Definition of the word playwright

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes plays.

Etymology[edit]

The word «play» is from Middle English pleye, from Old English plæġ, pleġa, plæġa («play, exercise; sport, game; drama, applause»). The word «wright» is an archaic English term for a craftsperson or builder (as in a wheelwright or cartwright). The words combine to indicate a person who has «wrought» words, themes, and other elements into a dramatic form—a play. (The homophone with «write» is coincidental.)

The first recorded use of the term «playwright» is from 1605,^[1] 73 years before the first written record of the term «dramatist».^[2] It appears to have been first used in a pejorative sense by Ben Jonson^[3] to suggest a mere tradesman fashioning works for the theatre.

Jonson uses the word in his Epigram 49, which is thought^{[by whom?]} to refer to John Marston:

Epigram XLIX — On Playwright

PLAYWRIGHT me reads, and still my verses damns,

He says I want the tongue of epigrams ;

I have no salt, no bawdry he doth mean ;

For witty, in his language, is obscene.

Playwright, I loath to have thy manners known

In my chaste book ; I profess them in thine own.

Jonson described himself as a poet, not a playwright, since plays during that time were written in meter and so were regarded as the province of poets. This view was held as late as the early 19th century. The term «playwright» later again lost this negative connotation.

History[edit]

Early playwrights[edit]

The earliest playwrights in Western literature with surviving works are the Ancient Greeks. These early plays were for annual Athenian competitions among play writers^[4] held around the 5th century BC. Such notables as Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes established forms still relied on by their modern counterparts. For the ancient Greeks, playwriting involved poïesis, «the act of making». This is the source of the English word poet.

Aristotle’s Poetics techniques[edit]

In the 4th century BCE, Aristotle wrote his Poetics, in which he analyzed the principle of action or praxis as the basis for tragedy. He then considered elements of drama: plot (μύθος mythos), character (ἔθος ethos), thought (dianoia), diction (lexis), music (melodia), and spectacle (opsis). Since the myths on which Greek tragedy were based were widely known, plot had to do with the arrangement and selection of existing material. Character was determined by choice and by action. Tragedy is mimesis—»the imitation of an action that is serious». He developed his notion of hamartia, or tragic flaw, an error in judgment by the main character or protagonist, which provides the basis for the «conflict-driven» play.

Neo-classical theory[edit]

The Italian Renaissance brought about a stricter interpretation of Aristotle, as this long-lost work came to light in the late 15th century. The neoclassical ideal, which was to reach its apogee in France during the 17th century, dwelled upon the unities, of action, place, and time. This meant that the playwright had to construct the play so that its «virtual» time would not exceed 24 hours, that it would be restricted to a single setting, and that there would be no subplots. Other terms, such as verisimilitude and decorum, circumscribed the subject matter significantly. For example, verisimilitude limits of the unities. Decorum fitted proper protocols for behavior and language on stage.
In France, contained too many events and actions, thus, violating the 24-hour restriction of the unity of time. Neoclassicism never had as much traction in England, and Shakespeare’s plays are directly opposed to these models, while in Italy, improvised and bawdy commedia dell’arte and opera were more popular forms. In England, after the interregnum, and Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, there was a move toward neoclassical dramaturgy.

One structural unit that is still useful to playwrights today is the «French scene», which is a scene in a play where the beginning and end are marked by a change in the makeup of the group of characters onstage rather than by the lights going up or down or the set being changed.^[5]

Well-made play[edit]

Popularized in the nineteenth century by the French playwrights Eugène Scribe and Victorien Sardou, and perhaps the most schematic of all formats, the «well-made play» relies on a series of coincidences (for better or worse) that determined the action. This plot driven format is often reliant on a prop device, such as a glass of water,^[6] or letter that reveals some secret information. In most cases, the character receiving the secret information misinterprets its contents, thus setting off a chain of events. Well-made plays are thus motivated by various plot devices which lead to «discoveries» and «reversals of action,» rather than being character motivated. Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House is an example of a well-made structure (built around the discovery of Krogstad’s letter) that began to integrate a more realistic approach to character. The character Nora’s leaving is as much motivated by «the letter» and disclosure of a «past secret» as it is by her own determination to strike out on her own. The well-made play infiltrated other forms of writing and is still seen in popular formats such as the mystery, or «whodunit.»

