What features do plays, that is, dramatic works, have? Features of the study of dramatic works Participation of the production in the success of the performance
Dramatic works are organized by the statements of the characters. According to Gorky, “the play requires that each acting unit be characterized by word and deed independently, without prompting from the author” (50, 596). There is no detailed narrative-descriptive image here. Actually the author's speech, with the help of which the depicted is characterized from the outside, is auxiliary and episodic in the drama. These are the title of the play, its genre subtitle, an indication of the place and time of action, a list of characters, sometimes
accompanied by their brief summarizing characteristics, preceding acts and episodes describing the stage setting, as well as remarks given in the form of commentary on individual lines of the heroes. All this constitutes a side text of the dramatic work. And his text is a chain of dialogical remarks and monologues of the characters themselves.
Hence, there is a certain limitation in the artistic possibilities of the drama. The writer-playwright uses only a part of the subject-pictorial means that are available to the creator of a novel or an epic, a short story or a story. And the characters of the characters are revealed in the drama with less freedom and completeness than in the epic. “I ... perceive the drama,” noted T. Mann, “as the art of silhouette and only feel the person being told as a volumetric, integral, real and plastic image” (69, 386). At the same time, playwrights, in contrast to the authors of epic works, are forced to limit themselves to the volume of verbal text that meets the needs of theatrical art. The plot time in a drama must fit within the strict stage time frame. And the performance in the forms familiar to European theater lasts, as you know, no more than three to four hours. And that requires an appropriately sized dramatic text.
At the same time, the author of the play also has significant advantages over the creators of stories and novels. One moment depicted in the drama is tightly adjacent to another, adjacent one. The time of the events reproduced by the playwright throughout the stage episode (see Ch. X) is not compressed or stretched; the characters in the drama exchange remarks without any noticeable time intervals, and their statements, as Stanislavsky noted, form a solid, continuous line. If with the help of narration the action is captured as something past, then the chain of dialogues and monologues in the drama creates the illusion of the present. Life here speaks as if from its own face: between what is depicted and the reader there is no intermediary - the narrator. The action of the drama seems to take place before the eyes of the reader. “All narrative forms, - wrote F. Schiller, - transfer the present into the past; everything dramatic makes the past real " (106, 58).
The dramatic kind of literature recreates the action with
maximum spontaneity. Drama does not allow for the summary characteristics of events and actions that would replace their detail. And she is, as Yu. Olesha noted, "a test of severity and at the same time flight of talent, a sense of form and everything special and surprising that makes talent" (71, 252). A similar thought about the drama was expressed by Bunin: “We have to squeeze thought into precise forms. But it's so exciting. "
FORMS OF BEHAVIOR OF CHARACTERS
The characters of the drama reveal themselves in behavior (primarily in the spoken words) more vividly than the characters in epic works. And this is natural. First, the dramatic form disposes of the characters to "polyphony". Secondly, the words of the characters in the drama are focused on the wide space of the stage and auditorium, so that the speech is perceived as directed directly to the audience and potentially loud. "Theater demands ... exaggerated broad lines in both voice, recitation and gestures." (98, 679), wrote N. Boileau. And D. Diderot noted that “you cannot be a playwright without eloquence” (52, 604).
The behavior of the characters in the drama is marked by activity, flashiness, and showiness. In other words, it is theatrical. Theatricality is the conduct of speech and gesticulation, carried out with the expectation of a public, mass effect. She is the antipode of the intimacy and inexpressiveness of forms of action. Behavior filled with theatricality becomes the most important subject of depiction in the drama. Dramatic action often takes place with the active participation of a wide range of people. Such are many scenes of Shakespeare's plays (especially the final ones), the culmination of Gogol's "The Inspector General" and Ostrovsky's "The Thunderstorms", supporting episodes of Vishnevsky's "Optimistic Tragedy". The viewer is especially influenced by episodes where there is an audience on the stage: images of meetings, rallies, mass performances, etc. Leave a vivid impression and scenic episodes showing few people if their behavior is open, not inhibited, effectively. “As in the theater he played,” Bubnov (At the Bottom of Gorky) comments on the frenzied tirade of the desperate Tick about the truth, which, by an unexpected and abrupt intrusion into the general conversation, gave him a theatrical character.
At the same time, playwrights (especially supporters
realistic art) feel the need to go beyond theatricality: to recreate human behavior in all its richness and diversity, capturing both private, domestic, intimate life where people express themselves in word and gesture sparingly and unassumingly. At the same time, the speech of the characters, which, according to the logic of the depicted should not be spectacular and bright, is presented in dramas and performances as lengthy, full-voiced, hyperbolically expressive. Here, a certain limitation of the drama's capabilities is reflected: playwrights (like actors on stage) are forced to elevate the “non-theatrical in life” to the rank of “theatrical in art”.
