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Analysing Drama - Preliminary Matters
Task A - Our answer
Performances are clearly much richer linguistically than play texts.
The actors' voices add emphasis, special voice qualities and intonation,
and we can see their facial expressions, gestures and actions, as well
as costumes, props and so on. Not surprisingly then, dramatic performances
are usually easier to understand and more enjoyable than dramatic texts.
But the analysis of the 'performance factors' like gestures and actions
is still very much in its infancy, and so at present we just don't have
the tools to do the analytical work that would be needed in a stylistics
approach. In any case, this course is about language and literature. And
analysing the language of dramatic texts is more developed and quite complex
enough to keep us profitably occupied in this course.
In any case, even though play texts are written to be performed, it is
clearly also possible for people to read dramatic texts, understand them
and enjoy them. Indeed, most of us can imagine how a text would be performed
as we read it, and it is clear that (a) actors and directors read and
understand dramatic texts in order to decide how to perform them, and
(b) most drama classes in schools and universities discuss texts, not
performances. So analysing dramatic texts is by no means without its merits,
and at the very least a complete account of a play would have to include
an account of the language used by the characters in it.
Another general philosophical issue to consider is what the object of
dramatic criticism should be: dramatic text, dramatic production or dramatic
performance? It is clear that the text is the object of criticism for
poems, novels and short stories. If we listen to a reading (performance)
of a poem, story or novel we still assume that the poem, say, resides
in the text, not the performance. Where is the play? In the text? In a
particular production? Or in a particular performance of a particular
production?
These are clearly complex issues that we do not have the time to explore
in detail here. But you might like to debate the issue with other students
and your tutors.
If you want to follow up the issues, you can see opposing views expressed
in the following two discussions:
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Wells, Stanley (1970) Literature and Drama, London: Routledge,
chapters 1 and 4.
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Short, Mick (1998) 'From dramatic text to dramatic performance'.
In J. Culpeper, M. Short and P. Verdonk (eds) Exploring the Language
of Drama, London: Routledge, pp.6-18.
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