May gathering

Drama is the specific mode of fictionrepresented in performance: a playperformed in a theatre, or on radio or television.^[1] Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been contrasted with the epic and the lyrical modes ever since Aristotle's Poetics (c. 335 BC)—the earliest work of dramatic theory.^[2]

The term "drama" comes from a Greekword meaning "action" (Classical Greek: δρᾶμα, drama), which is derived from "I do" (Classical Greek: δράω, drao). The two masks associated with drama represent the traditional generic division between comedy and tragedy. They are symbols of the ancient Greek Muses, Thalia, and Melpomene. Thalia was the Muse of comedy (the laughing face), while Melpomene was the Muse of tragedy (the weeping face).

In English (as was the analogous case in many other European languages), the word "play" or "game" (translating the Anglo-Saxon plèga or Latin ludus) was the standard term used to describe drama until William Shakespeare's time—just as its creator was a "play-maker" rather than a "dramatist" and the building was a "play-house" rather than a "theatre".^[3] The use of "drama" in a more narrow sense to designate a specific type of play dates from the modern era. "Drama" in this sense refers to a play that is neither a comedy nor a tragedy—for example, Zola'sThérèse Raquin (1873) or Chekhov'sIvanov (1887). It is this narrower sense that the film and television industries, along with film studies, adopted to describe "drama" as a genre within their respective media. "Radio drama" has been used in both senses—originally transmitted in a live performance, it has also been used to describe the more high-brow and serious end of the dramatic output of radio.^[4]

The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborativemodes of production and a collectiveform of reception. The structure of dramatic texts, unlike other forms of literature, is directly influenced by this collaborative production and collective reception.^[5] The early modern tragedyHamlet (1601) by Shakespeare and the classical Athenian tragedy Oedipus Rex(c. 429 BC) by Sophocles are among the masterpieces of the art of drama.^[6]A modern example is Long Day's Journey into Night by Eugene O’Neill(1956).^[7]

Drama is often combined with musicand dance: the drama in opera is generally sung throughout; musicalsgenerally include both spoken dialogueand songs; and some forms of drama have incidental music or musical accompaniment underscoring the dialogue (melodrama and Japanese Nō, for example).^[8] Closet drama describes a form that is intended to be read, rather than performed.^[9] In improvisation, the drama does not pre-exist the moment of performance; performers devise a dramatic script spontaneously before an audience.^[