In a broad sense, any work of art is conditional, that is, not identical real life... At the same time, the term convention (in a narrow sense) denotes ways of reproducing life, in which the discrepancy and even contrast between the forms depicted and the forms of reality itself are emphasized. In this respect, artistic conventions are opposed to "likelihood" or "lifelike". “Everything should be essentially vital, not necessarily everything should be life-like,” wrote Fadeev. - Among the many forms, there may be a conditional form. " (96, 662) (that is, "not life-like." B. X.).
In dramatic works, where the behavior of the characters is theatrical, conventions are especially widely used. The drama's inevitable departure from lifestyles has been spoken of more than once. Thus, Pushkin argued that "of all kinds of works, the most implausible works are dramatic." (79, 266), and Zola called drama and theater "the citadel of everything conventional." (61, 350).
Characters in dramas often speak out not because they need it in the course of the action, but because the author needs to explain something to readers and viewers, to make a certain impression on them. So, in dramatic works, additional characters are sometimes introduced, who either themselves tell about what is not shown on the stage (messengers in ancient plays), or, becoming interlocutors of the main characters, encourage them to talk about what happened (choirs and their leading figures in ancient tragedies ; confidantes and servants in the comedies of antiquity, Renaissance, classicism). In the so-called epic dramas, the characters-actors from time to time turn to the audience, "step out of the role" and, as it were, from the outside, report what is happening.
A tribute to convention is, further, the richness of speech in the drama with maxims, aphorisms, reasoning about what is happening. Monologues pronounced by the heroes alone are also conditional. Such monologues are not actually speech actions, but a purely stage technique for bringing out internal speech; there are many of them both in ancient tragedies and in the drama of modern times. Even more conditional are the remarks “to the side”, which, as it were, do not exist for the other characters on the stage, but are clearly audible to the audience.
It would be wrong, of course, to "fix" the theatrical hyperbole for the dramatic kind of literature alone. Similar phenomena are characteristic of classical epics and adventure novels, if we talk about the classics of the 19th century. - for the works of Dostoevsky. However, it is in the drama that the conventionality of speech self-disclosure of the characters becomes the leading artistic trend. The author of the drama, setting up a kind of experiment, shows how a person would express himself if in the spoken words he expressed his moods with maximum completeness and brightness. Naturally, dramatic dialogues and monologues turn out to be much more extensive and effective than those lines that could be uttered in a similar life situation. As a result, speech in a drama often acquires a resemblance to artistic-lyrical or oratorical speech: the heroes of dramatic works tend to express themselves as improvisers - poets or sophisticated orators. Therefore, Hegel was partly right, considering the drama as a synthesis of the epic principle (eventfulness) and the lyrical (speech expression).
From antiquity to the era of romanticism - from Aeschylus and Sophocles to Schiller and Hugo - dramatic works in the overwhelming majority of cases gravitated towards dramatic and demonstrative theatrics. L. Tolstoy reproached Shakespeare for the abundance of hyperbole, which allegedly "disrupts the possibility of artistic impression." From the very first words, - he wrote about the tragedy "King Lear", - one can see exaggeration: exaggeration of events, exaggeration of feelings and exaggeration of expressions " (89, 252). In assessing Shakespeare's work, L. Tolstoy was wrong, but the idea of the great English playwright's adherence to theatrical hyperbole is completely correct. What has been said about "King Lear" with no less reason can be attributed to ancient comedies and tragedies.
days, dramatic works of classicism, Schiller's tragedies, etc.
In the XIX-XX centuries, when the desire for everyday authenticity prevailed in literature art paintings, the conventions inherent in the drama began to be reduced to a minimum. At the origins of this phenomenon is the so-called "bourgeois drama" of the 18th century, the creators and theorists of which were Diderot and Lessing. Works of the greatest Russian playwrights of the XIX century. and the beginning of the XX century - A. Ostrovsky, Chekhov and Gorky - are distinguished by the reliability of the recreated life forms. But even when the playwrights were set on the likelihood of the depicted, the plot, psychological and proper speech hyperboles persisted. Even in Chekhov's drama, which showed the maximum limit of "life-likeness," the theatrical conventions made themselves felt. Let's take a look at the final scene of Three Sisters. One young woman, ten to fifteen minutes ago, broke up with a loved one, probably forever. Another five minutes ago learned about the death of her fiancé. And so they, together with the elder, third sister, summarize the moral and philosophical results of what happened, reflecting to the sounds of a military march about the fate of their generation, about the future of mankind. It is hardly possible to imagine this happening in reality. But we do not notice the implausibility of the ending of The Three Sisters, as we are accustomed to the fact that drama significantly alters the forms of people's life.
