drama appreciation essay

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4: Theatre Appreciation- A Student’s Perspective

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• Gillian Canavan

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Now that you have made it to the end of this textbook, pausing to reflect on the torrent of theatrical knowledge you have consumed is understandably overwhelming. As I have read through these chapters myself, I’ve found it helpful to focus on specific points made by each author that has resonated with me for one reason or another and consider how they influence the way I appreciate the art of theatre. Theatre Appreciation is accurately labeled a “survey” course, as it is designed to give an overview of the incredibly dense history and vast inner workings of the theatrical arts, which is no minor task. Believe these authors when they tell you that one chapter is not nearly enough time to adequately cover their respective subjects. So, don’t feel pressured to suddenly be struck with the desire for continued research into each of these subjects. Of course, this may be ideal in the eyes of your professors, and even some of your classmates might fall into this category; but if you do not, we hope there was at least one valuable aspect you can take away from this class. As a theatre student who has previously completed this course, I can say with certainty that I didn’t feel the urge to study every single topic more in-depth. But what mattered is that I resonated with enough content to spark a change in how I perceived theatre. My more casual view of theatre as an extracurricular, or a choice to fill my liberal arts credit, was altered to view theatre as an actual career path—don’t get me wrong, if you’ve found yourself here to fill a credit, we’ve loved having you and hope you stick around!

Working professionally in the theatre, whether in the realm of writing, designing, or performing is intimidating. The lack of promised financial gratification and stability cause many to abandon their pursuit of a career in the industry, but that does not mean it is not a valid option for a successful career. Look back on interviews with theatre professionals like TJ Young, Alaine Aldaffer, Shawn Irish, and Hal Luftig, and know that they found success by doing what they love. Each of them was able to find their place within the theatre and utilize their skills and talents to their fullest potential. In my time studying theatre, my own definition of “success” has been altered. Previously, “success” has always correlated to the amount of money in my bank account, but from what these authors have written, to be successful in the industry of theatre is to succeed in telling your story effectively to an audience. As I continue my own attempt to forge a theatrical career, I can wholeheartedly confess that the intimidation factor is still extremely present; but continuing to learn about the facets of the current industry, how it functions, and the history behind its development has made it considerably less daunting. Gaining new artists in the theatre industry is what keeps it ever-growing and ever-evolving, so if you feel the urge to learn more, have confidence that you started in the right place.

What makes theatre such a powerful and long-lasting art form is that despite differences in location, time period, genre, or level of experience, it grounds itself in a universal concept. The purpose for which each playwright crafts their story may differ, but all purposes are achieved through the same means—telling stories to an audience. After reading through the different chapters of this textbook, you can connect them together with the throughline of dedication to telling a story. I urge you to take all the clichés with a grain of salt, because despite how generic it sounds, it is inherent in our existence as human beings. As you have learned by reading the chapter on acting, human beings naturally have the remarkable ability of impersonation and mimicry. Alongside this is the natural instinct to mirror other humans. When we tell these stories, our audience will subconsciously mirror the person or people performing, making storytelling through live performance so powerful. It has an instinctual and unavoidable effect on emotions and theatre artists harness this effect to guide the audience’s collective response in harmony with the playwright’s purpose and the story’s function.

In all honesty, I find that the amount of storytelling present in our everyday lives is grossly underestimated. It truly is unavoidable. Out of habit we tell our roommates about our day as a form of bonding, we complain to our friends about the customer in front of us in at the coffee shop, and we calculate the best way to tell our friends about how “crazy” our Spring Break was (and make them believe it). There is a perpetual awareness of how we tell stories to achieve an intended reaction or result from our listeners. Obviously, playwrights, directors, designers, and actors, study technical elements of storytelling specific to the medium of theatre, but in its most basic form, we all understand how to do it.

We enjoy hearing them, watching them on screen, or reading them on a page, so why not venture into the theatre to enjoy it in a different setting? There are limitless possibilities at your disposal when deciding how you will experience live theatre. You might find yourself in a found space, where the boundary between actors and audience is fluid, or even play the role of “spect-actor” in a project under the umbrella of the Theatre of the Oppressed, gifted the ability to provide commentary on a social issue; or travel to see a Chinese Peking Opera adorned in all of its acrobatics and effervescence; or even landing on Broadway in New York City to see a classic musical, filled with soaring vocals and wonderous theatricality. Wherever you do end up, be sure to take notice of how you feel after the curtain falls. Were you collecting yourself from being moved to tears by a tragic performance? Or giddy from sitting through a side-splitting comedy? Either way, you have suffered a change in your person simply by seeing a performance. It is learning to appreciate the effect theatre has on you that begins your appreciation of theatre in its entirety.

The immediacy of theatre’s effects on an audience member is part of its power. When the show begins, the audience must willingly suspend their disbelief and temporarily be brought out of their world and placed into the one on the stage. As Aristotle claimed, seeing a good play should provoke a sense of catharsis, that allows us to safely experience emotions in a removed manner. We experience empathy towards these characters as we grieve for them, hope for them, rage for them, all as we invest ourselves in watching the actors on stage. However, as much as this is an essential convention of theatre, it can also be broken to achieve a purpose. There may be a time when you witness a play in which the playwright takes specific measures to remind the audience that they are simply that: people in a theatre watching actors on a stage. Yet, we are still somehow changed after the fact. Knowing that we are in a fictional, constructed world inhabited by fictional characters does not take away from the collective experience endured by the audience.

Allowing yourself to be receptive to the influence of theatre can be an amazing thing. Every story has a message, or indefinite messages, that spawn from the different interpretations of each person. “Given circumstances” can be used to describe the concrete details of the beginning of a play or scene, but it also describes the state of the audience that enters the theatre. Many people in the theatre refer to the audience as its own character, after all. In every single performance, the audience is comprised of different people with different life experiences. Think back to the “Applied Theatre” chapter, which focuses on theatre that is directed towards a specific group of people with a determined given circumstance, created with the intention of evoking change and bringing attention to issues that affect that group. Think about what was said about Prison Theatre; the example given about a production of Waiting for Godot performed by and for incarcerated people shows how a very specific set of given circumstances affects the audience’s reaction to the performance. Or how Reminiscence Theatre is devised from the memories of the elderly. Even if you fall outside of the targeted group of such productions, everyone resonates with different elements of the story, even the seemingly insignificant.

