Literary scholars agree that all form of literature involves some brand of performance intended for the audience. This is what makes literature engaging. However, poetry and drama are the literary genres most known to be pregnant with perfomative qualities. Indeed, poetry and drama’s commonality accrues from the two genres style, delivery methods, and the existence of audience for performance. Still there are separate qualities that distinct the two genres from each other.
In drama, the narrator is usually chatty; it is almost as if the narrator is having a dialogue with the audience. The characters in drama exhibit a sense of place, and a desire to attract the attention of the audience. The point is to ensure that the reader gets the use of language even as much as the story is told in a more dramatic and attention capturing manner. This is what creates dramatic rhythm, which is an essential aspect of a good drama. I will use Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet to demonstrate these aspects. In the play, the opening is vividly described in order to prepare the entry of the prince. However, this vivid description is contrasted with a more surreal lines spoken as preludes of Romeo’s entrance. Shakespeare uses this strategy to dramatize the play from the start and to create contrast visible for the audience.
For poetry, the language use is probably the biggest feature. The use of imagery, sound patterns, rhymes and rhythm. Even if the verbal composition of play is poetic, poetry still accommodates perfomative qualities. In drama, poetry is demonstrated in the structure of language but the drama comes out of the relationship with the audience. In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet Shakespeare uses poetic language to combine drama and poetry in the lines that goes:
Appear’ thou in the likeness of a sigh,
Speak but one rhyme and I am satisfied
Cry buy me pronounce but and dove!
In these lines, the poetry is found in the words, but the performance makes it drama.
References
Adair-Lynch, T. (2012). The Basic Elements of Theatre. Retrieved 2012, from http://homepage.smc.edu/adair-lynch_terrin/ta%205/elements.htm
Quintero, M. C. (n.d.). Poetry As Play: Gongorismo and the Comedia. New York, 1991: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