Drama occupies a special position in the literary system, since it is both a full-fledged literary genus and a phenomenon that naturally belongs to the theater. Drama as a genus has a specific content, the essence of which was the awareness of the contradictions of reality, and "above all its social contradictions through the relations of people and their individual fates." story ". According to the exact and figurative definition of V.G. Belinsky, "the drama represents the event that has taken place, as it were, taking place in the present, before the eyes of the reader or viewer."
The specific features of the drama as a genus are the absence of a narrator and a sharp weakening of the descriptive element. The basis of the drama is a visible action, and this affects the special correlation in it of event movement and the speeches of the characters. The statements of the characters and the arrangement, the ratio of parts are the most important ways of revealing the author's thoughts. In relation to them, other ways of expressing the author's position (a list of characters, remarks, instructions for directors and actors) play a subordinate role.
The most important category of content in drama is conflict. Of course, conflicts also exist in the epic, they can be present in a lyric work, but their role and meaning in an epic and lyric plot is different from that in a drama. The choice of conflicts and their alignment in a system largely determine the originality of the position of the writer; dramatic collisions are an essential way of identifying the life programs of characters and self-disclosure of their characters. The conflict largely determines the direction and rhythm of the plot movement in the play.
The content of conflicts, as well as the ways of their embodiment in a dramatic work, can be of a different nature. Traditionally, the conflicts of the drama, according to their content, emotional acuteness and coloration, are subdivided into tragic, comic, and actually dramatic. The first two types are distinguished in accordance with the two main genre forms of drama; they originally accompany tragedy and comedy, reflecting the most essential aspects of life conflicts. The third - arose at a rather late stage of drama, and its understanding is associated with the theory of drama developed by Lessing ("Hamburg Drama") and Diderot ("The Paradox of the Actor").
Of course, the conflict, with all the meaningful polysemy and variety of functions, is not the only component that determines the specificity of the drama as a genus. No less important are the methods of plot organization and dramatic narration, the ratio of the speech characteristics of the characters and the construction of the action, etc. However, we deliberately focus on the category of conflict. On the one hand, the analysis of this aspect allows, based on the generic specificity of the drama, to reveal the depth of the artistic content of the work, to take into account the peculiarities of the author's attitude to the world. On the other hand, it is the consideration of the conflict that can become the leading direction in the school analysis of a dramatic work, since high school students are characterized by an interest in effective clashes of beliefs and characters through which the problems of the struggle between good and evil are revealed. Through the study of the conflict, it is possible to lead schoolchildren to comprehend the motives behind the words and actions of the heroes, to reveal the originality of the author's intention, the moral position of the writer. The task of this section is to reveal the role of this category in creating the eventual and ideological tension of the drama, in expressing the social and ethical programs of the heroes, in recreating their psychology.
The drama depicts a person only in action, during which he discovers all aspects of his personality. "Dramaticism," VG Belinsky emphasized, noting the peculiarities of the drama, "consists not in one conversation, but in the live action of one talking to another."
In the works of the dramatic genre, in contrast to the epic and lyrical, there are no author's descriptions, narration, digressions. The author's speech appears only in the stage directions. Everything that happens to the heroes of the drama, the reader or viewer learns from the heroes themselves. The playwright, therefore, does not talk about the life of his characters, but shows them in action?
Due to the fact that the heroes of dramatic works manifest themselves only in action, their speech has a number of features: it is directly related to their actions, is more dynamic and expressive than the speech of the heroes of epic works. Of great importance in dramatic works are also intonation, pause, tone, that is, all those features of speech that acquire concreteness on stage.
The playwright, as a rule, depicts only those events that are necessary to reveal the characters of the characters and, therefore, to justify the developing struggle between the characters. All other facts of life that are not directly related to the depicted, slowing down the development of the action, are excluded.
Everything shown in a play, tragedy, comedy or drama is tied by the playwright, as Gogol aptly put it, "in one big common knot." Hence - the concentration of the depicted events and secondary characters around the main characters. The plot of the drama is characterized by tension and impetuous development. This feature of the plot of dramatic works distinguishes it from the plot of epic works, although both plots are based on common elements: the plot, culmination and denouement.
The difference between drama and epic and lyric poetry is also expressed in the fact that works of the dramatic genre are written for the theater and receive their final completion only on stage. In turn, the theater influences them, subordinating them to some extent to its own laws. Dramatic works are divided, for example, into actions, phenomena or scenes, the change of which involves a change in scenery and costumes. In approximately three or four acts of the play, that is, during the three or four hours occupied by the play, the playwright must show the origin of the conflict, its development and completion. These requirements relating to playwrights oblige them to choose such phenomena and events of life in which the characters of the people portrayed are especially clearly manifested.