When considering the path of theatre both academically and professionally, know that it is not a field that suits only one “type” of person. If you can’t envision yourself as the playwright who composes the story and structure for a production, perhaps you gravitate more towards a position that brings the play to life on stage. Regardless of where you are drawn to, don’t shy away from taking advantage of your preexisting skills or unrelated talents and expertise to assist you (there’s a reason an actor’s resumé has a section dedicated to “special skills”). Something like having visual knowledge and appreciation of art is valuable because the end result of any performance is the presentation for an audience in a physical space. Even when simply reading a script, remember that it was written with the intention of taking on a physical form, it’s just in need of the collaborative effort of other artists to forge it into reality. Designers, directors, and even actors must have an awareness of visual composition and how crafting what the audience sees serves the story.

The phrase, “Serve the story,” or a variation of the same expression, is often heard in the theatre. If all artists working on a show set this as a goal, it creates a unified world able to support the actors who tell the story. For example, the design of the set must consider the basic needs of entrances, exits, and other specified elements, but must also work to construct the less tangible element of the feeling or atmosphere of the play’s world. Our chapter on scenic design even elaborates on the script analysis done by the set designer, in order to effectively immerse the audience in the world of the story and develop a deeper understanding of the characters who live in that world. This is aided by the lighting design that not only ensures actors are visible, but directs our focus, and creates different moods.

As with any discipline or profession, efficient collaboration is an essential part of success. In Chapter 5, “The Director,” we are introduced to the concept of production meetings and how vital they are to the creation of a show that exists in a unified world. Also within this chapter, we learn that directors often do not start out as directors, but find themselves there after working in different areas of theatre. I think this applies to other niches of the theatre world as well, which might seem encouraging to students wanting to work in the art form. You may intend to become a lighting designer and end up a specialist in the properties department, or an actor may decide that the stage-management scene is where they thrive. But on your journey, gain experience with whatever you can. Since the director is responsible for deciding the entire creative interpretation of the production, it helps to grasp what is actually achievable in each department as they add in their respective elements. Though directors are not the only people who should have a well-rounded range of skills. Well-roundedness is imperative to building confidence while working in the theatre in any occupation. In the same way, learning to appreciate all kinds of theatre outside your familiar conventions provides a sturdy foundation for a well-rounded theatre student.

Well-roundedness in skillset must be accompanied by well-roundedness in cultural knowledge and appreciation. “Theatre Appreciation,” reaches across the globe and teaches us to appreciate types of theatre that we might have never known existed. Artists tend to be influenced by styles from previous time periods or different locations, but a true appreciation of the art requires an appreciation of the culture it was formed in. Theatre has evolved because of the interactions between cultural groups, but as we continue to learn about its history, we must remember the dominance of western culture in how we perceive theatre. In Chapter 14, “Global Theatre,” author Missy Maramara states:

The history of theater often focuses on the Western development of the art form and tends to exclude forms that do not share the same formal elements as outlined by Ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle. This can be attributed to the tendency of historical accounts to focus on the different movements of power within the Western Hemisphere: from the Greeks to the Romans, to the Europeans, such as France, Germany, England, and Spain, and to Russia and the United States of America. History of theatre follows mainstream historical accounts of accomplishments in the arts as a reflection of a world power. In other words, history is told from the perspective of the global leader and highlights the accomplishments of its global power.

It is only when we acknowledge this aspect of the history of theatre and know how it affects the development of theatre in the present day, that we can begin to expand our view to appreciate other cultural traditions in the art form. Learning about different cultures is not only important in gaining knowledge about theatre history but it is also built into the process of putting on a production. Designers of shows that occur in a specific time and place must conduct research about the visual elements that are characteristic of that time and place. If the director is taking on a piece that either exists in a culture outside of their own, or addresses issues or experiences that they have not dealt with firsthand, again, they must research those elements in order to be successful. You need to make sure that you understand the story being told and know how to work with the story to tell it in the most effective way. In the same way, actors must also do research because they themselves are the ones telling the story for each audience.

Learning about the process of becoming and working as an actor can be beneficial to anyone, regardless of occupation. If there is any group of people that must practice persistence and determination, it is actors. If you remember reading the interview with casting director, Alaine Aldaffer, she concluded with quite a startling statistic: that only about 8% of actors make a living by acting. Actors pursue this career fully knowing its incredibly competitive nature, but it is their love of the craft that motivates them. What is most notable to me about that interview, however, is her statement that the best actor often does not get the part. You could be the most experienced, technically perfect, and impressive actor, but if you are not quite a fit for the character and world of the play envisioned by the director, you won’t get cast. The point I am intending to be taken away from this is that there is an understanding of serving the story. An actor needs to understand that they are not the best choice to best serve the playwright’s story and continue to audition until they find where they can do that. Obviously, things like experience and training matter in becoming an actor, but it is the ability to take criticism and use it towards improving your craft that anyone can apply to their own occupation.

Appreciating Theatre is not only for those pursuing a career in the industry, but can be utilized by all as we gain a more fully realized knowledge of an art form rooted in human behavior and connection. What we learn by studying theatre can be applied to a vast number of other subjects and provide valuable skills to use throughout our lives. To appreciate theatre is to appreciate stories, art, and culture, that has a message, and letting yourself be changed by the experience.

Korean Dramas on Netflix Have Been the Savior of My Sophomore Pandemic Year

From our couch, slurping grocery store ramyun in our underwear, we’re traveling again—a world away on you.

In the Netflix original series, a South Korean face cream mogul accidentally paraglides into the demilitarized zone and onto a hot North Korean soldier. The red-star-crossed-lovers rom com is brilliant on so many levels—think North Korean Outlander but make it funny. There’s a North Korean defector on the writing staff, so it’s an unusually informed look at South Korea’s grumpy upstairs neighbor (impossibly romantic coincidences and balls-out camp aside.) We quickly binged the whole series and, by the end, Korean television had crash landed on our hearts. So we dove into the world of Netflix K-dramas, which has proven as endless and addictive as a BTS playlist.

We’re now deep into It’s Okay to Be Not Okay , in which a famous, sociopathic children’s book writer falls in love with a psychiatric nurse that works at the kind of institution she should probably be checked into, all while living in a mansion haunted by her mother’s ghost—I mean, why didn’t HBO think of that? The fashion alone is worth watching for, along with the blindingly obvious product placement. Key conversations take place at Subway, the shots littered with enough green-and-yellow logos to give you a seizure. And every character, regardless of age or economic status, got there in a brand new Volvo. There are multiple Volvo vs. Volvo chase scenes (spoiler alert: a Volvo always wins.) The handing of Volvo keys is the highest sign of trust. It’s so blatant it feels like ironic performance art worthy of an off-Greenwich Village stage.

