Puritans, the approach of the world to American Drama would have been different – discuss.

The arrival of the Puritans in the 17th century undoubtedly cast a long shadow on the development of American drama. Their disapproval of theatrical performances significantly hampered its growth in the early years. However, the argument that American drama would have been entirely different without the Puritans is multifaceted. Here's a closer look:

The Puritan Influence:

Banning Theatrical Performances: The Puritans viewed theatre as frivolous, immoral, and a distraction from religious devotion. They actively discouraged or banned theatrical productions in many Puritan settlements. This stifled the development of a professional theatre tradition and playwriting scene in early America.

Limited Exposure to European Drama: The Puritan disapproval limited exposure to the rich European theatrical tradition, particularly the works of Shakespeare and other playwrights that were flourishing at the time. This lack of a foundation in established dramatic forms slowed the evolution of American playwriting.

Alternative Consequences:

Focus on Religious Performances: In the absence of secular theatre, religious performances like morality plays and mystery plays might have flourished. These could have served as a foundation for a unique American dramatic tradition with a strong moral and religious undercurrent.

Focus on Storytelling: With theatre restricted, storytelling might have become a more prominent platform for dramatic expression. This could have led to a richer tradition of oral narratives, eventually influencing written drama.

The Unintended Impact:

Fueling Artistic Ingenuity: The Puritan restrictions might have inadvertently fostered artistic ingenuity. People might have sought alternative ways to express themselves, leading to the development of new dramatic forms, like minstrel shows or even early vaudeville performances, that defied or subverted Puritanical ideals.

Underground Theatre: A desire for entertainment might have driven the creation of underground theatre scenes, similar to what happened in Europe during the Middle Ages. This could have led to the emergence of a more rebellious and innovative style of American drama.

A Different Path:

Without the Puritans, American drama might have evolved differently:

Stronger European Influence: Exposure to European dramatic traditions might have resulted in a more immediate development of professional theatre and playwriting, potentially mirroring the British or French theatrical traditions.

Earlier Exploration of Themes: Themes that were later explored in American drama, such as social issues, religious hypocrisy, and the struggle for identity, might have emerged sooner.

The Reality:

The Puritan influence did have a significant impact, but American drama didn't remain stagnant. Here's what actually happened:

The Rise of American Theatre: Despite the initial challenges, a professional theatre scene eventually emerged in America in the 18th century. Playwrights began adapting European styles and incorporating American themes and experiences.

Impact on American Identity: American drama played a vital role in exploring themes of national identity, social justice, and the American experience.

A Unique Blend: American drama eventually developed its own unique voice, drawing on European traditions, American history, and diverse cultural influences.

Conclusion:

While the Puritans' disapproval undeniably impacted the initial trajectory of American drama, it's difficult to say definitively how different things would have been. The ingenuity of artists and the evolving American society likely still would have given rise to a vibrant theatre scene. The Puritan influence might be seen as a hurdle that American drama eventually overcame, shaping its unique character and themes.

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2. Discuss the American identity and social issues that influenced American drama.

Drama is known as “the caboose of literature” (Robert Sherwood), because, like the caboose on a train, it lies at the rear of all forms of literature. Drama explores issues and styles only after they have been introduced by the other arts.There was great theatrical activity in the US in the 19th century, a time when there were no movies, TV, or radio.

Every town of any size had its theatre or “opera house” in which touring companies of actors performed. However, no significant drama was performed in this century, with audiences preferring farce, melodrama, and vaudeville to serious efforts. For the most part, this was “caboose” behaviour. The theatre tends to dramatize accepted attitudes and values, only after they have been thoroughly explored by other mediums. Theatre is a social art, one we attend as part of large group, and we seem to respond to something new as a group more slowly than we do as individuals. When you laugh or cry in a theatre, your response is noticed, especially by those who are not so moved. You are in a sense giving your approval to those attitudes and values presented in the play.