While working on a play, the playwright sees not only his hero, but also his performer. This is evidenced by the numerous statements of writers. Regarding the performance of the roles of Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky N.V. Gogol wrote: "... creating these two little officials, I imagined Shchepkin and Ryazantsov in their skin ..." We find the same thoughts in A.P. Chekhov. While the Art Theater was working on the play "The Cherry Orchard", Chekhov informed K.S. Stanislavsky: "When I wrote to Lopakhin, I thought it was your role."
There is also another dependence of the dramatic work on the theater. It manifests itself in the fact that the reader connects the play with the scene in his imagination. When reading plays, images of certain supposed or actual performers of the roles appear. If the theater, in the words of A.V. Lunacharsky, is a form, the content of which is determined by drama, then the actors, in turn, help the playwright with their performance to finish the images. The scene to some extent replaces the author's descriptions. "Drama lives only on the stage," wrote N.V. Gogol to M.P. Pogodin, "Without it, it is like a soul without a body."
Theater creates a much greater illusion of life than any other art. Everything that happens on the stage is perceived by the audience especially acutely and directly. This is the tremendous educational power of drama, which distinguishes it from other types of poetry.
The originality of the drama, its difference from the epic and lyric poetry give reason to raise the question of some peculiarities in the correlation of methods and techniques of work used in the analysis of dramatic works in secondary school.
Drama is a literary genus (along with epics and lyrics), involving the creation artistic world for stage implementation in a play. Like the epic, it reproduces the objective world, that is, people, things, natural phenomena.
SPECIFIC TRAITS
1. Drama is the most ancient kind of literature, from the same antiquity its main difference from others comes - syncretism, when different types of art are combined in one (syncretism of ancient creativity - in the unity of artistic content and magic, mythology, morality).
2. Dramatic works are conditional.
Pushkin said: "Of all kinds of works, the most implausible are the dramatic ones."
3. At the heart of the drama is a conflict, an event enacted by an action. The plot is formed by the events and actions of people.
4. The specificity of drama as a literary genus consists in the special organization of artistic speech: unlike the epic, there is no narration in the drama and the direct speech of the characters, their dialogues and monologues is of paramount importance.
The drama is not only verbal (remarks "to the side"), but also staged action, therefore the speech of the characters is important (dialogues, monologues). Even in ancient tragedy, choirs played an important role (singing out the author's opinion), and in the classics this role was played by resonators.
"You cannot be a playwright without eloquence" (Diderot).
"Actors in a good play should speak in aphorisms. This tradition has been going on for a long time" (M. Gorky).
5. As a rule, a dramatic work assumes stage effects, speed of action.
6. Special dramatic character: unusual (conscious intentions, formed thoughts), the prevailing character, in contrast to the epic.
7. Dramatic works are small in volume.
Bunin remarked on this occasion: "We have to squeeze thought into precise forms. But this is so exciting!"
8. The illusion of complete absence of the author is created in the drama. From the author's speech in the drama, only the remarks remain - the author's brief instructions on the place and time of the action, on facial expressions, intonation, etc.
9. The behavior of the characters is theatrical. In life, they don't behave like that, and they don't say that.
Let us recall the unnaturalness of Sobakevich's wife: "Feodulia Ivanovna asked to sit down, saying also:" Please! "And making a movement with her head, like actresses representing queens. no nose. ".
TRADITIONAL SCHEME OF ANY DRAMA WORK: EXPOSITION - representation of heroes; TIE - collision; DEVELOPMENT OF ACTION - a set of scenes, development of an idea; CULTURE - the apogee of the conflict; RELEASE.
The dramatic genre of literature has three main genres: tragedy, comedy and drama in the narrow sense of the word, but it also contains such genres as vaudeville, melodrama, and tragicomedy.
Tragedy (Greek tragoidia, literally - goat song) is "a dramatic genre based on the tragic collision of heroic characters, its tragic outcome and full of pathos ..."
The tragedy depicts reality as a bunch of internal contradictions, it reveals the conflicts of reality in an extremely tense form. This is a dramatic work based on an irreconcilable life conflict leading to the suffering and death of the hero. So, in a collision with the world of crime, lies and hypocrisy, the bearer of advanced humanistic ideals, the Danish prince Hamlet, the hero of the tragedy of the same name by W. Shakespeare, tragically perishes. In the struggle waged by tragic heroes, heroic traits of the human character are revealed with great completeness.
