Modern drama and Ibsen
Modern drama began in the late 19th century. Before it, many plays were about kings, heroes or surprising luck. Modern dramatists wanted plays about people we could meet. Henrik Ibsen, a Norwegian writer, is called the father of modern drama. His play A Doll's House (1879) is set in an ordinary family living room. A wife called Nora has lived as her husband's 'doll', and at the end she decides to leave to find out who she is. The slam of the door shocked audiences of that time.
Features of modern drama:
- real setting, such as a living room
- everyday speech instead of grand speeches
- problems from real life: money, marriage, honesty
- a turning point that changes everything
- an ending that makes the audience think instead of tying everything up neatly
Romantic poetry: Goethe and Pushkin
Romanticism was an artistic movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Romantic poets valued strong feeling, nature, freedom and imagination over strict rules. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a German writer, wrote lyric poems in which the inner mood and the outer nature match: a storm outside is a storm inside. Alexander Pushkin, a Russian poet, is loved for clear, musical verse. He often used regular rhythm and rhyme, and his long poem Eugene Onegin is written in a fixed stanza pattern he invented.
Rhythm is the pattern of strong and weak beats in a line. Rhyme is the matching of end sounds. In the 3D, the regular rows show equal beats; the wave shows feeling that flows like nature.
Modern poetry and free verse: Whitman
Walt Whitman, an American poet, published Leaves of Grass (first printed in 1855) and made free verse famous. Free verse has no fixed rhyme and no fixed beat. The lines can be long or short, and the rhythm comes from repeated words and the natural rise and fall of speech. Whitman wrote about ordinary people, work and the democratic spirit, and he often used a big 'I' that stands for everyone.
Free verse is not 'random'. The poet decides where each line ends, and that choice creates rhythm and emphasis.
How to read a poem or a scene
For a poem: (1) read it aloud, (2) find the form (regular rhythm or free verse), (3) list images (pictures made with words), (4) find the feeling, (5) say what changes from the first line to the last.
For a play scene: (1) where are we? (2) who wants what? (3) what is the turning point? (4) what is said, and what is only shown, like a door or a silence?
Try it: beat your own poem
Do this in 10 minutes. Write four lines about rain. First write them with an equal beat (count 8 syllables per line and try to rhyme the ends). Clap the beat. Then write the same idea as free verse: lines of different lengths, no rhyme, like talking to a friend. Compare with the beads in the 3D. Which version felt more musical? Which felt more honest? There is no wrong answer.
Key formulas and definitions
- Modern drama = real setting + everyday speech + turning point
- Romantic poetry = feeling + nature + freedom (Goethe, Pushkin)
- Regular verse = fixed rhythm (and often rhyme)
- Free verse = no fixed beat or rhyme (Whitman)
- Image = a picture made with words
Worked examples
1. A play opens in a family kitchen. Two people argue about money. Which type of drama is this likely to be?
Modern realistic drama: a real setting and a real, everyday problem, as in Ibsen.
2. In a play, a character picks up her coat and walks out, and the door closes. No words are spoken. What does this show?
A turning point and a decision, shown by action instead of words. This is typical of modern drama, like the door in Ibsen's play.
3. Four lines each have 8 syllables and the ends rhyme. Is this regular verse or free verse?
Regular verse. Fixed beat and rhyme.
4. A poem has lines of 14, 5, 9 and 3 words, no rhyme, and repeats the word 'I'. What form is it?
Free verse, like Whitman's style.
5. 'The wind shook the trees and my heart shook too.' Which poetic idea is used?
The outer nature matches the inner feeling, a Romantic idea, as in Goethe's lyric poems.
Common mistakes
- Thinking free verse has no rhythm. It has rhythm from repeated words, line breaks and speech.
- Thinking poems must always rhyme. Many great poems, such as Whitman's, do not.
- Mixing 'Romantic' with love stories. Here Romanticism means feeling, nature and freedom.
- Judging Ibsen's characters by today's life only. Ask what was shocking in his time.