Drama Of Idea

Drama

Transition of Drama of Action to Dram of Idea

Drama is the most ancient, popular and admired genre of literature. It is as old as the history of human being. Etymologically, the word Drama has been derived from Greek word DRAN or DRAO which mean TO ACT or To Do. The aforesaid meanings are indicating that drama is written to perform on stage trough action.

            Change is universal phenomenon of this world. Same is the case with drama. If we study the drama of Greek, middle ages, Elizabethan period till 18^th century, we observe various ups and downs, changes and variation in Drama. Behind these changes, there are many solid reasons such as social political economic and geographical upheavals in that specific society. Moreover, Industrialization, Scientific Development, and various others psychological and philosophical theories has made a great impact on society as well as on literature (Drama).

            After the death of Shakespeare and his contemporaries drama in England suffered a decline for about tow centures. Even Congreve in the seventeenth and SHridan and Goldsmith in the eighteenth century, could not restore drama to the position which it held in Elizabethan age. However it was revived in the last decade of the nineteenth century and then there appeared dramatest who have now given it a respectable place in English Literature.

            Two important factors were responsible for the revival of drama in 1890’s. One was the influence of Ibsen, the great Norwegian dramatis, under which the English dramatists like Bernard Shaw discussed serious social and moral problems in a calm and sensible way. The second was the cynical atmosphere prevailing at that time, which allowed men to treat the moral assumptions of the great Victorian age with frivolity and make polite fun of their conventionality, prudishness or smugness.

            Henrik Ibsen, a great NOrvegian playwright gave new dimensions to drama and challenged the conventional morality and set pattern.He had taught men that the real dram amust deal with human emotions, with things which are near and dear to ordinary men and women. The new dramatists thus gave up the melodramatic romanticisiom and pseudo-classic remoteness of their predessors, and began to treat in their plays the actual English life, first of the aristocratic class, thenof the middle class and finally of the laboring class. This treatment of actual life made the drama more and more a drama of ideas which were for the most part, revoluntinoary, directed against past literary models, current social conventions and the prevailing morality of Victorian England. The new dramatist dealt mainly with the problem of sex , of labour and of youth, fighting against romantic love, capitalism and parental authority which were the characteristic features of Victorianism. The characters in their plays are constantly questioning restless and dissatisfied. Youngmen struggle to throw off the trammels of the Victorian prejudice. Following the example of Nora, the heroin in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, who leaves her dull domineering husband who seeks to crush her personality and keep her permanently in a child like, irresponsible state, the young women in these plays join eagerly the Fiminsit movement and glory in a new-found liberty. Influenced by the philosophies of Schopenhauer and the psychological theory of Segment Freud, Modern dramatist no longer held love or relation between the sexes as something sacred or romantic as their forefathers did. They looked upon it as a  as a biological phenomenor directed by nature, or the Life Force as Benard Shaw calls it.

                        In the new drama of idea, where a number of theories had to be propounded and explained, action became slow and frequently interrupted. . Moreover, inner conflict was substituted for out conflict, with the result that drama became quieter than the romantic drama of the previous years. The new researchers in the field of Psychology helped the dramatist in the study of SOUL for the expression of which they had to resor to symbols. By means of Symbolism the dramatist could raise the darks and even sordid themes to artistic levels. The emphasis on the inner conflict led some of the modern dramatists to make their protagonists not men but unseen forces, thereby making wider and larger and sphere of drama.

                        "Drama of Ideas", pioneered by George Bernard Shaw, is a type of discussion play in which the clash of ideas and hostile ideologies reveals the most acute problems of social and personal morality. In a Drama of Ideas there is a little action but discussion. Characters are only the vehicles of ideas. The conflict which is the essence of drama is reached through the opposing ideas of different characters. The aim of Drama of Ideas is to educate people through entertainment.

Arms and the Man is an excellent example of the Drama of Ideas. Here very little happens except discussion. The plot is built up with dynamic and unconventional ideas regarding war and love. Shaw criticizes the romantic notion of war and love prevailing in the contemporary society. Unlike the conventional comedies, here characters are engaged  in lengthy discussion and thus bring out ideas contrary to each other.

Ibsen and then Shaw, Galsworthy and Granville Barker were the chief exponents of this realistic drama of ideas.

To Shaw, drama was preeminently a medium for articulating his own ideas and philosophy. He enunciated the philosophy of life force which he sought to disseminate through his dramas. Thus Shavian plays are the vehicles for the transportation of ideas, however, propagandizing they may be. Shaw wanted to cast his ideas through discussions.