Episodes run around the length of a Disney movie. And there are usually about sixteen. One season. Sixteen movies. It’s amazing. But an adjustment for the Hollywood viewer. After our incessant gushing, our friend Dan watched Crash Landing on You and said he felt like he needed Ritalin to make it through the first episode. The storytelling is slow, thorough, and zen. Climactic scenes are replayed from various points of view so it occasionally feels like being trapped in a conversation with your drunk aunt who tells you the same story multiple times (which begs the question: am I becoming that aunt?) But patience is rewarded with some of the most hypnotic cinema, ever. By the end, we’d spent so much time with these characters, saying goodbye felt like a breakup.

There’s a deeper reason Dan wasn’t hooked: no boobs. K-dramas are prude and sometimes the only action you get after ten hours of subtitles is a long, slow mo hug that is panned in on from every angle. But what’s lacking in nudity is made up for with steamy Korean food porn. Sex is great, but have you tried Galbi Jjim? Sure, we felt blue-balled when the romantic climax to twenty some hours of television was a make out sesh beneath slowly falling cherry blossoms (all the kissing scenes seem to have something falling: Snow. Rain. Petals. Confetti). Which is maybe? Some kind of? Analogy? But after the bountiful TV sex and violence that got us through 2020, the innocence itself was novel.

We’re not alone in our adoration: K-dramas, which were already huge in much of the world, exploded during the pandemic. Along with K-pop and Korean beauty products, K-dramas have swept the Earth in what the Chinese call “Hallyu,” the Korean wave. It’s Okay to Not Be Okay is among the ten most binged Netflix shows in several South American countries as well as Russia, Canada, Australia, and my living room.

The Hallyu has even hit North Korea, changing the way its citizens see their neighbors to the South—and themselves. There’s a black market for smuggling South Korean dramas into the dictatorship which is obviously not fucking cool with Kim Jong Un. Watching or owning South Korean media up North will get you 5-15 years in labor camps—and people are doing it anyway. K-dramas are so good, people are risking their lives to watch them.

What, exactly, is so compelling about these shows. Is it the eye-popping fashion? The K-poppy soundtracks? The cinematic views of the South Korean coast? The frequent and dramatic grabbing of wrists? If I’m honest, I don’t care to know. Wanting to escape my comfort zone was what drew me to K-dramas in the first place. I like wondering why the characters are singing to a tomato plant and if there’s really that much yelling in Korean workplaces. I like wondering how many references I’m missing. I like wondering.

Yesterday, we watched the main characters of It’s Okay to Not Be Okay finally kiss— finally . To my surprise, James gasped and covered his mouth with both hands, stunned. My giant husband who has grown unphased by murder and sex scenes alike, gasped at an on-screen kiss like a tween girl. He was far away, in a land where spicy noodles abound and kisses are Blockbuster again. Especially at Subway. From our couch, slurping grocery store ramyun in our underwear, we’re traveling again—a world away on you.

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The Drama Teacher

Your Go-To Resource for Drama Education

200 Irresistible Words To Describe Theatre Performances

Here is an updated list of over 200 words drama and theatre students can use in school essays to help describe theatre performances they have seen . This version includes several easy-to-understand synonyms beside each adjective in case readers are unfamiliar with certain words.

Seeing a professional theatre performance is such a rich and rewarding experience for drama students. But coming back to class and analysing a performance can sometimes be a complex task. Written analyses often need to include aspects of plot, characterisation, acting, production areas, and even performance styles such as absurdism , epic theatre , political theatre , or magical realism . Even very capable students can have trouble using the most appropriate words to describe what they witnessed at the theatre.

This list of adjectives will help students successfully complete a theatre review , performance analysis, or evaluation. It can also be used to describe in-class plays performed by peers. The list should also prove useful for university drama and theatre students .

200 Words to Describe Theatre Performances

All of these words were well thought out! Helped me on my E1 assignment!

This helped me way 2 much like keep the hard work . I entered a competition and this will probably make me win . I’ll give feedback if I win from this amazing vocabulary chart !.

Awesome, Laila! I’m glad the list of words helped. Good luck in the competition! – Justin

This is a great help good work.

Thanks for the feedback Destiney! – Justin

Hamlet Analysis Essay: Shakespeare’s Play Analysis Example

Looking for the Hamlet analysis essay? Read this drama analysis essay example and get an insight into Hamlet themes and characters.

Introduction to the Drama Analysis Example

Hamlet themes, analysis of characters in hamlet, conclusion of the hamlet analysis essay.

In the play Hamlet, William Shakespeare who is one of the most influential writers in history has elaborated the contemporary themes in society into a piece of literature as revealed in the drama. Due to his universal way of creating themes, he has been able to influence the western literature. In the contemporary theatre of the western, they still view Shakespeare’s work being relevant.

Shakespeare therefore uses the stylistic device of a play within a play to pass his information to the audience as well as helping him develop his plot. Shakespeare has in this case therefore used the main actor Hamlet in portraying this device. Hamlet who is a character in the play is again seen in another play within the play, which he acts in order to be in a position to kill Claudius.

Hamlet is a play that depicts a vivid drama of melancholy and insanity as well as famous of its ghostliness. In this play, Shakespeare has used various elements of literature to develop the plot of the play. In this case, the writer has used characters, settings, symbols, themes, characterization and other elements of literature in the development of the plot. The writer has used these elements correlatively to achieve his plot.

Themes are used to develop characters in the play. For instance, the writer has used the theme of betrayal to develop the main character Hamlet in the play hence the development of the plot. The writer used the name of the play as the name of the main actor while other characters in the play helped in development of the predominant theme in the main character.

Therefore, four main characters have greatly contributed by playing major roles. Hamlet experienced character development through the betrayals of Ophelia with whom he is romantically involved. Gertrude is his mother and Claudius’ wife while Gildernstern and Rosencrantz were his friends from the University of Wittenberg.

When the scene begins, there is a very close relationship between Hamlet and the mother, which later fades off when Gertrude remarries his uncle Claudius two months after his father’s death. This culminated the distrust in women since his mother was the most important female in his life.