European drama, which was to influence modern American drama profoundly, matured in the last third of the 19th century with the achievements of three playwrights: Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg, and Anton Chekhov.

Ibsen, who was profoundly influenced by psychologists Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, tackled subjects such as guilt, sexuality, and mental illness— subjects that had never before been so realistically and disturbingly portrayed onstage (like in A Doll’s House and Enemy of the People). Strindberg brought to his characterizations an unprecedented level of psychological complexity (like in The Father and The Dance of Death). And Chekhov shifted the subject matter of drama from wildly theatrical displays of external action and emotions to the concerns of everyday life (like in The Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard). They bequeathed to their literary heirs plays about life as it is actually lived. They presented characters and situations more or less realistically, in what has been called the “slice-of-life” dramatic technique.

The pre-eminence of the actor in American drama and theatre suffered a great deal in the later decades of the century, first, on account of the rise of the stage manager, or what is called Regisseur in the production of a play, subordinating the actor to him in discipline and authority and, secondly, to the rise of theatrical and dramatic realism.

The first phenomenon became all the more forceful when playwrights, like Augustin Daly, David Belasco and Steele Mockage assumed the role of producer-director for their plays. However, the actorly tradition did not die down as such, for the actor, though exceptionally in a few cases, rather than the playwright, continued to define the play for the audience.

Realism in theatre began earlier than in drama. The old actor based theatre Influences presupposed a need to be unreal on the stage in order to reach out to the audience. Bernard Hewitt points out the unreality even in the best of American acting. Miss Cushman is the best magic actress in English drama whom we have had on the American stage. Dignity, feeling, sound sense and the most deliberate and studious care are marked characteristics of her acting.

Viewing her as she was before the incessant repetition of one abnormal delineation had exaggerated her force and impressiveness to the borders of the grotesque or the ghastly... The alternative to stage histrionics came in the form of a shift of focus from the actor to the scene. Steele Mackage creates a portable stage for his play Hazel Kirke, (1880).

It was the first significant move towards stage realism. Bernard Hewitt writes: In the Madison Square theatre an entire Box setting with heavy threedimensional pieces and the actors too, if need be, could be removed and replaced by another in forty seconds. It had no apron or proscenium doors… All these characteristics were part of the trend towards realism in production. The machinery was needed to shift the realistic scenery. The production must be flamed by the proscenium arch to create the realistic illusion Hazel Kirke is a significant departure from Melodrama in that it is no world of heroes and villains but a domestic arena of familial misunderstanding played out on shifting stages within Box - like house setting. Both the stage or stages and the drama there on begin a process of interiorization totally foreign to the ethos of melodrama, and its predecessors, romantic and national drama as well. A further advance in stage tradition was carried out by David Belasco who still persisted with sensational melodramas.

To Belasco goes the credit for the finest triumph in realistic stage management. In Belasco’s production of a French play, I Gaza in 1895, realistic effects such as the making of thunder, lighting, wind and galloping horses behind the scenes are achieved with “the dexterity of a master mechanic”. The stage realism of the sort championed by Mackage and Belasco, is not a matter of individual inclination and effort but a distinct theatrical ideology taking shape on the Continent in the latter part of the 19th century. The earliest theoretician of the realistic stagecraft Duke of Saxe Meiningen who popularized realism through the concepts of ensemble acting and ruthless realism on the stage.

What the Duke attempted was evolved ideologically by Andre Antoine in France through his Theatre Libre in Paris, Otto Brahm in Berlin through his Frie Buhne. Stage environment or realism, ensemble acting, directional supremacy and the elimination of unrealisticstage effects were the passionate causes championed by these theatrical movements.

The thoughtful American producers and directors like Belasco and others responded enthusiastically to the new European tidings. For them, it was a two-fold task: First, they barf to realize the new theatrical art on the American stage which never allowed itself any notions of art. Secondly, these playwrights had to contend with the increasing hold of the business interests, which developed into theatrical syndicates controlling American stage.

