Verse drama is any

drama Drama is the specific Mode (literature), mode of fiction Mimesis, represented in performance: a Play (theatre), play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on Radio drama, radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a g ...

written significantly in

verse Verse may refer to: Poetry * Verse (poetry), a line or lines in a poetic composition * Blank verse, a type of poetry having regular meter but no rhyme * Free verse, a type of poetry written without the use of strict meter or rhyme, but still re ...

(that is: with line endings) to be performed by an actor before an audience. Although verse drama does not need to be ''primarily'' in verse to be considered verse drama, significant portions of the play should be in verse to qualify. For a very long period, verse drama was the dominant form of drama in

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

(and was also important in non-European cultures). Greek tragedy and

Racine Jean-Baptiste Racine ( , ; ; 22 December 1639 – 21 April 1699) was a French dramatist, one of the three great playwrights of 17th-century France, along with Molière and Corneille, as well as an important literary figure in the Western tra ...

's plays are written in verse, as is almost all of

William Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...

's,

Ben Jonson Benjamin Jonson ( 11 June 1572 – ) was an English playwright, poet and actor. Jonson's artistry exerted a lasting influence on English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours; he is best known for the satire, satirical ...

's and John Fletcher's drama, and other works like

Goethe Johann Wolfgang (von) Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German polymath who is widely regarded as the most influential writer in the German language. His work has had a wide-ranging influence on Western literature, literary, Polit ...

's ''

Faust Faust ( , ) is the protagonist of a classic German folklore, German legend based on the historical Johann Georg Faust (). The erudite Faust is highly successful yet dissatisfied with his life, which leads him to make a deal with the Devil at a ...

'' and

Henrik Ibsen Henrik Johan Ibsen (; ; 20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) was a Norwegian playwright, poet and actor. Ibsen is considered the world's pre-eminent dramatist of the 19th century and is often referred to as "the father of modern drama." He pioneered ...

's early plays. In most of Europe, verse drama has remained a prominent art form, while at least popularly, it has been tied almost exclusively to Shakespeare in the English tradition. In the English language, verse has continued. In the new millennium, there has been a resurgence in interest in the form of verse drama. Some of them came in blank verse or iambic pentameter and endeavour to be in conversation with Shakespeare's writing styles. ''

King Charles III Charles III (Charles Philip Arthur George; born 14 November 1948) is King of the United Kingdom and the 14 other Commonwealth realms. Charles was born at Buckingham Palace during the reign of his maternal grandfather, King George VI, and ...

'' by Mike Bartlett, written in iambic pentameter, played on the West End and Broadway, as well as being filmed with the original cast for the BBC. Likewise, '' La Bete'' by

David Hirson David Hirson (born 1958) is an American dramatist, best known for his award-winning Broadway comedies, ''La Bête (play), La Bête'' and ''Wrong Mountain''. Biography Hirson was born in New York City to actress Alice Hirson, Alice and playwright ...

, which endeavours to recreate Moliere's farces in rhyming couplets, enjoyed several prominent productions on both sides of the Atlantic.

David Ives David Ives (born July 11, 1950) is an American playwright, screenwriter, and novelist. He is perhaps best known for his comic one-act plays; ''The New York Times'' in 1997 referred to him as the "maestro of the short form". Ives has also written ...

, known best for his short, absurdist work, has turned to " transladaptation" (his word) in his later years: translating and updating French farces, such as ''The School for Lies'' and ''The Metromaniacs'', both of which premiered in New York City. With the renewed interest in verse drama, theatre companies are looking for "new Shakespeare" plays to produce. In 2017, the

American Shakespeare Center The American Shakespeare Center (ASC) is a Regional theater in the United States, regional theatre company located in Staunton, Virginia, Staunton, Virginia, that focuses on the plays of William Shakespeare; his contemporaries Ben Jonson, Beaumo ...

founded Shakespeare's New Contemporaries (SNC), which solicits new plays in conversation with Shakespeare's canon. This was partially in response to the

Oregon Shakespeare Festival The Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) is a regional Repertory, repertory theatre in Ashland, Oregon, United States, founded in 1935 by Angus L. Bowmer. The Festival now offers matinee and evening performances of a wide range of classic and conte ...

