Word Finder - dramatist

definition

A writer and creator of theatrical plays.

His career as a dramatist very probably began by collaboration with other authors.

But with Der Ring des Nibelungen Wagner devoted himself to a story which any ordinary dramatist would find as unwieldy as, for instance, most of Shakespeare's subjects; a story in which ordinary canons of taste and probability were violated as they are in real life and in great art.

Here Henrik Ibsen, the dramatist, was born in 1828.

The complicated plot is constructed with greater skill than is usual with this dramatist, and the pathos of particular situations, and of the entire character of Penthea - a woman doomed to hopeless misery, but capable of seeking to obtain for her brother a happiness which his cruelty has condemned her to forego - has an intensity and a depth which are all Ford's own.

Again, the appeal to " God's judgment " in the trial by battle in Lohengrin is a subject of which no earlier librettist could have made more than a plausible mess - which is the best that can be said for the music as music. But as dramatist Wagner compels our respect for the power that without gloss or apology brings before us the king, a model of royal fair-mindedness and good-nature, acquiescing in Telramund's monstrous claim to accuse Elsa without evidence, simply because it is a hard and self-evident fact that the persons of the drama live in an age in which such claims seemed reasonable.

Detmold possesses a natural history museum theatre, high school, library, the house in which the poet Ferdinand Freiligrath (1810-1876) was born, and that in which the dramatist Christian Dietrich Grabbe (1801-1836), also a native, died.

Early in 1850 Ayala removed his name from the university books, and settled in Madrid with the purpose of becoming a professional dramatist.

Even when we treat him merely as a dramatist our enjoyment of his later works gains enormously if we take them as organic wholes, and not as mere plots dressed up in verse and action.

It may have been during his exile, when withdrawn from his active career as a dramatist, that he composed or completed his poem on the first Punic war.

He was not only the oldest native dramatist, but the first author of an epic poem (Bellum Punicum) - which, by combining the representation of actual contemporary history with a mythical background, may be said to have created the Roman type of epic poetry.

As a dramatist he worked more in the spirit of Plautus than of Ennius, Pacuvius, Accius or Terence; but the great Umbrian humorist is separated from his older contemporary, not only by his breadth of comic power, but by his general attitude of moral and political indifference.

In this respect it reached its height in the second half of the 18th century, and is specially associated with Colley Cibber, Samuel Johnson, Cumberland the dramatist, David Garrick, Samuel Richardson, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Beau Nash, Miss Chudleigh and Mrs Thrale.

Foremost among epic poets, though not equally successful as a dramatist, was Mihaly Vorbsmarty (q.v.), who, belonging also to the close of the last period, combines great power of imagination with elegance of language.

It appears to be traceable in its Greek dress in writings of the philosopher Democritus and the dramatist Menander; it was certainly known to the author of Tobit and perhaps to the author of Daniel; some would trace its influence in the New Testament, in the parable of the wicked servant and elsewhere; it was known to Mahomet and is referred to in the Koran; it has been included among the tales in the Arabian Nights; and it survives in a good many versions ancient and modern.

Madame de Maintenon was the widow of the dramatist Scarron, and first came into relationship with the king as governess to his illegitimate children.

He was also a dramatist, and apart from his prominence as a Jewish Nationalist would have found a niche in the temple of fame.

His writings are defective in virility and breadth of thought, and his tragedies display neither the insight into character nor the constructive power of a great dramatist.

He is not a dramatist - his work as such is insignificant - nor a novelist, for, though his two chief works except the Confessions are called novels, Emile is one only in name, and La Nouvelle Helotise is as a story diffuse, prosy and awkward to a degree.

The dramatist must have heard of Timur in other quarters, equally reliable it may be with those available in the present stage of Oriental research.

Weisse (1726-1804) the dramatist, and Christlob Mylius (1722-1754), who had made some name for himself as a journalist.

Hitherto Lessing had, as a dramatist, followed the methods of contemporary French comedy as cultivated in Leipzig; Miss Sara Sampson, however, marks the beginning of a new period in the history of the German drama.

The Hamburgische Dramaturgic (1767-1768), Lessing's commentary on the performances of the National Theatre, is the first modern handbook of the dramatist's art.

Johnson's wide grasp of the discourse and knowledge of human nature enable him in a hundred entangled passages to go straight to the dramatist's meaning.

The murder of the dramatist Kotzebue, as an agent of this reaction, in the following year, by a fanatical student named Karl Sand, clinched the matter; it became obvious to the governments that a policy of rigorous repression was necessary if a fresh revolution were to be avoided.

At Clermont Conti had been a fellow student of Moliere's for whom he secured an introduction to the court of Louis XIV., but afterwards, when writing a treatise against the stage entitled Traite de la comedic et des spectacles scion les traditions de l'Eglise (Paris, 1667), he charged the dramatist with keeping a school of atheism.

As a dramatist, pure and simple, his bird-like instinct of song carried him too often into a sphere too exalted for the stage; but he has written nothing that is not stamped with the exquisite quality of distinction.

