What do you mean by Drama of Ideas? Short question

 

Ans:English dramas went through different stages with the passage of time.The Renaissance drama was predominantly revenge tragedy and romantic comedy. Following Elizabethan dramatic success ,English drama entered into a phase of decadence.Webster alone present the decadnance age.However , with the change of time,English drama was predominantly pre-occupied with social problem.Of the modern dramatist,Shaw influenced new types of drama in theme and style to the world theater .He was indebted to Ibsen and Karl Marx. The principles of his drama is a criticism of modern life. He satiries the ‘ism’ in his dramatic works.

Shaw’s satirical study of English man and society is presented in his dramas.His dramas are called Drama of Ideas. Because with his usw of wit , humour and irony he expresses a philosophy. Shaw uses flippant characters and unimportant situations.But beneath these unimportant characters and situation there lives a great philosophy, a philosophy about life and civilization.

Shaw wants to bring about a reformation in term of ideas to an otherwise materialistic “The Waste Land”. For example:his play, :Arms and The Man” is a reprsentive play of “Drama of Ideas”. Here,he satirizes the ongoing conception about love-marriage, and soldering. Soldering is not only a matter of showing heroism.Victory by any means is not the proper soldering. Saving life from hunger and fear is also another achievement of the battle. Similarly,love marriage is not a matter of romance.It is the cause of the need of procreation for all the time to come.

Thus,through these plays ideas are propagated. Characters embody ideas and they act as the vehicles of ideas and they preach to the audience.The essence of the drama is conflict of wills which is represented by plot and characters. Through the conversation of the characters the conflict reaches its clilmax. In this way, the success of the “Drama of Ideas” depends mostly on the brightness and brilliance of dialogue.