The genre of tragedy has a long history. It arose out of religious cult rites, was a stage enactment of a myth. With the advent of the theater, tragedy took shape as an independent genre of dramatic art. The creators of the tragedies were the ancient Greek playwrights of the 5th century. BC NS. Sophocles, Euripides, Aeschylus, who left her perfect examples. They reflected tragic collision traditions of the tribal system with a new social order. These conflicts were perceived and portrayed by playwrights mainly on mythological material. The hero of an ancient tragedy found himself drawn into an insoluble conflict either by the will of the imperious fate (fate), or by the will of the gods. So, the hero of the tragedy Aeschylus "Prometheus the Chained" suffers because he violated the will of Zeus when he gave fire to people and taught them crafts. In the tragedy of Sophocles "King Oedipus" the hero is doomed to be a paricide, to marry his own mother. An ancient tragedy usually consisted of five acts and was built in compliance with the "three unities" - place, time, action. Tragedies were written in verse and were distinguished by the loftiness of speech, its hero was the "tall hero".
Comedy, like tragedy, originated in ancient Greece. The ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes (V-IV centuries BC) is considered the "father" of comedy. In his works, he ridiculed the greed, bloodthirstiness and immorality of the Athenian aristocracy, advocated a peaceful patriarchal life ("Horsemen", "Clouds", "Lysistratus", "Frogs").
In Russia, folk comedy has existed for a long time. The outstanding comedian of the Russian Enlightenment was D.N. Fonvizin. His comedy "The Minor" mercilessly ridiculed the "wild lordship" reigning in the Prostakov family. Wrote comedies I.A. Krylov ("A Lesson for Daughters", "Fashion Shop"), making fun of the admiration for foreigners.
In the XIX century. samples of satirical, social realistic comedy are created by A.S. Griboyedov ("Woe from Wit"), N.V. Gogol ("The Inspector General"), A.N. Ostrovsky ("A profitable place", "Our people - we will be numbered", etc.). Continuing the traditions of N. Gogol, A. Sukhovo-Kobylin in his trilogy ("The Wedding of Krechinsky", "Delo", "Death of Tarelkin") showed how the bureaucracy "lightened" the whole of Russia, bringing her troubles comparable to the damage caused by the Tatar Mongol yoke and the invasion of Napoleon. The comedies of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin (The Death of Pazukhin) and A.N. Tolstoy ("The Fruits of Enlightenment"), which in some ways approached the tragedy (they contain elements of tragicomedy).
Tragicomedy rejects the moral absolute of comedy and tragedy. The perception of the world underlying it is associated with a sense of the relativity of the existing criteria of life. Overestimating moral principles leads to uncertainty and even abandonment of them; subjective and objective principles are blurred; an unclear understanding of reality can cause interest in it or complete indifference and even recognition of the illogicality of the world. The tragicomic worldview in them dominates at the turning points of history, although the tragicomic beginning was already present in the drama of Euripides ("Alkestida", "Ion").
A drama is a play with an acute conflict, which, in contrast to the tragic, is not so sublime, more mundane, ordinary and somehow resolvable. The specificity of the drama lies, firstly, in the fact that it is based on modern and not on antique material, and secondly, the drama asserts a new hero who rebelled against his fate and circumstances. The difference between drama and tragedy is in the essence of conflict: conflicts of a tragic plan are insoluble, because their resolution does not depend on the personal will of a person. The tragic hero finds himself in a tragic situation involuntarily, and not because of a mistake he has made. Dramatic conflicts, unlike tragic ones, are not insurmountable. They are based on the clash of characters with such forces, principles, traditions that oppose them from the outside. If the hero of the drama dies, then his death is in many ways an act of a voluntary decision, and not the result of a tragically hopeless situation. So, Katerina in "The Thunder" by A. Ostrovsky, acutely worried that she had violated religious and moral norms, unable to live in the oppressive atmosphere of the Kabanovs' house, rushes into the Volga. This denouement was not necessary; the obstacles to the rapprochement between Katerina and Boris cannot be considered insurmountable: the heroine's rebellion could have ended differently.
On the one hand, when working on a drama, means are used that are in the arsenal of the writer, but, on the other hand, the work should not be literary. The author describes the events so that the person who will read the test can see everything that happens in his imagination. For example, instead of “they sat in the bar for a very long time,” you can write “they drank six beers,” and so on.
In the drama, what is happening is shown not through internal reflections, but through external action. Moreover, all events take place in the present time.
Also, certain restrictions are imposed on the volume of the work, since it must be presented on stage within the allotted time (up to a maximum of 3-4 hours).
The demands of the drama as a stage art leave their mark on the behavior, gestures, and words of the characters, which are often exaggerated. What cannot happen in life in a few hours, in drama it can very much. At the same time, the audience will not be surprised at the conventionality, improbability, since this genre initially allows them to a certain extent.
