Modern Age Drama

The drama which had suffered steep decline during the Victorian Age was revived with great force at the beginning of the 20th century and the course of six decades has witnessed many trends and currents in the 20th century drama. Modern drama, which developed around the turn of the twentieth century, focused on alienation and disconnection. These themes can be seen in some of the most famous plays of playwrights such as Henrik Ibsen, George Bernard Shaw and Eugene O'Neill.

Main Characteristics of Modern Drama

The important characteristics of Modern Drama are discussed below:

1. Realism : 

Realism is the most significant and outstanding quality of the Modern English Drama. The dramatists of the earlier years of the 20th century were interested in naturalism and it was their endeavour to deal with real problems of life in a realistic technique to their plays.

It was Henrik Ibsen, the Norwegian dramatist who popularised realism in Modern Drama. He dealt with the problems of real life in a realistic manner in his play. His example was followed by Robertson Arthur Jones, Galsworthy and GB Shaw in their plays. Modern Drama has developed the problem play and there are many modern dramatists who have written a number of problem plays. They dealt with the problems of marriage, justice, law, administration and strife between capital and labour in their dramas.

They used theatre as a means for bringing about reforms in the conditions of society prevailing in their days. Henrik Ibsen's play A Doll's House is a good example of a problem play. The problem play was a new experiment in the form and technique and dispensed with the conventional devices and expedients of theatre.

2. Play of Ideas : 

Modern Drama is essentially a drama of ideas rather than action. The stage is used by dramatists to give expression to certain ideas which they want to spread in the society. The Modern Drama dealing with the problems of life has become far more intelligent than ever it was in the history of drama before the present age. With the treatment of actual life, the drama became more and more a drama of ideas, sometimes veiled in the main action, sometimes didactically act forth.

3. Romanticism

The earlier dramatists of the 20th century were realists at the core, but the passage of time brought in a new trend in Modern Drama. Romanticism, which had been very dear to Elizabethan dramatists found its way in Modern Drama and it was mainly due to Sir JM Barrie's effort that the new wave of Romanticism swept over Modern Drama for some years of the 20th century. Barrie kept aloof from realities of life and made excursion into the world of romance.

4. Poetic Drama

16th and 17th centuries were great ages of poetic drama in various parts of Europe which declined in 18th and 19th centuries (except in Germany) the earlier dramatists like Ibsen, Henry Arthur Jones, Arthur Wing Pinero, Shaw etc had been dealing with melodramatic romanticism displaying it with aristocratic existence first, followed by middle class lives and finally of labour-class conditions. Realism had spent itself and it began to be generally recognised that the naturalistic conversation cultivated from 1890 to 1920 was insufficient, that the terms of life could never be the terms of art.

Dramatists were aiming at a profounder view of life than was introduced by the majority of the Realists and a different medium of expression.

The poetic dramatists believed that imagination may be more intensely stirred by what is remote in time and place than by what is near and familiar.

Poetic drama while aiming at the poetic in atmosphere or theme, is naturalistic in characterisation and dialogue. But the dissatisfaction with naturalistic dialogue led to attempts to bring back poetry into the speech of the theatre.

The Poetic verse drama gained importance in the 30s with dramatists such as TS Eliot and Christopher Fry.

Significant playwrights of English poetic drama in 20th century included WH Auden and Christopher Isherwood who collaborated for two poetic dramas The Dog Beneath The Skin and The Ascent of F6: A Tragedy in Two Acts (1936).

Christopher Fry's The Lady's Not for Burning made him a major force in theatre in the 1940s and 1950s. It is a wry comedy set in the Middle Ages in which love overcomes prejudice and hypocrisy. An English gentlewoman is accused of witchcraft in a small English town around the year 1400. Jennet Jourdemayne, the lady, will die as a matter of course and bureaucrat convenience. Thomas Mendip–whom she has just met–is determined to save her and then discovers to his dismay that he has also fallen in love with her. Written in blank verse, the play is a comedy, but the danger suggested by the title is real.

5. History and Biographical Plays 

Another trend, visible in the Modern English Drama is in the direction of using history and biography for dramatic technique. There are many beautiful historical and biographical plays in modern dramatic literature. Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra are historical plays of great importance. John Drinkwater's Abraham Lincoln and Mary Stuart are also historical plays.

6. Irish Movement 

A new trend in the Modern English Drama was introduced by the Irish dramatists who brought about the Celtic Revival in the literature.

In the hands of the Irish dramatists like Yeats, JM Synge, TC Murray etc drama ceased to be realistic in character and became an expression of the hopes and aspirations of the Irish people from remote ways to their own times.

7. Comedy of Manners 

There is a revival of Comedy of Manners in Modern Dramatic Literature. Oscar Wilde, Maugham, N Coward etc have done much to revive the comedy of wit in our days. The drama after the second world war has not exhibited a love for comedy and the social conditions of the period after the war were not very favourable for the development of the artificial comedy of the Restoration Age.

8. Impressionism 

It is a movement that shows the effects of things and events on the mind of the artist and the attempt of the artist to express his expressions. Impressionism constitutes another important feature of modern drama. In the impressionistic plays of WB Yeats, the main effort is in the direction of recreating the experience of the artist and his impressions about reality rather than in presenting reality as it is. The impressionistic drama of the modern age seeks to suggest the impressions on the artist rather than making an explicit statement about the objective characteristics of things or objects.

9. Expressionism 

It is a movement that tries to express the feelings and emotions of the people rather than objects and events. Expressionism is another important feature of modern drama. It marks an extreme reaction against the naturalism. The movement which had started early in Germany made its way in England drama and several modern dramatists like JB Priestly, Sean O' Casey, CK Munro and Elmer Rice have made experiments in the expressionistic tendency in modern drama.