Comparative Analysis in Drama
Senior 6 · Literature in English
Comparative Analysis in Drama
Lesson 1 of 5
25 min
A novel is finished when the writer puts down the pen. A play is not finished until actors speak it to an audience. Everything in drama follows from that fact: the story is shown, not told; characters reveal themselves through what they say and do; and the writer's only direct voice is the stage directions. Before comparing plays, you need a shared toolkit for describing any play, from Greek tragedy to a Rwandan school production.
Here are three short moments from William Shakespeare's plays, each showing a different way a dramatist lets us into a character's mind:
HAMLET (aside) A little more than kin, and less than kind!
Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2: Hamlet's first words, spoken to the audience, not to the king beside him
HAMLET To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them.Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1: a soliloquy, spoken alone on stage
ROMEO (to the sleeping Juliet) Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath,
Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty.Romeo and Juliet, Act 5, Scene 3
In the last extract the audience knows what Romeo does not: Juliet is not dead but drugged, and will wake within minutes. That gap in knowledge is dramatic irony, and it makes Romeo's words almost unbearable to hear.
Definition
In 1863 the German writer Gustav Freytag described the five-part structure of classical and Shakespearean drama, often drawn as a pyramid. Here it is applied to Romeo and Juliet:
Not every play fits the pyramid exactly: many modern plays have one or two acts, and comedies often build to a complication that is untied in the last scene (the dénouement). But asking "where is the turning point?" is always useful.
| Aspect | Questions to ask |
|---|---|
| Genre | Tragedy, comedy, satire, tragicomedy? What does the ending suggest? |
| Plot and structure | Acts and scenes; exposition, conflict, climax, resolution; subplots |
| Conflict | Between characters, within a character, between a character and society, fate or the gods |
| Character | Protagonist, antagonist, foils; how each is revealed (speech, action, others' comments) |
| Dialogue and language | Verse or prose? Formal or everyday? Soliloquies, asides, songs, proverbs |
| Setting and staging | Time, place, society; stage directions, props, costume, lighting, music, dance |
| Themes | The ideas the play explores, such as power, love, justice, tradition and change |
| Dramatic devices | Dramatic irony, foreshadowing, the play within a play, the chorus |
Worked example: writing about a moment as theatre
Question: How does Shakespeare create tension in Romeo's speech to the sleeping Juliet?
The tension comes from dramatic irony. The audience has watched Friar Laurence give Juliet a potion that will make her seem dead for forty-two hours, and knows that the letter explaining the plan never reached Romeo. When Romeo says that death "Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty", he is literally right, because she is alive, yet he draws the wrong conclusion and prepares to die. On stage, every second of his speech is a second in which Juliet might wake; an audience watching her motionless body cannot help hoping she will. The language adds to the effect: personified Death has "suck'd the honey of thy breath", a sensuous image that reminds us how alive she still is. The scene shows how drama can make an audience feel suspense even about an ending they already know.
Tip
Always write about the play as performed. Use words like audience, stage, scene and enters, not only reader and page. Ask: what does the audience see, hear and know at this moment?
Warning
Crash Course Theater: "Thespis, Athens, and the Origins of Greek Drama". Watch for how tragedy grew out of religious festivals, and note the terms chorus and catharsis.
Practice
Sources and credits