In the days of dear and inaccessible to many books, drama (as a public performance) was the leading form of artistic reproduction of life. However, with the development of printing technologies, it gave way to the primacy of the epic genres. Nevertheless, even today, dramatic works remain in demand among society. The main audience of the drama is, of course, theater-goers and moviegoers. Moreover, the number of the latter exceeds the number of readers.
Depending on the method of production, dramatic works can be in the form of a play and a script. All dramatic works intended to be performed from the theater stage are called plays (French pi èce). Dramatic works, which are used to make films, are scripts. Both the plays and the scripts contain the author's remarks to indicate the time and place of the action, indicating the age, appearance of the characters, etc.
The structure of the play or script follows the structure of the story. Usually, parts of a play are designated as an act (action), phenomenon, episode, picture.
The main genres of dramatic works:
- drama,
- tragedy,
- comedy,
- tragicomedy,
- farce,
- vaudeville,
- sketch.
Drama
Drama is literary work depicting a serious conflict between actors or between actors and society. The relationship between the heroes (heroes and society) of the works of this genre is always full of drama. In the course of the development of the plot, there is an intense struggle both within individual characters and between them.
Although the conflict in drama is very serious, it can nevertheless be resolved. This circumstance explains the intrigue, the tense expectation of the audience: will the hero (s) be able to extricate themselves from the situation or not.
Drama is characterized by a description of the real Everyday life, posing "mortal" questions of human existence, deep disclosure of characters, the inner world of characters.
There are such types of drama as historical, social, philosophical. A kind of drama is melodrama. In it, acting faces are clearly divided into positive and negative.
Well-known dramas: "Othello" by V. Shakespeare, "At the Bottom" by M. Gorky, "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" by T. Williams.
Tragedy
Tragedy (from the Greek tragos ode - "goat song") is a literary dramatic work based on an irreconcilable life conflict. Tragedies are characterized by an intense struggle between strong characters and passions, which ends in a catastrophic outcome for the characters (usually death).
The conflict of a tragedy is usually very deep, has universal human significance and can be symbolic. The main character, as a rule, suffers deeply (including from despair), his fate is unhappy.
The text of the tragedy often sounds pathetic. Many tragedies are written in verse.
Well-known tragedies: "Chained Prometheus" by Aeschylus, "Romeo and Juliet" by V. Shakespeare, "The Thunderstorm" by A. Ostrovsky.
Comedy
A comedy (from the Greek komos ode - "funny song") is a literary dramatic work in which characters, situations and actions are presented comically, using humor and satire. In this case, the characters can be quite sad or sad.
Usually comedy presents everything that is ugly and ridiculous, funny and absurd, ridicules social or everyday vices.
Comedy is subdivided into comedy of masks, positions, characters. This genre also includes farce, vaudeville, interlude, sketch.
A sitcom (comedy of situations, situational comedy) is a dramatic comedy work in which events and circumstances are the source of the funny.
A comedy of characters (a comedy of morals) is a dramatic comedy work in which the source of the funny is the inner essence of characters (morals), funny and ugly one-sidedness, a hypertrophied trait or passion (vice, lack).
Farce is a light comedy that uses simple comic techniques and is designed for a rough taste. Usually slapstick is used in circus to lownade.
Vaudeville is a light comedy with an entertaining intrigue, in which there are a large number of dance numbers and songs. In the United States, vaudeville is called a musical. In modern Russia, they also usually say "musical", meaning vaudeville.
An interlude is a small comic scene that is acted out between the actions of the main play or performance.
A sketch is a short comedic work with two or three characters. Typically, sketches are presented on stage and television.
Well-known comedies: "Frogs" by Aristophanes, "The Inspector General" by N. Gogol, "Woe from Wit" by A. Griboyedov.
Famous TV sketch shows: "Our Russia", "Town", "Flying Circus of Monty Python".
Tragicomedy
Tragicomedy is a literary dramatic work in which a tragic plot is depicted in a comic form or is a disorderly heap of tragic and comic elements. In a tragicomedy, serious episodes are combined with funny, sublime characters are set off by comic characters. The main technique of tragicomedy is grotesque.
We can say that "tragicomedy is funny in the tragic" or vice versa, "tragic in the funny."
Well-known tragicomedies: "Alkestida" by Euripides, "The Tempest" by V. Shakespeare, "The Cherry Orchard" by A. Chekhov, the films "Forrest Gump", "The Great Dictator", "The Same Munchazen."
More detailed information on this topic can be found in the books by A. Nazaykin
Russian legislation classifies dramatic works as literature in general (Art. 282, v. XIV, Cens, ust., Ed. 1857); but among all other works of literature, dramatic ones have their own very important peculiarity.