The rise of theatrical realism in the late 19th century did not ipso facto bring about realistic drama. Belasco’s Melodramas staged in realistic style illustrate that realistic drama is not a matter of theatrical formulations. Drama was never a privileged element in .4merlcan theatre since its inception in the 18” century.

Drama flourishes in periods of great cultural reflection as it did in ancient Greece, Rome and the 16th century Elizabethan England. The playwrights in these periods were the foremost thinkers of society. The rise of modem science and the consequent industrial revolution in Europe and America in the latter part of 19th century brought about a paradigm shift in the socio-economic situation necessitating a deep cultural reflection. William Dean Howells, regarded as the father of literary realism in America, is a theoretician of realist drama as well. In several of his writings, including his reviews of plays for the periodicals, like Harpers, Atlantic Monthly, Howells traces the growth of realistic drama in America.

For him, the rise of realist drama, like the rest of literature, is an evolutionary progress from romanticism. Romanticism included Melodrama, both European and American as well. The next stage of development from romanticism was that of the French Well-Made Play and the English Problem Play. The French Well-Made Play in the hands of playwrights like Eugene Scribe, Victorian Sardou, Alexander Dumas and Emile Augier, is a dramatic structure “a complex plot with a maximum of theatrical ingenuity and an absolute minimum of thought”. It is realistic in the choice of its subject matter and linear in the progress of the plot and enacts an archetypal action with a preordained conclusion and moral. The English problem play, though it borrows certain elements of the French Well-Made play, is structured both in form and content to deal with an important socio-economic problem of contemporary relevance.

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3. Attempt a critical note on ‘Musical’ and ‘Farce’ as important forms of American Drama.

Musicals can be considered as a subgenre of theatrical performances. It is pop- theatre with decorative stage-settings, accompanied by pop-songs, and dance to narrate a story. It has striking resemblances with opera. A musical must tell a compelling story in a compelling way, by blending song, dance, and other entertaining visual arts to evoke an intellectual, emotional response. An artist, a medium, and eventually audience are the preliminary requirement for performing arts.

A popular or commercial art form has to fulfil the same criteria with an additional requirement of paying audience who can afford the expenses to make the act of expression profitable. In postmodern era, art is a commercial endeavour, a hybrid of taste, attitude of the audience, and popularity. Audience’s demand is the key determiner in the development of the product; since there is a mercenary motif behind as popular art.

An artist, a medium, and eventually audience are the preliminary requirement for performing arts. A popular or commercial art form has to fulfil the same criteria with an additional requirement of paying audience who can afford the expenses to make the act of expression profitable. In postmodern era, art is a commercial endeavour, a hybrid of taste, attitude of the audience, and popularity. Audience’s demand is the key determiner in the development of the product; since there is a mercenary motif behind as popular art.

The musical theatre can be divided into three distinct categories:

● Musical Comedy

● Musical plays

● Concept Musicals

Musical comedies usually have energetic zeal, upbeat, and are often witty in tone. It must be entertaining and humorous. Dancing and singing are the part of the story it specifically aimed to the comedy written before or middle of the twentieth century. Some examples are Anything Goes, Kiss Me, Kate, Annie Get Your Gun, Guys and Dolls, and Hello, Dolly! Musical plays deals with more serious subjects and emphases are given on the ‘book’ (the story, characters, and plot). Instead of entertainment, it is intended to advance and deepen the story.

Such examples of musical plays include Show Boat (1927), which highlighted the human cost of interbreeding of humans of different races; Pal Joey (1940), which displayed intellectual and unemotional “romantic” traits; and Lady in the Dark (1941), which found a novel experience of psychoanalysis. Richard Rodgers (music), and Oscar Hammerstein II (books and lyrics) developed this genre in 1940s and 50s through shows like Oklahama! (1943), Carousel (1945), South Pacific (1949), The King and I (1951). The combination of melody, narrative, psychological traits of the character and social issues, represents the verisimilitude of the society in an entertaining way. The word “concept musical” was coined in Company in 1970 and is used to explicate musicals that fixed on a particular theme or idea. The primary purpose is to express a point rather than maintenance of the plot. Assassins (1990) and Avenue Q (2003) are some examples of concept musical.

