The genres of drama include tragedy, comedy, and tragic comedy. Tragedy involves serious subject matter and often ends sadly, while comedy aims to make audiences laugh and usually has happy endings. Tragic comedy blends elements of both. Other drama subdivisions are heroic drama, melodrama, mystery plays, morality plays, farces, musicals, and domestic drama. Each has distinguishing characteristics around tone, characters, and storyline.
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The genres of drama include tragedy, comedy, and tragic comedy. Tragedy involves serious subject matter and often ends sadly, while comedy aims to make audiences laugh and usually has happy endings. Tragic comedy blends elements of both. Other drama subdivisions are heroic drama, melodrama, mystery plays, morality plays, farces, musicals, and domestic drama. Each has distinguishing characteristics around tone, characters, and storyline.
The genres of drama include tragedy, comedy, and tragic comedy. Tragedy involves serious subject matter and often ends sadly, while comedy aims to make audiences laugh and usually has happy endings. Tragic comedy blends elements of both. Other drama subdivisions are heroic drama, melodrama, mystery plays, morality plays, farces, musicals, and domestic drama. Each has distinguishing characteristics around tone, characters, and storyline.
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The genres of drama include tragedy, comedy, and tragic comedy. Tragedy involves serious subject matter and often ends sadly, while comedy aims to make audiences laugh and usually has happy endings. Tragic comedy blends elements of both. Other drama subdivisions are heroic drama, melodrama, mystery plays, morality plays, farces, musicals, and domestic drama. Each has distinguishing characteristics around tone, characters, and storyline.
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What are the subdivisions of drama?
Before we subcategorize drama we must first understand what it is. Drama is the actions and words of characters on a stage. It is a composition meant to be acted out on a stage by actors with accompanying gestures, costumes and setting. Drama can be categorized in many ways but it is usually done by genre.
The genres of drama are many but the most important are tragic, comedy and tragic comedy. There are also other subdivisions like heroic drama, melodrama, mystery play, morality play, farce, musical and domestic drama.
Comedy: Are plays that are light in tone, and that typically have happy endings. It intends to make the audience laugh.
Tragedy: Tragedy is one of the oldest forms of drama; however, its meaning has changed since the earliest days of staged plays. In ancient times, a tragedy was often a historical drama featuring the downfall of a great man. In modern theater, the definition is a bit looser. Tragedy usually involves serious subject matter and the death of one or more main characters. These plays rarely have a happy ending.
Tragic comedy: It is a play that combines elements of tragedy and comedy, either by providing a happy ending to a potentially tragic story or by some more complex blending of serious and light moods.
Heroic drama: It retains parts of the tragedy play; It has heroic or noble characters who deal with extreme situations, but differs from tragedy because it usually has a happy ending.
Mystery play: The mystery play deals with the Bible and stories from the Bible.
Morality play: Morality plays are dramatized allegories, in which personified virtues, vices, diseases, and temptations struggle for the soul of Man as he travels from birth to death. They instill a simple message of Christian salvation, but often include comic scenes.
Farce: Farce is a sub-category of comedy, characterized by greatly exaggerated characters and
situations. Characters tend to be one-dimensional and often follow stereotypical behavior. Farces typically involve mistaken identities, lots of physical comedy and outrageous plot twists.
Melodrama: Melodrama is another type of exaggerated drama. As in farce, the characters tend to be simplified and one-dimensional. The formulaic storyline of the classic melodrama typically involves a villain a heroine, and a hero who must rescue the heroine from the villain.
Musical: In musical theater, the story is told not only through dialogue and acting but through music and dance. Musicals are often comedic, although many do involve serious subject matter. Most involve a large cast and lavish sets and costumes.
Domestic drama: It deals with "ordinary" people, from everyday life. It has in the last 150 years replaced both classical tragedy and "heroic" drama as the predominant form of serious drama.