commissioning "modern English" versions of Shakespeare plays. SNC has been on hold since the start of the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

. However, the twenty-first century also saw theatre practitioners using verse and hybrid forms in a much wider selection of dramatic texts and theatrical performances and forms than those inspired by Shakespeare. A transnational researcher, Kasia Lech, showed that contemporary practices reach for verse to test the boundaries of verse drama and its traditions in Western theatre, including English-language theatre but also Polish, Spanish, and Russian. Lech argues that verse is particularly relevant for contemporary theatre practice because the dialogical relationship between its rhythmic and lexical levels speaks to the globalized world's pluralistic nature. Lech discusses how artists such as Polish Radosław Rychcik and Spanish-British

Teatro Inverso Teatro may refer to: * Theatre * Teatro (band) Teatro, Italian for "theatre", is a vocal group signed to the Sony BMG music label. The members of Teatro are Jeremiah James, Andrew Alexander, Simon Bailey and Stephen Rahman-Hughes. Band membe ...

use verse in

multilingual Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. When the languages are just two, it is usually called bilingualism. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolin ...

contexts "as a performative tool to engage with and reflect on interlingual processes as a socio-political force and as a platform for dramaturgies of foreignness." Nigerian

Inua Ellams Inua Marc Mohammed Onore de Ellams II (born 23 October 1984) is a Nigerian-born British poet, playwright and performer. He was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2023 Birthday Honours for services to the arts. E ...

explores his identity that escapes geographical, national, and temporal boundaries. Russian

Olga Shilyaeva Olga may refer to: People and fictional characters * Olga (name), a given name, including a list of people and fictional characters named Olga or Olha * Michael Algar (born 1962), English singer also known as "Olga" Places Russia * Olga, Russia ...

in her 2018 ''28 дней. Трагедия менструального цикла'' (''28 Days. The tragedy of a menstrual cycle'') uses verse to talk about experience of

menstruation Menstruation (also known as a period, among other colloquial terms) is the regular discharge of blood and Mucous membrane, mucosal tissue from the endometrium, inner lining of the uterus through the vagina. The menstrual cycle is characterized ...

. Irish

Stefanie Preissner Stefanie Preissner (born 21 April 1987) is an Irish writer, actress, script supervisor and columnist. She is best known as the creator of comedy-drama '' Can't Cope, Won't Cope''. Early life An only child born in Munich, Germany, Preissner mov ...

in her ''Our Father'' (2011) and ''Solpadeine Is My Boyfriend'' (2012) plays with autobiography and her multiple identities "as the character she performs, as the performer, the writer, and a voice of a young generation of Ireland facing the drastic political, social, and personal changes and desperately looking for predictability."Lech K. (2021) ''Dramaturgy of Form: Performing Verse in Contemporary Theatre.'' Routledge
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Dramatic verse

Dramatic verse occurs in a dramatic work, such as a

play Play most commonly refers to: * Play (activity), an activity done for enjoyment * Play (theatre), a work of drama Play may refer also to: Computers and technology * Google Play, a digital content service * Play Framework, a Java framework * P ...

, composed in poetic form. The tradition of dramatic verse extends at least as far back as

ancient Greece Ancient Greece () was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity (), that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically r ...

. The

English Renaissance The English Renaissance was a Cultural movement, cultural and Art movement, artistic movement in England during the late 15th, 16th and early 17th centuries. It is associated with the pan-European Renaissance that is usually regarded as beginni ...

saw the height of dramatic verse in the English-speaking world, with playwrights including

Christopher Marlowe Christopher Marlowe ( ; Baptism, baptised 26 February 156430 May 1593), also known as Kit Marlowe, was an English playwright, poet, and translator of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe is among the most famous of the English Renaissance theatre, Eli ...

and

developing new techniques, both for dramatic structure and poetic form. Though a few plays, for example ''

A Midsummer Night's Dream ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'' is a Comedy (drama), comedy play written by William Shakespeare in about 1595 or 1596. The play is set in Athens, and consists of several subplots that revolve around the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta. One s ...