He therefore uses mockery phrases like “such dexterity to incestuous sheets” and “frailty, thy name is woman”. Such phrases illustrated how disgusted and disappointed he was towards his mother and women as well as depicting how isolated he was as a young man.

The theme of madness has also played major role in the development of the plot. Insanity was used in many revenge tragedies like in the first revenge tragedy of Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus. Unlike in the case of Hamlet where the madness is ambiguous, other revenge tragedies in the character have been unambiguous.

In the source of Shakespeare’ plot in Hamlet, the main protagonist feigns his madness to be in the position to revenge without being suspected by the king (Claudius) whom he plots to kill. In the play, Hamlet’s madness tends to distract him from accomplishing his mission as it is depicted in the play as being with very little interest in accomplishing the mission of the ghost even after proving that Claudius is guilty (act 4 scene 2).

Hamlet therefore acts like a mad person in the play since he is aware in a bizarre manner that he should act as a mad man to accomplish the role of revenge in Hamlet. He knows the role that he is supposed to play even though to some extent he does not attain it satisfactorily.

This in return built Hamlet as a character who wants to revenge. Ophelia is another character who plays the part of a mad person but in her case, she is innocently mad. Ophelia loses her senses of self-knowledge and composure completely and therefore insane.

Suicide is another theme that has been used by Shakespeare to develop the plot in Hamlet. The play has been shaped using Ophelia as well as Hamlet. Hamlet deeply contemplates about the issue of suicide and this is seen in his soliloquies. He keeps on asking himself questions about the act of murder.

Hamlet had the fear to kill because of his social as well as religious morals. He views suicide as a crime in the societal view and even before God who gives life. He also had the fear of what happens to the person after he has departed from this world and going to the world of the deaths.

Ophelia’s death also arouses many issues where some people say that she died a natural death while others say that she committed suicide. According to Hamlet’s mother, Ophelia’s death was accidental because she drowned while on the other hand, the priest and the gravediggers said it clearly that Ophelia killed herself. This therefore left the people feeling that Gertrude’s narration was just a story to cover up the whole issue of murder since it was viewed as an immoral act in the society (act 5).

In Hamlet, Shakespeare has used women characters in the development of the plot. In the play, women are seen to play minor roles but very essential in development of the plot. In the play, Gertrude and Ophelia are the two women in direct relationship with the main protagonist. The writer develops the theme of love in the play using Gertrude who is the main protagonist’s mother. This is seen when Gertrude tries to stop the death of his son because Hamlet never loved her as a mother.

This is because; he felt that her mother was involved in the murder of his father. She is concerned about the well-being of her son, which proves the reason why Claudius could not inform her about the plot of killing his stepson. Ophelia is portrayed as loving because after the death of her father she became insane.

This is evident when she started using abusive language in public without fear as she used to behave in the previous scene, where Hamlet could abuse her and she could not respond due to the fear she had as woman who was under the power of a man.

The theme of patriarchal is built around the two women to show how they were not allowed to make decisions on their own. For example, in the case of Ophelia, she is forced by the father (Claudius) and her brother Laertes not to love Hamlet because the brother feels that Hamlet is playing with her feelings.

Trying to satisfy the wants of the father and brother, Hamlet blames her and even insults her, but since Ophelia does not have power to explain to him what was underlying the whole issue, she ends up suffering. The husband on the other hand see Gertrude as a less repressed person but Claudius married her so that he can be able to promptly take over the throne after Hamlet’s death and pretend that he is good just like the previous king by remarrying his wife.

Ophelia has been used to develop the stylistic device of symbolism in the play towards the development of the plot. The symbolism of her language in the play increases the range of meanings depicted in the play.

For example, Ophelia is emotional after hearing about the death of her father and throws flowers in every place around her as a sign of purity (act 4 scene 4). On the contrary, this symbolizes her deflowering as a person, on the other scene of her madness.

Lastly, the two characters have contributed in the development of the plot and again helped the writer to portray the fate of his heroes in the play. When Ophelia rejects Hamlet, Hamlet’s disgust his mother’s remarriage, taints the opinion about all women hence making him an isolated man. The madness death of Ophelia fortifies her brother’s determination of revenging on Hamlet, which results to the final catastrophe in the play. Gertrude cared for his son but could not control the tragedy from taking place.

The writer has used Hamlet who is the main character in the play to build other themes hence the development of the plot. After the death of Hamlet’s father, Hamlet plots on how to kill Claudius after the spirit confirmed to him that Claudius is the one who killed his father.

However, in the play Hamlets avenge on Claudius. “… I, his son, do this same villain send to heaven, why, this is hire and salary, not revenge” (Act 3 scene 3 78-84).

Honor is another theme portrayed through Hamlet the main protagonist. This theme is best depicted when Hamlet takes order from the ghost to revenge on Claudius as if the order came from God. “… With wings as swift as meditation or the thoughts of love may sweep to my revenge” (1.v.35-37).

The writer develops the plot using Claudius, Hamlet’s brother the king who later marries Gertrude his brother’s wife. In the play, he is Hamlet’s major avenger who is portrayed as lustful because he took his brother’s wife, Shrewd. He takes the throne that does not belong to him and allows his son revenge on Hamlet.

Due to these characters, he stands out as a man with contrasting characters from other men in the play. The ideas of Hamlet are just, honest and full of revenge but Claudius ensures that his power is maintained. In conclusion, the writer has also used other elements in correlation like the setting of the play to bring out the meaning in Hamlet.

Shakespeare therefore does not present various elements of literature as single entities in the play but he uses his concept of unity to express them as a single entity. Therefore, in this case, he uses characters in the play to develop themes and stylistic devices as well as using the themes to create the characters hence the clear development of the play.

• Summary & Analysis
• Genre & Literary Analysis
• Important Quotes
• Essay Topics
• Essay Samples
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2018, June 26). Hamlet Analysis Essay: Shakespeare’s Play Analysis Example. https://ivypanda.com/essays/drama-analysis-of-hamlet-by-shakespeare/

"Hamlet Analysis Essay: Shakespeare’s Play Analysis Example." IvyPanda , 26 June 2018, ivypanda.com/essays/drama-analysis-of-hamlet-by-shakespeare/.

IvyPanda . (2018) 'Hamlet Analysis Essay: Shakespeare’s Play Analysis Example'. 26 June.

IvyPanda . 2018. "Hamlet Analysis Essay: Shakespeare’s Play Analysis Example." June 26, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/drama-analysis-of-hamlet-by-shakespeare/.

