Verse drama
A verse drama is a drama that is mainly written in metrically bound language . The occasional occurrence of verse , for example in the form of interspersed songs, is not sufficient to classify a drama as a verse drama, rather large parts of the main text must be written in verse. Verse drama was the only dramatic text form until the 18th century, after which dramas were increasingly written in prose . The term "verse drama", which serves to differentiate it from the prose form, has only been traceable since the early 20th century.
In his poetics, Aristotle defines drama itself as "imitation in verse". Ancient and medieval dramas are almost exclusively written in verse, with different meters predominating in different epochs. In German-language literature the Knittelverse was widespread until about 1600 , which was then replaced by the Alexandrian and finally the Blankverse in the 18th century . In classical French drama, the alexandrine was predominant, while in the dramas of William Shakespeare blank verse and prose passages alternate. The way German-language literature deals with verse drama is reflected in Shakespeare translations. Early German translations mostly ignored Shakespeare's passages and translated them as prose; so it is in Christoph Martin Wieland all Shakespeare translations to prose, as well as in their completions by Johann Joachim Eschenburg . It was not until August Wilhelm von Schlegel attempted to reproduce the original in the blank verse, with which he met with the approval of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and the poets of Sturm und Drang .
Since the end of the 19th century, dramas written in prose gained increasing importance, which eventually pushed verse drama to the margins. Important prose dramatists of this time were Henrik Ibsen and Anton Pawlowitsch Chekhov , while Hugo von Hofmannsthal and William Butler Yeats were important representatives of the verse drama of this epoch. A later theoretical proponent of verse drama was TS Eliot , who viewed it as a superior form and developed his own, relatively free meters based on everyday spoken language.
Music theater has always been a domain of verse drama .
literature
- Peter Szondi : The lyrical drama of the fin de siècle . Frankfurt 1975, ISBN 3-518-07690-6 .
- TS Eliot: The tasks of verse drama . Frankfurt 1960.
- Hugo von Hofmannsthal: Theater in verse . Berlin 1899.
- Glenda Leeming: Poetic Drama , Basinstoke 1989, ISBN 0-333-36902-5 .
- Kayla M. Wiggins: Modern verse drama in English . Westport 1993, ISBN 0-313-28929-8 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jan-Dirk Müller (Ed.), Reallexikon der deutschen Literaturwissenschaft (Volume III), Berlin (2003), p. 763