While distinguishing between musicals and other genre like opera, it would be naïve to ignore the complications which arise from the fact that the musical is a highly collaborative art form. Musical is a perfect amalgamation of dialogue and song. A musical is a sort of drama where both dialogue and song are used to uphold the story. In an opera, generally a song is sung without any dialogue. Musicals are humorous and lighter in matter.

In Musicals, the director, choreographer, and designers play main roles and partake more in the artistic procedure. They can have an impact on the work that ends up not just on the tage but in the published play script, like the visit of the Prince to Yuri Lyubimov’s Taganka theatre, which resulted in an absolute reform of the opening number in Cabaret . Musicals are somewhat shaped in the rehearsal room.

Classical background of Musicals: The genesis of Musical theatre is very complex. Though America is well known for musicals, its origin lies in ancient Greece. There is a common notion that Oklahama is the first integrated musical theatre, but musical theatre can trace its root back to the religious ritual of Dithyramb. Dithyramb means hymn to Dionysus, the god of poetry, wine, and fertility.

It was first created by Arion in Corinth and became popular at Athens, where it was danced and sung by fifty men or boys. A flute-player stood in the midst of dancers. As Musical Theatre is communal activity, where acting is accompanied by lyrics (song) and often dance, the attic theatre may be considered as the first form of musical theatre. The theatre was divided into four parts – the audience sat on the tiers of seats, carved out of the hill side.

The seats were circular. In front of the seats, which were known as ‘theatron’ there was the ‘Orchestra’ (the dancing place). It was a circular space, set apart for the dancing of the chorus. In short, the early Greek dramas were musicals, and while they had little direct effect on the development of modern musical theatre, it is reassuring to know that the first theatre was musical—and that show tunes have been around for 2,500 years. In 414, B.C.E, Aristophanes’ The Birds can be considered as an example of Musical theatre. Though in England, the Puritans closed the theatre house, forbade acting, bringing a halt to performing arts that lasted until 1660, the demand remained the same. The French introduced a formal dance instruction in the late 17th century. During this time the plays were performed in the American Colonies.

In 1664, the British navy, forcibly, established a colony in New Amsterdam that was renamed as New-York in the honour of King’s brother, Duke of York. As High street was the widest boulevard city, the English called it Broadway. Plays and comic operas were regularly performed for the purpose of entertainment in the colonies like Charleston, Philadelphia, and Williamsburg.

Though in 1732, something was performed in the Manhattan store-house, there was no recorded proof. John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera was the first professional performance that took place on third December 55 1750 in a simple wooden theatre at Nassau Street, of Broadway. In 1667, What is a Musical? the infrastructure of theatre house was renovated and as a result an elaborate theatre house was inaugurated on John Street.

In1796, The Archers, a comic opera, was performed. Some critics opine that it was the inception of American musicals. On the Other hand, in 1767 David Douglass’s seasoned American Company tried to perform The Disappointment, which can be considered as the earliest American- born musical theatre on these shore. Since it contained “personal reflections, it was banned. After a year, Pinafore Fever (1878) flourished and achieved a nation- wide popularity. The soaring popularity of Pinafore not only attracted a lot of audience but also fostered a group of musical’s audience. It was the first model for form, content, and motif of American Musical theatre performance. With the increasing population of Manhattan Island, Broadway became the cultural and commercial of the community.

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4. Discuss William Dean Howell’s ‘Self Sacrifice’ as a Farce.

William Dean Howells' Self-Sacrifice can be seen as a farce, blending humor, irony, and social commentary. A farce, by definition, is a comedic work that emphasizes exaggerated situations, absurdities, and improbable events. Howells uses these elements in Self-Sacrifice to critique societal norms, particularly concerning the roles of women and marriage.