1. IvyPanda . "Hamlet Analysis Essay: Shakespeare’s Play Analysis Example." June 26, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/drama-analysis-of-hamlet-by-shakespeare/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Hamlet Analysis Essay: Shakespeare’s Play Analysis Example." June 26, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/drama-analysis-of-hamlet-by-shakespeare/.

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Essays About Drama: Top 5 Examples and 5 Prompts

The word drama covers many meanings and subjects; if you are writing essays about drama, discover our guide with interesting essay examples and writing prompts featured here.

What is drama to you? Many know it as a situation or event in which emotions run high. For others, the grand, intricate stage plays of Shakespeare and others of his time come to mind. Regardless, these and all other definitions of drama share one thing in common: emotion.

In all its forms, from theatre to television to cinema to even day-to-day interaction, drama is always centered around emotion, tension, and conflict- things we experience daily. Drama is, quite literally, our life, complete with all its imperfections, troubles, twists, and turns. 

For help with your essays, check out our round-up of the best essay checkers

1. The History of Drama by Homer Stewart

2. why the news is not the truth by peter vanderwicken, 3. drama reflection essay (author unknown), 4. kitchen sink dramas by rodolfo chandler, 5. love yourself, not your drama by crystal jackson, 6. shakespeare’s theater: an essay from the folger shakespeare editions by barbara mowat and paul werstine, 1. what is drama, 2. types of drama, 3. the history of drama, 4. is the world over-dramatized today, 5. a dramatic incident of the past.

“Perhaps the most theatrical form of drama was opera which is still popular in today’s society. Broadway is certainly a sight that attracts thousands of people annually. In addition, the playwrights of today are striving to make the theatrical experience meaningful to the lives of viewers so that it is not just simply “pleasant entertainment”. Many themes that drama plays in modern times focus on are social problems, tragedies involving the elements of love and hate and as well as social problems that affect the inhabitants of today.”

Stewart gives readers a brief history of drama and its subjects. In different eras, the plays were based around themes and ideas prevalent in those times; for example, the Romantic Period focused on the “experiences of ordinary people.” He also references several playwrights, including Friedrich von Schiller and Percy Bysshe Shelley. In modern times, drama is centered around critical social issues while still managing to be engaging and entertaining.

“Pulitzer turned them into stories with a sharp dramatic focus that both implied and aroused intense public interest. Most newspapers of the time looked like the front page of the Wall Street Journal still does. Pulitzer made stories dramatic by adding blaring headlines, big pictures, and eye-catching graphics. His journalism took events out of their dry, institutional contexts and made them emotional rather than rational, immediate rather than considered, and sensational rather than informative.”

Vanderwicken criticizes the state of news today, saying that many stories are dramatized and outright fabricated to make them more entertaining. He attributes this to Joseph Pulitzer of Pulitzer Prize fame, who introduced He also gives historical examples of instances where the media has exaggerated – news today is too dramatic, and it must change.

You might also be interested in these essays about Macbeth .

“I felt that this learning experience is a very huge step because it takes us from doing a play which is very immature in to something that is big and has maturity in it. It helps me to practice in fluency, public speaking and mostly self-confidence. In the play I developed my ways of acting and how to put emotions in to the character, in which those emotions were not really me.”

This essay describes lessons one can learn from performing drama, such as confidence and speaking fluently. The author also reflects on an experience performing in drama, where the author learned to be more expressive, speak better, and become more hardworking. There is also a brief discussion on the elements of drama, including plot and setting. Drama is important and can teach you essential skills and lessons. 

“In the late 1950s in Britain, the “Kitchen Sink movement”, which is also known as “Kitchen Sink realism” occurred. This cultural movement stemed from ideas about working class activities. A typical writer of kitchen sink dramas is John Osborne, for example his drama “Look back in anger” which aroused many strong opinions when it was first performed as a drama. It is set in a small flat in the west midlands, which is typical of working class people.”

Chandler describes a period in drama where “kitchen sink dramas” depicted working-class stories. He uses John Osborne’s “Look Back in Anger” as an example, briefly describing the play. Jimmy, one of the characters, was known as an “angry young man,” This term was later used to describe young people critical of the social and political state of the world.

“We learn to recognize co-dependence, narcissism, and toxicity for what they are rather than making excuses because we liked the look of someone. In other words, we grow up. We stay in love with our own toxic patterns and keep the cycle of damage going, or we recognize the collateral damage of all our drama and start wanting better for ourselves. We make choices. We experience consequences. If we grow up, we’ll even connect the two.”

Jackson’s essay discusses drama from another perspective, the drama that comes with love life. She gives readers tips on how to care for yourself better and look past all the tension, confusion, and drama that comes with dating. If we look at potential partners from a deeper, more constructive point of view, we can avoid toxic relationships and have a healthy love life. 

“When performance required that an actor appear “above,” as when Juliet is imagined to stand at the window of her chamber in the famous and misnamed “balcony scene,” then the actor probably climbed the stairs to the gallery over the back of the stage and temporarily shared it with some of the spectators. The stage was also provided with ropes and winches so that actors could descend from, and reascend to, the “heavens.””

In their essay, Mowat and Werstine discuss the conventions of performing Shakespearean drama during his time, including the performance of some scenes in different areas of the theater and men playing women’s roles. They also discuss how the theaters they performed in, such as the Globe Theatre, enhanced the plays’ dramatic effect.

5 Prompts for Essays About Drama

The word drama has many meanings and is used differently, as seen in the essay examples above. In your essay, give the word’s etymology, explain the different sides of drama, from theatre to school life, and give examples of how they exemplify the meaning. Explain how they are all connected as well. 

Drama in the context of theatre has four primary forms: comedy, tragedy, tragicomedy, and melodrama. Discuss each type of drama and elaborate on its characteristics. If you wish, compare and contrast them as well. Be sure to give examples of plays when explaining them.   

In your essay, you can also discuss the different periods in the history of drama. Explain what occurred in these periods, how drama changed, and their effects on modern drama. You need not explore too many periods; just make sure you write about key developments and explain them adequately. 

In the world today, the resilience of survivors is glorified and dramatized, while we see media outlets making headlines out of mere gossip and celebrity news. From this, it can be argued that society is centered around making a drama out of nothing. Why is this the case? Discuss your opinion on this issue- feel free to research if you need inspiration. 