Out of the discussions in the play ARMS AND THE MAN, Shaw breaks the idols of love and war. The iconoclast Shaw pulls down all false gods which men live, love admire and adore. By a clever juxtaposition of characters and dialogues, Shaw smashes the romantic illusions about war and war heroes. Shaw’s message is that war is no longer a thing of banners and glory, as the nineteenth century dramatist saw but a dull and sordid affair of brutal strength and cruel planning out. The dialogues of Bluntschli, Riana and Sergius go to preach this message with great success. Here to quote Sergius who says, “War is a hollow sham like love.” One thing however be remembered that in Arms and The Man, Mr. Shaw does not, as some imagine attack war. He is not Tolstoy an in the least. What he does is to denounce the sentimental illusion that gathers around war. “Fight if you will”, says he ‘but for goodness’ sake don’t strike picturesque attitudes in the limelight about it. View it as one of the desperately irrational things of life that may, however, in certain circumstances be a brutal necessity. Bluntschli is the very mouth piece of the play that exposes the dreamful reality of war. There is a lot of learning in the disillusionment of Riana and Sergius.

But this is not the whole message Shaw intends to convey through his Arms and The Man. In the play he has taken a realistic view not only of war and heroism but of love and marriage. He has taken a realistic view of life as a whole. He has blown away the halo of romance that surrounds human life as a whole. His message in this play is, therefore, the destruction not only of the conventional conception of the heroic soldier but of the romantic view of marriage, nay, of life as a whole. He pleads for judging everything concerning human life from a purely realistic point of view. This is the message he conveys through the play, Arms and The Man. The hero Bluntschli here serves the mouth piece of the author. He is the postal of level -headedness that sees through emptiness of romantic love and romantic heroism. He towers about all others and shatters all the pet theories and so called high ideas, and converts Raina and Sergius to his own views and succeeds in life because he faces facts and his no romantic illusions about him.

Further, as all the propaganda plays go Arms and The Man lacks action and instead of action it contains plenty of dramatic dialogues. It is not a lie if we say that Arms and The Man is a perfect combination of the elements of action and ‘discussion’. The conversation between Raina and Captain Bluntschli, for example in the act-I, is extremely lively and through the mouth of the chocolate cream soldier. Shaw gives expression to his own heresies about the glories of warfare. The fugitive soldier talks to the universality of the flaying instinct, but his talk is not an end in itself. He argues only with a view to persuading Raina to give him shelter and to protect him from the raids of Bulgarian soldiers. Thus there is not a scrap of discussion for the sake of discussion. The action of the drama require that Raina’s hatred of a cowardly should be disarmed, her romantic notions blasted and sympathy and pity aroused. As soon as this end has been achieved, the tired soldier drops down fast asleep. He instinctively realizes that he has become Riana’s poor dear; and there is no need for further argument.

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Shavian drama primarily deals with ideas, using characters as spokespersons and dialogues/situations as polemical. Arms and the Man is a celebrated example of the Shavian drama of ideas. The play aims to satirize the long-cherished conventions of love and romance on the one hand, and those of soldiering and heroism on the other. The victorious Bulgarian cavalry-charge led by Sergius Saranoff against the Serbian artillery at the battle of Slivnitza which makes him "the hero of Slivnitza" is actually a gross act of romantic adventurism. Sergius's heroism makes Raina, his betrothed Petkoff daughter, and her mother instantly ecstatic, but Sergius fails to get promoted in the army because his act of adventurism is rightly looked upon as a piece of amateurish idiocy. The Shavian protagonist in the play, Bluntschli, who enters Raina's bed-chamber secretly, explains Sergius's ludicrous suicidal bid to the young romantic girl who gathers from the professional soldier what the realities of war actually are. Raina's "soul's hero" Sergius and the fugitive Serbian artillery-man, Bluntschli, are a pair of contrasted characters to highlight the conflict of the two ideas/attitudes to war, heroism, soldiering and patriotism. Sergius, Raina, Major Petkoff and Catherine are all men and women inclined to the conventional ideas of heroism, adventurism and patriotism. Bluntschli serves as a typical Shavian ideologue to argue his way in his characteristic serio-comical manner to lead the entire romantic-sentimental host to disillusionment. Raina gradually discovers that Sergius is as much an adventurist in the domain of soldiering as he is a hypocrite in the domain of love. He is found as making secret overtures to the Petkoff house-maid, Louka, behind Raina's back. Louka, an example of a new woman, is very clever and ambitious to trap Sergius in love and marriage. At the end of the play, Raina righly chooses to marry her "chocolate-cream soldier" Bluntschli, and rejects the foolishly and falsely romantic Sergius Saranoff. The play can also be seen as a problem play on the Ibsenian model. The play presents, analyzes and sarcastically exposes the problems relating to love, relationships and marriage, problems relating to patriotism, heroism and soldiering. Characters represent contrary and confronting ideas; dialogues and situations underscore the problems and the conflicting trajectories. The whole play does have a strong purpose of criticism and reformation.