FEATURE OF DRAMATIC WORKS
This peculiarity lies in the fact that dramatic works for their promulgation and distribution, in addition to the method common to all other literature, i.e. printing, have another way, inherently belonging to them and directly arising from the essence of this kind of poetry. This way of publication and dissemination, characteristic of dramatic literature, is stage performance. Only with a stage performance does the author's dramatic fiction receive a completely finished form and produces exactly that moral effect, the achievement of which the author has set himself the goal. Although dramatic works are printed both for the most profitable reproduction of copies and in order to perpetuate the work, print reproduction is not their ultimate goal, and dramatic works, although printed, should be considered not literary works, but stage works.
In this case, the printed text of dramatic works bears great resemblance to the published scores of operas, oratorios, etc.: just as the latter lacks musical sounds in order for the impression to be complete, so dramatic works lack a living human voice and gestures.
THE VALUE OF A DRAMA WORK
Dramatic fiction, entering the public in two ways - through print and through representation, - in both cases receives material value, which is far from the same. As much as the need to see the stage performance of a play is higher than the need to simply read it, so the value of a dramatic fiction, reproduced in the theater, is higher than the value of the same fiction made public through print. Most dramatic works are not published for fear that the sale of printed copies will not cover the costs of printing. The proceeds for a printed play, relative to the amount earned for presenting the same play at the theaters in which it is played, is so insignificant that it cannot be compared. A play that has some stage merit in a short time bypasses all theaters; it will be reviewed and paid for by hundreds of thousands of people; and the same play would not be printed in two thousand copies in four or five years. Many people watch a good play several times, each time paying money for the place; and everyone buys printed copies for himself only one at a time.
Thus, a dramatic piece has real value only when it is performed on stage; This value, directly dependent on the degree of interest in the play that attracts the audience, is expressed by the amount of collection received during its presentation.
The levy for seats in the theater during the presentation of a play, serving as a measure of its stage worth, also serves as a determination of its material value. But since the performance itself is a complex act, performed with the participation of various figures, such as: art and works of artists, the costs of the management or the owners of theaters and the play composed by the author, it is required to determine to what extent the interest and success of the performance and its material value , i.e. collection depends on each of these three actors.
PARTICIPATION OF ARTISTS IN THE SUCCESS OF THE PRESENTATION
First of all, without a play, no matter how talented the actors are, they have nothing to play. There is no dispute that the skillful play of the artists greatly increases the interest of the performance; but it is also beyond dispute that a talented troupe certainly requires talentedly written plays, otherwise it would have nothing to perform and nothing to show its talent on. The popularity of an artist also depends on the number of well-known roles played, and the more famous artists become, the more they need the best works in order to develop and demonstrate their abilities.
Actually, the audience watches not the artists, but how the artists play a well-known play; otherwise, with the performance of your favorite actors, all the plays would have the same success; but it is known that when the same actors play, one play does not survive even two performances, and the other never leaves the repertoire.
Not all troupes have good artists; most are very mediocre; such troupes, if we accept that the success of a stage performance depends only on the artists, they would never see success and could not even exist. Meanwhile, it is known that wonderful plays, having success in theaters rich in talent, have their share of success in troupes that are poorly composed. If, in the same way, with a good composition of troupes and with a bad one, some plays do not make collections, while others stay on stage with constant success, giving great benefits over the course of several years, then it is obvious that the material value of a stage performance does not depend mainly on the artists.
PARTICIPATION OF THE STAGE IN THE SUCCESS OF THE SUBMISSION
Even less the interest and value of the performance depends on the costs of the management and the theater proprietors for the production. It often happens that a play with expensive sets and costumes falls out of the first performance, while the other keeps to the repertoire in a poor environment. Gogol's "auditor", in order to have the success that he enjoys, required a little expenses from the management. The intrinsic merits of a play always redeem its staging, and the higher the play is in terms of its intrinsic interest, the less expense it requires for its appearance. An author who has given considerable interest to his dramatic work also benefits the theater maintainer by reducing costs on his part.It is just as unfair as to attribute the success of a book to the luxury of its publication or to the art of the bookbinder. ...
THE VALUE OF PERFORMANCE DEPENDS ON THE PRESENTED PIECE
So, the interest, the success, and therefore the value of the performance, depends mainly on the play presented. Artists and directors only contribute to the success, and the author makes the success. The validity of this position is obvious already because with the increase in the fame of the author, the value of the presentation of his works also increases. Benefit prices and benefit fees of even the most beloved artists by the public very much depend on the name of the author of the given play. Not only benefit performances, but in general the first performances of plays by famous authors are quite expensive for the public; the increased demand for seats in the theater raises their price, causing the well-known speculation of theatrical ticket profits. In these cases, only one name of the author, displayed on the poster, raises the value of the performance - and here the author is the first and main producer of the benefits provided by the performance.