Contemporary playwrights in the United States[edit]

Contemporary playwrights in the United States often do not reach the same level of fame or cultural importance as others did in the past.^{[citation needed]} No longer the only outlet for serious drama or entertaining comedies, theatrical productions must use ticket sales as a source of income, which has caused many of them to reduce the number of new works being produced. For example, Playwrights Horizons produced only six plays in the 2002–03 seasons, compared with thirty-one in 1973–74.^[7] As revivals and large-scale production musicals become the de rigueur of Broadway (and even Off-Broadway) productions, playwrights find it difficult to earn a living in the business, let alone achieve major successes.^{[citation needed]}

New play development[edit]

In an effort to develop new American voices in playwriting, a phenomenon known as new play development^{[citation needed]} began to emerge in the early-to-mid-1980s, and continues through today. Many regional theatres have hired dramaturges and literary managers in an effort to showcase various festivals for new work, or bring in playwrights for residencies.^{[citation needed]} Funding through national organizations, such as the National Endowment for the Arts and the Theatre Communications Group, encouraged the partnerships of professional theatre companies and emerging playwrights.^{[citation needed]}

New Dramatists and The Lark theatre in New York City, for example, will often have a «cold» reading of a script in an informal sitdown setting.^{[citation needed]} A cold reading means that the actors haven’t rehearsed the work, or may be seeing it for the first time, and usually, the technical requirements are minimal.^[8] Shenandoah and the O’Neill Festival offer summer retreats for playwrights to develop their work with directors and actors in a totally «devoted» setting.^{[citation needed]}

The 1990s saw the formation of playwriting collectives like 13P and Clubbed Thumb who have gathered members together to produce, rather than develop, new works.^{[citation needed]} This has been a reaction to the «developed to death» notion in which the play never gets produced, but goes through endless readings and critiques that after a certain point in New York go through some kind of assiduous development process, and rare is the play that shows up on a producer’s desk that gains any traction.^{[citation needed]} On Broadway, this has happened with David Mamet’s Race (2009) and Martin McDonagh’s A Behanding in Spokane (2010), although these shows were packaged with stars (Christopher Walken in the latter) and with playwrights who are well established in the profession.^{[citation needed]}

See also[edit]

• List of playwrights
• Play (theatre)
• Screenwriter

References[edit]

External links[edit]

Last Updated:
12 Apr 2023
— Updated example sentences

English[edit]

Etymology[edit]

play +‎ wright (“builder, craftsman”)

Pronunciation[edit]

• IPA^(key): /ˈpleɪˌɹaɪt/
• Rhymes: -eɪɹaɪt

Noun[edit]

playwright (plural playwrights)

1. A writer and creator of theatrical plays.

   Synonyms: dramatist, stagewright

Translations[edit]

See also[edit]

• screenwriter
• scenarist
• screenplay

examples:

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Aeschylus

Greek tragedian; the father of Greek tragic drama (525-456 BC)

Edward Franklin Albeen

United States dramatist (1928-)

Maxwell Anderson

United States dramatist (1888-1959)

Jean Anouilh

French dramatist noted for his reinterpretations of Greek myths (1910-1987)

Aristophanes

an ancient Greek dramatist remembered for his comedies (448-380 BC)

Sir James Matthew Barrie

Scottish dramatist and novelist; created Peter Pan (1860-1937)

Francis Beaumont

English dramatist who collaborated with John Fletcher (1584-1616)

Samuel Beckett

a playwright and novelist (born in Ireland) who lived in France; wrote plays for the theater of the absurd (1906-1989)

Bertolt Brecht

German dramatist and poet who developed a style of epic theater (1898-1956)

Pedro Calderon de la Barca

Spanish poet and dramatist considered one of the great Spanish writers (1600-1681)

