Post-Shakespearean Dramatists and declining of drama...

1 Post-Shakespearean Dramatists Introduction - Post Shakespearean drama/Jacobean drama (that is, the drama of the age of James 11603-1625) was a decadent form of the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. The Elizabethan age was the golden age of English drama.With the turn of the century the drama in England also took a turn. It does not mean that there were no dramatists left. There certainly was a large number of them, but none of them could come anywhere near Shakespeare.Just as after Chaucer, poetry in England suffered a decline, similarly after Shakespeare had given his best (that is, after the sixteenth century) drama also suffered a decline. With the passage of time it grew more and more decadent, till with Shirley in the†¦show more content†¦The blank verse of Beaumont and Fletcher is similarly inclined to a free use of weak and feminine endings. The â€Å"mighty line† of Marlowe and terse verse of Shakespeare in the prime are lost. As the fifteenth century followers of Chaucer failed to retain the charm of their master’s versification, so the later dramatists were quite unable to recapture the vital quality of dramatic blank verse. 7) Poor Characterisation – The post-Shakespearean dramatists had little skill in creating characters. They could not create new characters. They had certain stock-characters which they represented again and again in their plays. The whore, the lustful king, the adventurous panderer, were their wooden characters and they repeated them with mechanical regularity in their plays. 8) Other Channels of Expression – Dramatic literature suffered a setback due to the growing popularity of poetry and novels as medium of expressing literary thoughts. These two forms of literature proved more fascinating to authors, and instead of diverting their energy to drama which was on its way to decline, they directed their thoughts and ideas to the field of poetry and fiction. 9) Opposition by the Puritans – The Puritan opposition to drama is also responsible for the decline of drama during this age. Since theShow MoreRelatedElizabethan Era11072 Words   |  45 PagesThe Elizabethan Age is the time period associated with the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603) and is often considered to be a golden age in English history. It was an age considered to be the height of the English Renaissance, and saw the full flowering of English literature and English poetry. In Elizabethan theater, William Shakespeare, among others, composed and staged plays in a variety of settings that broke away from Englands past style of plays. It was an age of expansion and explorationRead More Politics, Power, and Purpose in Shakespeares Measure for Measure6619 Words   |  27 Pagesit is, also by its very nature, a social art form, occurring in public, before spectators. Because theatre is temporal and social, the human behavior occurring in the theatre event--th e behavior represented by the fictional story being told by the drama--is inescapably seen through the prism of the larger, more public society which is watching it. Even the most private and intimate scene is, in the medium of theatre, presented in public; the most private thought or emotion is displayed before a public