Role of Western Drama

Western drama is the too long subject. here it's give a short note about it.  Western drama originates in classical Greece.The theatrical culture of thecity-state of Athens produced threegenres of drama: tragedy, comedy, and the satyr play. Their origins remain obscure, though by the 5th century BCE they were institutionalised incompetitions held as part of festivitiescelebrating the god Dionysus.Historians know the names of many ancient Greek dramatists, not leastThespis, who is credited with the innovation of an actor ("hypokrites") who speaks (rather than sings) and impersonates a character (rather than speaking in his own person), while interacting with the chorus and its leader ("coryphaeus"), who were a traditional part of the performance of non-dramatic poetry (dithyrambic, lyricand epic).

Only a small fraction of the work of five dramatists, however, has survived to this day: we have a small number of complete texts by the tragediansAeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, and the comic writers Aristophanes and, from the late 4th century, Menander.Aeschylus' historical tragedy The Persians is the oldest surviving drama, although when it won first prize at theCity Dionysia competition in 472 BCE, he had been writing plays for more than 25 years.The competition ("agon") for tragedies may have begun as early as 534 BCE; official records ("didaskaliai") begin from 501 BCE, when the satyr play was introduced. Tragic dramatists were required to present atetralogy of plays (though the individual works were not necessarily connected by story or theme), which usually consisted of three tragedies and one satyr play (though exceptions were made, as with Euripides' Alcestis in 438 BCE). Comedy was officially recognized with a prize in the competition from 487 to 486 BCE.

Five comic dramatists competed at the City Dionysia (though during thePeloponnesian War this may have been reduced to three), each offering a single comedy. Ancient Greek comedy is traditionally divided between "old comedy" (5th century BCE), "middle comedy" (4th century BCE) and "new comedy" (late 4th century to 2nd BCE).