In the play, the protagonist, Irene, sacrifices her own happiness for the sake of her husband, John. This selflessness is presented in an exaggerated manner, with Irene almost martyring herself for a man who seems oblivious to her sacrifices. The absurdity of her actions highlights the excessive nature of her devotion and the societal expectation that women must constantly serve others, particularly in relationships.

The humor in Self-Sacrifice arises from the farcical misunderstandings and situations that escalate throughout the play. For instance, the characters' exaggerated reactions to Irene’s selflessness create absurd conflicts. These comic situations, while humorous on the surface, reveal the underlying tension between individual desires and societal expectations.

Howells uses farce not just for humor but to expose the absurdities of the cultural and gender norms of his time. The play critiques the unrealistic expectations placed on women to be self-sacrificial, while also suggesting the emotional and moral cost of such behavior. Through these farcical elements, Howells demonstrates how self-sacrifice, when taken to extremes, can become both comical and tragic.

In conclusion, Self-Sacrifice works as a farce by exaggerating situations and characters to ridicule societal norms, especially regarding gender roles and marital expectations. The humor not only entertains but also serves as a sharp critique of the pressures that individuals, particularly women, face in the pursuit of personal and social obligations.

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5. Discuss ‘A Raisin in the Sun’ as a Marxist play.

According to Marxists, literature reflects those social institutions out of which it emerges and is itself a social institution with a particular ideological function. Literature reflects class struggle and materialism. So Marxists generally view literature “not as works created in accordance with timeless artistic criteria, but as ‘products’ of the economic and ideological determinants specific to that era” Marxist literary criticism maintains that a writer’s social class, and its prevailing ‘ideology’ – outlook, values, tacit assumptions, and the like – have a major bearing on what is written by a member of that class.

So instead of seeing authors as primarily autonomous ‘inspired’ individuals whose genius and creative imagination enables them to bring forth original and timeless works of art, the Marxist sees them as constantly formed by their social contexts in ways which they themselves would usually not admit. Definition The English literary critic and cultural theorist, Terry Eagleton, defines Marxist criticism this way: Marxist criticism is not merely a ‘sociology of literature’, concerned with how novels get published and whether they mention the working class. Its aim is to explain the literary work more fully; and this means a sensitive attention to its forms, styles and, meanings. But it also means grasping those forms, styles and meanings as the product of a particular history.

Marxist Literary Criticism Karl Marx’s studies have provided a basis for much in socialist theory and research. Marxism aims to revolutionize the concept of work through creating a classless society built on control and ownership of the means of production. Marx believed that Economic Determinism, Dialectical Materialism and Class Struggle were the three principles that explained his theories.

The Bourgeois [Dominant class who control and own the means of production] and Proletariat [Subordinate class: Do not own and control the means of production] were the only two classes who engaged in hostile interaction to achieve class consciousness. Marx believed that all past history is a struggle between hostile and competing economic classes. It is through the theories of class struggle, politics and economics that Marxist literary criticism emerged.

The thought behind Marxist Criticism is that works of literature are mere products of history that can be analyzed by looking at the social and material conditions in which they were constructed. Marx’s Capital states that “the mode of production of material life determines altogether the social, political, and intellectual life process. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but on the contrary their social being that determines their consciousness.” In simple words, the social situation of the author determines the types of characters that will develop, the political ideas displayed and the economical statements developed in the text.

Hansberry broke her family’s tradition of enrolling in Southern black colleges and instead attended the University of Wisconsin in Madison. 161 Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in The Sun as a Marxist Play While at school, she changed her major from painting to writing, and after two years decided to drop out and move to New York City. In New York, Hansberry attended the New School for Social Research and then worked for Paul Robeson’s progressive black newspaper, Freedom, as a writer and associate editor from 1950 to 1953. She also worked part-time as a waitress and cashier, and wrote in her spare time.

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