Play (theatre)  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Revision as of 11:52, 5 December 2021

True portrait of Monsieur Ubu (1896) is a woodcut frontispiece for Ubu Roi. It represents Ubu, a fictional character from Jarry's eponymous play

At the Theater (The Melodrama) (c. 1860-64) by Honoré Daumier

Theatrum Orbi engraving by Theodor de Bry from the chapter on Ars Memoriae in Utriusque cosmi maioris scilicet et minoris metaphysica by Robert Fludd

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A play or stageplay, written by a playwright, or dramatist, is a form of literature, almost always consisting of dialog between characters, intended for performance rather than reading. However, many people and especially scholars simply read and study plays in this more academic manner, particularly classical plays such as those of Shakespeare. And there are rare dramatists, notably George Bernard Shaw, who have had little preference whether their plays were performed or read. So, the term play refers both to the written works of playwrights and to their complete theatrical performance.

Playwrights

A playwright, also known as a dramatist, is a person who writes dramatic literature or drama. These works may be written specifically to be performed by actors or they may be closet dramas or literary works written using dramatic forms but not meant for performance.

The term is not a variant spelling of playwrite, but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder (as in a wheelwright or cartwright). Hence the prefix and the suffix combine to indicate someone who crafts plays. The homophone with write is in this case coincidental.

Early playwrights

The earliest playwrights in Western literature with surviving works are the Ancient Greeks, some of their earliest plays having been written around the 5th century BC. Such notables as Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes established forms that are still relied on by their modern counterparts.

While the most famous playwright in the English language is William Shakespeare, whose classic tragedies, comedies, and histories are still being performed hundreds of years after they were written, the term 'playwright' appears to have been coined by Ben Jonson in his Epigram 49, To Playwright, as an insult, to imply an inferior hack-writer for the theatre. He always described himself as a poet, since plays during that time period were always written in meter and so regarded as the provenance of poets. This view was held even as late as the early 19th Century. However, it later lost this negative connotation.

See also

• Playing

Lists

• List of basic theatre topics
• List of films based on stage plays or musicals
• List of plays made into feature films
• Screenwriter
• Script (comic)
• Scriptwriter

Related topics

• Closet drama
• Drama
• Dramatis personæ
• Theatre
• History of theatre
• Screenplay
• Musical theatre