Though alarmed by the revolutionary agitation in Germany, which culminated in the murder of his agent, the dramatist Kotzebue, Alexander approved of Castlereagh's protest against Metternich's policy of " the governments contracting an alliance against the peoples," as formulated in the Carlsbad decrees, 1819, and deprecated any intervention of Europe to support " a league of which the sole object is the absurd pretensions of absolute power."

The strict military discipline of the school lay heavily on Schiller, and intensified the spirit of rebellion, which, nurtured on Rousseau and the writers of the Sturm and Drang, burst out in the young poet's first tragedy; but such a school-life had for a poet of Schiller's temperament advantages which he might not have known had he followed his own inclinations; and it afforded him glimpses of court life invaluable for his later work as a dramatist.

As a ballad poet, Schiller's popularity has been hardly less great than as a dramatist; the bold and simple outline, the terse dramatic characterization appealed directly to the popular mind, which did not let itself be disturbed by the often artificial and rhetorical tone into which the poet falls.

On the other hand, even the friendship with Schiller did not help him to add to his reputation as a dramatist.

Goethe's dramas, on the other hand, have not, in the eyes of his nation, succeeded in holding their own beside Schiller's; but the reason is rather because Goethe, from what might be called a wilful obstinacy, refused to be bound by the conventions of the theatre, than because he was deficient in the cunning of the dramatist.

A greater dramatist was Johannes Messenius (1579-1636), who was the son of a miller near Vadstena and had been carefully educated abroad by the Jesuits.

The Gothic Society eventually included certain younger men than these - Arvid August Afzelius (1785-1871), the first editor of the Swedish folk-songs; Gustaf Vilhelm Gumaelius (1789-1877), who has been somewhat pretentiously styled " The Swedish Walter Scott," author of the historical novel of Tord Bonde; Baron Bernhard von Beskow (q.v.; 1796-1868), lyrist and dramatist; and Karl August Nicander (1799-1839), a lyric poet who approached the Phosphorists in manner.

The other leading verse-writers were Karl Vilhelm Bottiger (1807-1878), the son-in-law and biographer of Tegner, who, in addition to his lyrical poetry, chiefly of the sentimental kind, wrote an admirable series of monographs on Swedish men of letters; Johan Borjesson (1790-1866), the last of the Phosphorists, author of various romantic dramas; Vilhelm August Detlof von Braun (1813-1860), a humorous lyrist; " Talis Qualis," whose real name was Karl Vilhelm August Strandberg (1818-1877); Oscar Patrick Sturzen-Becker (181'- 1869), better known as " Orvar Odd," a lyrical poet who was also the author of a series of amusing sketches of everyday life; and August Teodor Blanche (1811-1868), the popular dramatist.

Fredrik August Dahlgren (1816-1895) gained a great reputation as a dramatist by his national opera, Vermleindingarne (1846).

The art was sustained by Karl Anton Wetterbergh (1804-1889), who called himself " Onkel Adam," by August Blanche the dramatist, and by Marie Sofie Schwartz (1819-1892).

On the other hand Portugal gave birth to no considerable dramatist from the time of Gil Vicente, in the 16th century, until that of Garrett in the 19th, and it has failed to develop a national drama.

Antonio Ferreira, the chief dramatist of the classical school, knew both Greek and Latin as well as Miranda, but far surpassed him in style.

The historian Barros tried his youthful pen in a romance of chivalry, the Chronica do Imperador Clarimundo, while in another branch, and a popular one in Portugal, the Arthurian cycle, the dramatist Ferreira de Vasconcellos wrote Sagramor or Memorial das proesas da segunda Tavola Redonda.

Joao de Camara, the leading dramatist of the day, one of whose pieces, Os Velhos, has been translated and staged abroad.

Vrchlicky is also a very brilliant dramatist.

Clifford soon earned for herself a prominent place in English literary life as a novelist, and later as a dramatist.

Between 1867 and 1874 he acted as minister of education and of finance; upon the restoration of the Bourbon dynasty he withdrew from politics, and won a new reputation as a dramatist.

Not merely in Spain, but in every land where Spanish is spoken, and in cities as remote from Madrid as Munich and Stockholm, he has met with an appreciation incomparably beyond that accorded to any other Spanish dramatist of recent years.

On the other hand, it was during the early and middle part of his career impossible, and during the later part very difficult, for a dramatist to live decently by his pieces.

But these are all the defects which can be fairly urged against him; and in a dramatist bound to a less strict service they would hardly have been even remarked.

The tragedy of Lucrece Borgia, coequal in beauty and power with its three precursors, followed next year in the humbler garb of prose; but the prose of Victor Hugo stands higher on the record of poetry than the verse of any lesser dramatist or poet.

Among these may be mentioned Count Medo Pucic (1821-1882), and the dramatist Matija Ban (1818-1903), whose tragedy Meyrimah is considered by many the finest dramatic poem in the Serbo-Croatian language.

Regnard, the French dramatist, found in Lapland (1681) that witches could turn men into cats, and could themselves assume the forms of swans, crows, falcons and geese.

The first reference to the boots came in a play written by the English dramatist William Moncrieff, in 1817.