Look back to a past event marked by tension, emotion, and drama. Narrate the events and explain how they made you feel- did you learn anything from them? This can be either your own experience or just an event from history or the news. You can read this essay for further inspiration. 

Note: drama can mean different things to different people, so what you consider “dramatic” is up to you.For help picking your next essay topic, check out our top essay topics about love .

Martin is an avid writer specializing in editing and proofreading. He also enjoys literary analysis and writing about food and travel.

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Home › Drama Criticism › Analysis of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet

Analysis of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on July 25, 2020 • ( 2 )

With Shakespeare the dramatic resolution conveys us, beyond the man-made sphere of poetic justice, toward the ever-receding horizons of cosmic irony. This is peculiarly the case with Hamlet , for the same reasons that it excites such intensive empathy from actors and readers, critics and writers alike. There may be other Shakespearean characters who are just as memorable, and other plots which are no less impressive; but nowhere else has the outlook of the individual in a dilemma been so profoundly realized; and a dilemma, by definition, is an all but unresolvable choice between evils. Rather than with calculation or casuistry, it should be met with virtue or readiness; sooner or later it will have to be grasped by one or the other of its horns. These, in their broadest terms, have been—for Hamlet, as we interpret him—the problem of what to believe and the problem of how to act.

—Harry Levin, The Question of Hamlet

Hamlet is almost certainly the world’s most famous play, featuring drama’s and literature’s most fascinating and complex character. The many-sided Hamlet—son, lover, intellectual, prince, warrior, and avenger—is the consummate test for each generation’s leading actors, and to be an era’s defining Hamlet is perhaps the greatest accolade one can earn in the theater. The play is no less a proving ground for the critic and scholar, as successive generations have refashioned Hamlet in their own image, while finding in it new resonances and entry points to plumb its depths, perplexities, and possibilities. No other play has been analyzed so extensively, nor has any play had a comparable impact on our culture. The brooding young man in black, skull in hand, has moved out of the theater and into our collective consciousness and cultural myths, joining only a handful of comparable literary archetypes—Oedipus, Faust, and Don Quixote—who embody core aspects of human nature and experience. “It is we ,” the romantic critic William Hazlitt observed, “who are Hamlet.”

Hamlet also commands a crucial, central place in William Shakespeare’s dramatic career. First performed around 1600, the play stands near the midpoint of the playwright’s two-decade career as a culmination and new departure. As the first of his great tragedies, Hamlet signals a decisive shift from the comedies and history plays that launched Shakespeare’s career to the tragedies of his maturity. Although unquestionably linked both to the plays that came before and followed, Hamlet is also markedly exceptional. At nearly 4,000 lines, almost twice the length of Macbeth , Hamlet is Shakespeare’s longest and, arguably, his most ambitious play with an enormous range of characters—from royals to gravediggers—and incidents, including court, bedroom, and graveyard scenes and a play within a play. Hamlet also bristles with a seemingly inexhaustible array of ideas and themes, as well as a radically new strategy for presenting them, most notably, in transforming soliloquies from expositional and motivational asides to the audience into the verbalization of consciousness itself. As Shakespearean scholar Stephen Greenblatt has asserted, “In its moral complexity, psychological depth, and philosophical power, Hamlet seems to mark an epochal shift not only in Shakespeare’s own career but in Western drama; it is as if the play were giving birth to a whole new kind of literary subjectivity.” Hamlet, more than any other play that preceded it, turns its action inward to dramatize an isolated, conflicted psyche struggling to cope with a world that has lost all certainty and consolation. Struggling to reconcile two contradictory identities—the heroic man of action and duty and the Christian man of conscience—Prince Hamlet becomes the modern archetype of the self-divided, alienated individual, desperately searching for self-understanding and meaning. Hamlet must contend with crushing doubt without the support of traditional beliefs that dictate and justify his actions. In describing the arrival of the fragmentation and chaos of the modern world, Victorian poet and critic Matthew Arnold declared that “the calm, cheerfulness, the disinterested objectivity have disappeared, the dialogue of the mind with itself has commenced.” Hamlet anticipates that dialogue by more than two centuries.

Like all of Shakespeare’s plays, Hamlet makes strikingly original uses of borrowed material. The Scandinavian folk tale of Amleth, a prince called upon to avenge his father’s murder by his uncle, was first given literary form by the Danish writer Saxo the Grammarian in his late 12th century Danish History and later adapted in French in François de Belleforest’s Histoires tragiques (1570). This early version of the Hamlet story provided Shakespeare with the basic characters and relationships but without the ghost or the revenger’s uncertainty. In the story of Amleth there is neither doubt about the usurper’s guilt nor any moral qualms in the fulfillment of the avenger’s mission. In preChristian Denmark blood vengeance was a sanctioned filial obligation, not a potentially damnable moral or religious violation, and Amleth successfully accomplishes his duty by setting fire to the royal hall, killing his uncle, and proclaiming himself king of Denmark. Shakespeare’s more immediate source may have been a nowlost English play (c. 1589) that scholars call the Ur – Hamlet. All that has survived concerning this play are a printed reference to a ghost who cried “Hamlet, revenge!” and criticism of the play’s stale bombast. Scholars have attributed the Ur-Hamle t to playwright Thomas Kyd, whose greatest success was The Spanish Tragedy (1592), one of the earliest extant English tragedies. The Spanish Tragedy popularized the genre of the revenge tragedy, derived from Aeschylus’s Oresteia and the Latin plays of Seneca, to which Hamlet belongs. Kyd’s play also features elements that Shakespeare echoes in Hamlet, including a secret crime, an impatient ghost demanding revenge, a protagonist tormented by uncertainty who feigns madness, a woman who actually goes mad, a play within a play, and a final bloodbath that includes the death of the avenger himself. An even more immediate possible source for Hamlet is John Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge (1599), another story of vengeance on a usurper by a sensitive protagonist.

Whether comparing Hamlet to its earliest source or the handling of the revenge plot by Kyd, Marston, or other Elizabethan or Jacobean playwrights, what stands out is the originality and complexity of Shakespeare’s treatment, in his making radically new and profound uses of established stage conventions. Hamlet converts its sensational material—a vengeful ghost, a murder mystery, madness, a heartbroken maiden, a fistfight at her burial, and a climactic duel that results in four deaths—into a daring exploration of mortality, morality, perception, and core existential truths. Shakespeare put mystery, intrigue, and sensation to the service of a complex, profound epistemological drama. The critic Maynard Mack in an influential essay, “The World of Hamlet ,” has usefully identified the play’s “interrogative mode.” From the play’s opening words—“Who’s there?”—to “What is this quintessence of dust?” through drama’s most famous soliloquy—“To be, or not to be, that is the question.”— Hamlet “reverberates with questions, anguished, meditative, alarmed.” The problematic nature of reality and the gap between truth and appearance stand behind the play’s conflicts, complicating Hamlet’s search for answers and his fulfillment of his role as avenger.