'', feature extended passages of rhymed verse, the majority of dramatic verse is composed as

blank verse Blank verse is poetry written with regular metre (poetry), metrical but rhyme, unrhymed lines, usually in iambic pentameter. It has been described as "probably the most common and influential form that English poetry has taken since the 16th cen ...

; there are also passages of prose. Dramatic verse began to decline in popularity in the nineteenth century, when the prosaic and conversational styles of playwrights such as

became more prevalent, and were adapted in English by

George Bernard Shaw George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from the 188 ...

. Verse drama did have a role in the development of

Irish theatre The history of Irish theatre begins in the Middle Ages and was for a long time confined to the courts of the Gaelic and "Old English" – descendants of 12th-century Norman invaders – inhabitants of Ireland. The first theatre building in Ir ...

Closet drama

An important trend from around 1800 was the

closet drama A closet drama is a play (theatre), play that is not intended to be performed onstage, but read by a solitary reader. The earliest use of the term recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary is in 1813. The literary historian Henry Augustin Beers, H ...

: a verse drama intended to be read from the page, rather than performed.

Byron George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824) was an English poet. He is one of the major figures of the Romantic movement, and is regarded as being among the greatest poets of the United Kingdom. Among his best-kno ...

and Shelley, as well as a host of lesser figures, devoted much time to the closet drama, in a signal that the verse tragedy was already in a state of obsolescence. That is, while poets of the eighteenth century could write so-so poetic dramas, the public taste for new examples was already moving away by the start of the nineteenth century, and there was little commercial appeal in staging them. Instead,

opera Opera is a form of History of theatre#European theatre, Western theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by Singing, singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically ...

would take up verse drama, as something to be sung: it is still the case that a verse

libretto A libretto (From the Italian word , ) is the text used in, or intended for, an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata or Musical theatre, musical. The term ''libretto'' is also sometimes used to refer to th ...

can be successful. Verse drama as such, however, in becoming closet drama, became simply a longer poetic form, without the connection to practical theatre and performance. According to

Robertson Davies William Robertson Davies (28 August 1913 – 2 December 1995) was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor. He was one of Canada's best known and most popular authors and one of its most distinguished " men of letters" ...

in '' A Voice From the Attic'', closet drama is "Dreariest of literature, most second hand and fusty of experience!" But indeed a great deal of it was written in

Victorian times In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the reign of Queen Victoria, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. Slightly different definitions are sometimes used. The era followed th ...

, and afterwards, to the extent that it became a more popular long form at least than the faded

epic Epic commonly refers to: * Epic poetry, a long narrative poem celebrating heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation * Epic film, a genre of film defined by the spectacular presentation of human drama on a grandiose scale Epic(s) ...

. Prolific in the form were, for example, Michael Field and

Gordon Bottomley Gordon Bottomley (20 February 187425 August 1948) was an English poet, known particularly for his verse dramas. He was partly disabled by tubercular illness. His main influences were the later Victorian Romantic poets, the Pre-Raphaelites and Wi ...

Dramatic poetry in general

Dramatic poetry is any poetry that uses the discourse of the characters involved to tell a story or portray a situation. The major types of dramatic poetry are those already discussed, to be found in plays written for the theatre, and

libretti A libretto (From the Italian word , ) is the text used in, or intended for, an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata or musical. The term ''libretto'' is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major l ...

. There are further dramatic verse forms: these include

dramatic monologue Dramatic monologue is a type of poetry written in the form of a speech of an individual character. M.H. Abrams notes the following three features of the ''dramatic monologue'' as it applies to poetry: Types of dramatic monologue One of the m ...

s, such as those written by

Robert Browning Robert Browning (7 May 1812 – 12 December 1889) was an English poet and playwright whose dramatic monologues put him high among the Victorian literature, Victorian poets. He was noted for irony, characterization, dark humour, social commentar ...

and

Alfred Tennyson Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (; 6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was an English poet. He was the Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of ...

and Shakespeare.

Dramatic verse

Closet drama

Dramatic poetry in general

See also

References

Further reading