Karel Capek

Czech writer who introduced the word `robot’ into the English language (1890-1938)

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Spanish writer best remembered for `Don Quixote’ which satirizes chivalry and influenced the development of the novel form (1547-1616)

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Russian dramatist whose plays are concerned with the difficulty of communication between people (1860-1904)

William Congreve

English playwright remembered for his comedies (1670-1729)

Pierre Corneille

French tragic dramatist whose plays treat grand moral themes in elegant verse (1606-1684)

Sir Noel Pierce Coward

English dramatist and actor and composer noted for his witty and sophisticated comedies (1899-1973)

Russel Crouse

United States playwright (1893-1966)

Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac

a French soldier and dramatist remembered chiefly for fighting many duels (often over the size of his nose); was immortalized in 1897 in a play by Edmond Rostand (1619-1655)

Thomas Decker

English dramatist and pamphleteer (1572-1632)

John Dryden

the outstanding poet and dramatist of the Restoration (1631-1700)

Thomas Stearns Eliot

British poet (born in the United States) who won the Nobel prize for literature; his plays are outstanding examples of modern verse drama (1888-1965)

Euripides

one of the greatest tragic dramatists of ancient Greece (480-406 BC)

John Fletcher

prolific English dramatist who collaborated with Francis Beaumont and many other dramatists (1579-1625)

Christopher Fry

English dramatist noted for his comic verse dramas (born 1907)

Athol Fugard

South African playwright whose plays feature the racial tensions in South Africa during apartheid (born in 1932)

Frederico Garcia Lorca

Spanish poet and dramatist who was shot dead by Franco’s soldiers soon after the start of the Spanish Civil War (1898-1936)

Jean Genet

French writer of novels and dramas for the theater of the absurd (1910-1986)

Andre Paul Guillaume Gide

French author and dramatist who is regarded as the father of modern French literature (1869-1951)

Hippolyte Jean Giraudoux

French novelist and dramatist whose plays were reinterpretations of Greek myths (1882-1944)

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

German poet and novelist and dramatist who lived in Weimar (1749-1832)

Carlo Goldoni

prolific Italian dramatist (1707-1793)

Harley Granville-Barker

English actor and dramatist and critic and director noted for his productions of Shakespearean plays (1877-1946)

Moss Hart

United States playwright who collaborated with George S. Kaufman (1904-1961)

Vaclav Havel

Czech dramatist and statesman whose plays opposed totalitarianism and who served as president of Czechoslovakia from 1989 to 1992 and president of the Czech Republic since 1993 (born in 1936)

Christian Friedrich Hebbel

German dramatist (1813-1863)

Lillian Hellman

United States playwright; her plays were often indictments of injustice (1905-1984)

Victor-Marie Hugo

French poet and novelist and dramatist; leader of the romantic movement in France (1802-1885)

Henrik Johan Ibsen

realistic Norwegian author who wrote plays on social and political themes (1828-1906)

William Inge

United States playwright (1913-1973)

Eugene Ionesco

French dramatist (born in Romania) who was a leading exponent of the theater of the absurd (1912-1994)

Benjamin Jonson

English dramatist and poet who was the first real poet laureate of England (1572-1637)

George Simon Kaufman

United States playwright who collaborated with many other writers including Moss Hart (1889-1961)

Bernd Heinrich Wilhelm von Kleist

German dramatist whose works concern people torn between reason and emotion (1777-1811)

Thomas Kid

English dramatist (1558-1594)

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

German playwright and leader of the Enlightenment (1729-1781)

Howard Lindsay

United States playwright who collaborated with Russel Crouse on several musicals (1889-1931)

Clare Booth Luce

United States playwright and public official (1902-1987)

Count Maurice Maeterlinck

Belgian playwright (1862-1949)

David Mamet

United States playwright (born in 1947)

Christopher Marlowe

English poet and playwright who introduced blank verse as a form of dramatic expression; was stabbed to death in a tavern brawl (1564-1593)

John Marstan

English playwright (1575-1634)

Menander

comic dramatist of ancient Greece (342-292 BC)