Hamlet opens with startling evidence that “something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” The ghost of Hamlet’s father, King Hamlet, has been seen in Elsinore, now ruled by his brother, Claudius, who has quickly married his widowed queen, Gertrude. When first seen, Hamlet is aloof and skeptical of Claudius’s justifications for his actions on behalf of restoring order in the state. Hamlet is morbidly and suicidally disillusioned by the realization of mortality and the baseness of human nature prompted by the sudden death of his father and his mother’s hasty, and in Hamlet’s view, incestuous remarriage to her brother-in-law:

O that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew! Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d His canon ’gainst self-slaughter! O God! God! How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world! Fie on’t! ah, fie! ’Tis an unweeded garden That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely. That it should come to this!

A recent student at the University of Wittenberg, whose alumni included Martin Luther and the fictional Doctor Faustus, Hamlet is an intellectual of the Protestant Reformation, who, like Luther and Faustus, tests orthodoxy while struggling to formulate a core philosophy. Brought to encounter the apparent ghost of his father, Hamlet alone hears the ghost’s words that he was murdered by Claudius and is compelled out of his suicidal despair by his pledge of revenge. However, despite the riveting presence of the ghost, Hamlet is tormented by doubts. Is the ghost truly his father’s spirit or a devilish apparition tempting Hamlet to his damnation? Is Claudius truly his father’s murderer? By taking revenge does Hamlet do right or wrong? Despite swearing vengeance, Hamlet delays for two months before taking any action, feigning madness better to learn for himself the truth about Claudius’s guilt. Hamlet’s strange behavior causes Claudius’s counter-investigation to assess Hamlet’s mental state. School friends—Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—are summoned to learn what they can; Polonius, convinced that Hamlet’s is a madness of love for his daughter Ophelia, stages an encounter between the lovers that can be observed by Claudius. The court world at Elsinore, is, therefore, ruled by trickery, deception, role playing, and disguise, and the so-called problem of Hamlet, of his delay in acting, is directly related to his uncertainty in knowing the truth. Moreover, the suspicion of his father’s murder and his mother’s sexual betrayal shatter Hamlet’s conception of the world and his responsibility in it. Pushed back to the suicidal despair of the play’s opening, Hamlet is paralyzed by indecision and ambiguity in which even death is problematic, as he explains in the famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy in the third act:

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, Th’ oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, The pangs of despis’d love, the law’s delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of th’ unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? Who would these fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death— The undiscover’d country, from whose bourn No traveller returns—puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry And lose the name of action.

The arrival of a traveling theatrical group provides Hamlet with the empirical means to resolve his doubts about the authenticity of the ghost and Claudius’s guilt. By having the troupe perform the Mousetrap play that duplicates Claudius’s crime, Hamlet hopes “to catch the conscience of the King” by observing Claudius’s reaction. The king’s breakdown during the performance seems to confirm the ghost’s accusation, but again Hamlet delays taking action when he accidentally comes upon the guilt-ridden Claudius alone at his prayers. Rationalizing that killing the apparently penitent Claudius will send him to heaven and not to hell, Hamlet decides to await an opportunity “That has no relish of salvation in’t.” He goes instead to his mother’s room where Polonius is hidden in another attempt to learn Hamlet’s mind and intentions. This scene between mother and son, one of the most powerful and intense in all of Shakespeare, has supported the Freudian interpretation of Hamlet’s dilemma in which he is stricken not by moral qualms but by Oedipal guilt. Gertrude’s cries of protest over her son’s accusations cause Polonius to stir, and Hamlet finally, instinctively strikes the figure he assumes is Claudius. In killing the wrong man Hamlet sets in motion the play’s catastrophes, including the madness and suicide of Ophelia, overwhelmed by the realization that her lover has killed her father, and the fatal encounter with Laertes who is now similarly driven to avenge a murdered father. Convinced of her son’s madness, Gertrude informs Claudius of Polonius’s murder, prompting Claudius to alter his order for Hamlet’s exile to England to his execution there.

Hamlet’s mental shift from reluctant to willing avenger takes place offstage during his voyage to England in which he accidentally discovers the execution order and then after a pirate attack on his ship makes his way back to Denmark. He returns to confront the inescapable human condition of mortality in the graveyard scene of act 5 in which he realizes that even Alexander the Great must return to earth that might be used to “stop a beer-barrel” and Julius Caesar’s clay to “stop a hole to keep the wind away.” This sobering realization that levels all earthly distinctions of nobility and acclaim is compounded by the shock of Ophelia’s funeral procession. Hamlet sustains his balance and purpose by confessing to Horatio his acceptance of a providential will revealed to him in the series of accidents on his voyage to England: “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, / Roughhew them how we will.” Finally accepting his inability to control his life, Hamlet resigns himself to accept whatever comes. Agreeing to a duel with Laertes that Claudius has devised to eliminate his nephew, Hamlet asserts that “There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all.”

In the carnage of the play’s final scene, Hamlet ironically manages to achieve his revenge while still preserving his nobility and moral stature. It is the murderer Claudius who is directly or indirectly responsible for all the deaths. Armed with a poisonedtip sword, Laertes strikes Hamlet who in turn manages to slay Laertes with the lethal weapon. Meanwhile, Gertrude drinks from the poisoned cup Claudius intended to insure Hamlet’s death, and, after the remorseful Laertes blames Claudius for the plot, Hamlet, hesitating no longer, fatally stabs the king. Dying in the arms of Horatio, Hamlet orders his friend to “report me and my cause aright / To the unsatisfied” and transfers the reign of Denmark to the last royal left standing, the Norwegian prince Fortinbras. King Hamlet’s death has been avenged but at a cost of eight lives: Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencranz, Guildenstern, Laertes, Gertrude, Claudius, and Prince Hamlet. Order is reestablished but only by Denmark’s sworn enemy. Shakespeare’s point seems unmistakable: Honor and duty that command revenge consume the guilty and the innocent alike. Heroism must face the reality of the graveyard.

Fortinbras closes the play by ordering that Hamlet be carried off “like a soldier” to be given a military funeral underscoring the point that Hamlet has fallen as a warrior on a battlefield of both the duplicitous court at Elsinore and his own mind. The greatness of Hamlet rests in the extraordinary perplexities Shakespeare has discovered both in his title character and in the events of the play. Few other dramas have posed so many or such knotty problems of human existence. Is there a special providence in the fall of a sparrow? What is this quintessence of dust? To be or not to be?

Hamlet Oxford Lecture by Emma Smith

Analysis of William Shakespeare’s Plays

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How Enid Blyton Created the Template for Children’s Theatre in Britain

Written by Andrew Maunder | 8th Jan 2022 | Essay , Theatre for Young Audiences , United Kingdom

Enid Blyton with two children who starred in the stage production of "Noddy in Toyland." Reuters/Alamy.

Head to London’s West End and you are likely to find all sorts of plays for families, inspired by some of the most loved children stories. There is JK Rowling’s  Harry Potter And The Cursed Child , Neal Foster’s adaptation of David Walliams’  Gangsta Granny  and Tim Minchin’s “anarchically joyous, gleefully nasty and ingenious musical adaptation” of Roald Dahl’s Matilda, as theatre critic Lyn Gardner described it.

The popularity of theatre for children and for adapting children’s books for the stage begins in Britain with the works of best-selling children’s writer Enid Blyton (1897-1968) in the 1950s. By this time Blyton had, as  The New York Times reported , made herself “supreme above all authors” and was “a category all herself”. This was thanks to her long-running magazine  Sunny Stories , adventure series such as The Famous Five and The Secret Seven, and stories set in the boarding schools Malory Towers and St Clare’s. It was not unusual for bookshops to have a designated Enid Blyton section due to her regularly publishing 30 or more books a year – 39 in 1951 and 44 in 1952.

It made sense, then, to adapt her stories for the stage and she sometimes had two shows running in London during the Christmas season: Noddy in Toyland (1954-59) and the thriller Famous Five Adventure (1955; 1956). The importance of Blyton’s literary achievements remains a  contentious issue  but in the 1950s she mostly seemed untouchable and conquered the West End as seamlessly as she had done the world of children’s publishing.

This was especially so with Noddy in Toyland (described as a “pantomime”), which opened on December 23, 1954. Along with the power of Blyton’s name, Noddy’s catchy tunes, dazzling special effects (including a “real” train puffing steam on stage) and the ease with which Blyton’s characters could be shoe-horned into a familiar pantomime plot (the usually timid Noddy travels to the Enchanted Wood to capture some wicked goblins) helped make it a West End fixture.

Noddy on Stage

Noddy, a little wooden nodding boy who lives in Toyland, first appeared in the stories Noddy Goes to Toyland (1949) and Hurrah for Little Noddy (1950) and came to be Blyton’s most famous character. There were 24 tales in the “Noddy Library” series, ending with Noddy and the Aeroplane (1963).

Noddy, the story of a wooden boy living in Toyland, was a huge success for Blyton. Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy

The Noddy books’ success was due in part to the colorful illustrations by Dutch artist Eelco Martinus ten Harmsen . Designed for pre-school children, the books’ characters were partly intended to compete with those of Disney and were an enormous hit in Britain. By 1962, 26 million copies of the books had been sold.

In 1954, When the wooden boy made his stage debut it was, unsurprisingly, a hit.

Children at performances reacted noisily and excitedly. They leaned dangerously over the balconies to get a better look and tried to grab the sweets thrown to them from the stage. It was often pandemonium but to Blyton, this did not matter: “the children took over the play at times and even held up the action”,  she reported  proudly.

Noddy came at a time in the history of pantomime and theatre for children as it coincided with celebrity casting taking off, much to the annoyance of traditionalists. “If this is the way pantomime is going’,  remarked one reviewer  faced with the crooner Frankie Vaughan, “it will speedily become a yearly parade of television performers going through their usual paces … [and] there will be little point in taking the children along”.

Blyton was widely credited with returning pantomime to children. Her plays had no “stars” but sold out nonetheless.

The familiarity of the characters was part of the appeal of Noddy and later the Famous Five Adventure – in much the same way that Harry Potter and Matilda draw audiences in 2021.

Critical plaudits

Programme for Noddy in Toyland at the Stoll Theatre in London. Wikimedia, CC BY-SA

In 1954, people worried about declining theatre attendances (partly because of the  threat posed by television ) held up Noddy in Toyland as proof that the way to make children develop a long-lasting interest in theatre, and thus ensure its survival, “is to offer them real plays of their own” (The Stage, December 31, 1954). Even writer Kenneth Tynan – a fearsome enemy of things twee and formulaic – used his Observer column to compare the “pleasing” production favorably against the star-studded pantomimes elsewhere, full of “radio comedians…condemned to fidget uneasily in doublet and hose” (26 December 1954). As Tynan noted, Noddy in Toyland kept things simple.

Simplicity was, of course, part of the charm of Blyton’s work. The show was easier to follow than other pantomimes. Fairies, goblins, talking animals, humans and toys came together in a world that made sense to its young audience. But as reviewers noted, there was a myth-like quality to it all. The show promised an exciting but easily understandable way of living beyond the every day, which even to young children who (one might suppose) had not lived long enough to become jaded, was beguiling.

Blyton’s plays have been forgotten but 70 years on this is still part of the appeal of such shows. In Blyton’s case, it is another instance of her legacy – a legacy that sits awkwardly in the history of popular entertainment.

This article was originally published by The Conversation on December 14, 2021, and has been reposted with permission. To read the original article, click here .

This post was written by the author in their personal capacity.The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect the view of The Theatre Times, their staff or collaborators.

This post was written by Andrew Maunder .

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Drama Appreciation

• Hornbrook, David. 2002. On The Subject Of Drama . London: Routledge
• Norton, Glyn. P. 2008. The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism Volume III The Renaissance . New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Richards, I.A. 2004. Principles of Literary Principles . New York: Routldge
• Barnet, Sylvan, M. Berman, W. Burto. And M. Stubbs. 1996. Literature for Composition: Essay, Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. New York: harper Collins.
• Perrine, Lawrence.1974. Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
• Bloom, Harold. 2007. The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams . Bloom’s Literary Criticism: New York
• Wilde, Oscar Wilde. An Ideal Husband . Icon Group international, Inc:San Diego