Thomas Middleton

English playwright and pamphleteer (1570-1627)

Arthur Miller

United States playwright (1915-2005)

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin

French author of sophisticated comedies (1622-1673)

Ferenc Molnar

Hungarian playwright (1878-1952)

Sean O’Casey

Irish playwright (1880-1964)

Clifford Odets

United States playwright (1906-1963)

Eugene Gladstone O’Neill

United States playwright (1888-1953)

John James Osborne

English playwright (1929-1994)

Harold Pinter

English dramatist whose plays are characterized by silences and the use of inaction (born in 1930)

Luigi Pirandello

Italian novelist and playwright (1867-1936)

George Dibdin Pitt

a British playwright who created the fictional character Sweeney Todd (1799-1855)

Titus Maccius Plautus

comic dramatist of ancient Rome (253?-184 BC)

Jean Baptiste Racine

French advocate of Jansenism; tragedian who based his works on Greek and Roman themes (1639-1699)

Sir Terence Mervyn Rattigan

British playwright (1911-1977)

Elmer Leopold Rice

United States playwright (1892-1967)

Esme Stuart Lennox Robinson

Irish playwright and theater manager in Dublin (1886-1958)

Edmond Rostand

French dramatist and poet whose play immortalized Cyrano de Bergerac (1868-1918)

Jean-Paul Sartre

French writer and existentialist philosopher (1905-1980)

Augustin Eugene Scribe

French playwright (1791-1861)

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Roman statesman and philosopher who was an advisor to Nero; his nine extant tragedies are modeled on Greek tragedies (circa 4 BC — 65 AD)

William Shakespeare

English poet and dramatist considered one of the greatest English writers (1564-1616)

George Bernard Shaw

British playwright (born in Ireland); founder of the Fabian Society (1856-1950)

Sam Shepard

United States author of surrealistic allegorical plays (born in 1943)

Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Irish playwright remembered for his satirical comedies of manners (1751-1816)

Robert Emmet Sherwood

United States playwright (1896-1955)

Marvin Neil Simon

United States playwright noted for light comedies (born in 1927)

Sophocles

one of the great tragedians of ancient Greece (496-406 BC)

Thomas Straussler

British dramatist (born in Czechoslovakia in 1937)

Johan August Strindberg

Swedish dramatist and novelist (1849-1912)

Edmund John Millington Synge

Irish poet and playwright whose plays are based on rural Irish life (1871-1909)

Publius Terentius Afer

dramatist of ancient Rome (born in Greece) whose comedies were based on works by Menander (190?-159 BC)

Tirso de Molina

Spanish dramatist who wrote the first dramatic treatment of the legend of Don Juan (1571-1648)

Peter Alexander Ustinov

British actor and playwright (1921-2004)

Lope Felix de Vega Carpio

prolific Spanish playwright (1562-1635)

John Webster

English playwright (1580-1625)

Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde

Irish writer and wit (1854-1900)

Thornton Niven Wilder

United States writer and dramatist (1897-1975)

Thomas Lanier Williams

United States playwright (1911-1983)

William Wycherley

English playwright noted for his humorous and satirical plays (1640-1716)

William Butler Yeats

Irish poet and dramatist (1865-1939)

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Everybody gets a little dose of Shakespeare. He’s the greatest playwright in the English language, but his politics are fairly square.

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PRONUNCIATION OF PLAYWRIGHT

GRAMMATICAL CATEGORY OF PLAYWRIGHT

Playwright is a noun.

WHAT DOES PLAYWRIGHT MEAN IN ENGLISH?

Definition of playwright in the English dictionary

The definition of playwright in the dictionary is a person who writes plays.

WORDS THAT RHYME WITH PLAYWRIGHT

SYNONYMS OF «PLAYWRIGHT»

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TRANSLATION OF PLAYWRIGHT

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Principal search tendencies and common uses of playwright

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REFERENCE

« EDUCALINGO. Playwright [online]. Available <https://educalingo.com/en/dic-en/playwright>. Apr 2023 ».