All of the above leads to the following conclusion: if the material value of dramatic performances mainly depends on the plays presented, then justice requires that the authors of these plays be given the opportunity to have their share of participation in the benefits provided by the performances, and that they be given the right to freely dispose of the stage performances. representations of their works. This attitude of dramatic authors to the stage performances of their plays has long been recognized in Europe and was expressed in the acknowledged the right of representation(droit de representation).
The censorship charter currently in force in Russia, classifying dramatic works as literature in general, on a par with other works of print, about friend the way they are made public, i.e. on the stage performance, does not mention and, as it were, does not recognize it at all.
The absence in our legislation of a department on dramatic property (droit de faire representer [ right of representation (fr.)]) especially from the literary (droit de faire imprimer [ printing right (fr.)]) put and still puts dramatic writers in a special, strange and exclusive position: the dramatic author ceases to be the owner of his work and loses any right to it precisely at the very moment when it takes its final form and acquires significant value.
CONSEQUENCES OF NON-RECOGNITION ON AUTHORS RIGHT OF REPRESENTATION
Such a feature in the position of Russian playwrights could not do without adverse consequences: a) for dramatic literature in Russia; b) for the development of theaters and dramatic arts; c) for the stage education of artists.
DRAMATIC LITERATURE
a) As far as it is true that stage literature is in decline, it is equally true that works in this branch of literature are paid very poorly and do not provide the workers in the least. Dramatic literature as a product of mental labor. obeys the same economic laws as any productivity. Can unsecured and unprofitable production thrive? How many forces will attract labor, the fruits of which do not belong to the working people, but are plundered by everyone at will? And the conditions for dramatic work are precisely this: work, and others use the fruits of your labors. To work for the common good or for the general pleasure, without the hope of sufficient remuneration for labor, is more or less a feat and in any case is an exceptional phenomenon; the legitimate desire to acquire has always been and will be the main engine of the working people. Therefore, writers endowed with rather diverse talents reluctantly choose other, more profitable branches of literature, neglecting unprofitable works in the dramatic field. Specialists remain, i.e. the same writers who, due to the special conditions of their talent, are forced to work exclusively for the stage, condemned to continuous and hasty work, in order to compensate for the disadvantage of their work at least with a number of works. Working hastily and, consequently, to the detriment of the intrinsic dignity of their works, from constant mental stress, they either exhaust their strength early, or cool down to their work and look for means for their existence in other, more profitable occupations. What is surprising is not that dramatic literature is not flourishing in Russia, but that it still retains some significance to this day and does not fall completely. The occasional appearance of wonderful plays is explained by purely accidental circumstances: this is certainly either the first work of a young man, for whom vocational work and first glory are still very seductive, and material needs are very easily tolerated, or the work of a wealthy man who has a lot of free time and who has no need. rushes to work.
THEATERS
b) It would seem that provincial theaters should benefit from non-copyright protection, since they are thereby freed from unnecessary costs; but the opposite comes out. Never and nowhere can the free use of someone else's property be fruitful; provincial theaters, the development of which the free use of plays not only does not contribute, but even hinders, confirms this truth. It interferes, firstly, because the free use of a varied repertoire, with insignificant other costs, and then paid from fees, making the business of entrepreneurs very easy, makes it possible for people to take on this business without education and decisively without any means. For the most part, the supply of aesthetic pleasures in provincial cities is undertaken by such people who cannot successfully conduct any business; but why not take it? - there is no risk, nothing to lose, but you can make some money, and you can probably cash in on someone else's account. The mainspring of all mechanics is to invite a clever poster who knows how to enticingly paint a play on a poster, i.e. come up with special, enticing names not only for each act of the play, but also for the phenomena - and then the whole thing is considered over. Such an entrepreneur does not care about the scenery, or about the costumes, or about the troupe, or about conscientious performance, but only cares about the poster, which alone makes him a collection that arouses curiosity. For such an entrepreneur, each new work of a famous writer is a "find" (their own word), and the more famous the author, the more valuable the find, because you can take a fee or two from the public for just one poster, i.e. for the name of the author, without any cost or hassle. Entrepreneurs are in a hurry to use such a find and often stage the play the next day upon receipt, without preparing roles and without any staging. The audience, attracted by the poster, gives a collection or two, looking not according to the merit of the performance, but according to the number of curious people in the city - and then this play will not even be watched for nothing. What's the business of an entrepreneur that a play is killed forever? His job was done: the money was taken, there were no expenses. (It is known that in the provinces it is considered a rarity if the play is played more than twice). In this case, the theater owners take money for free even not for the play (because it is not the play indicated on the poster that is played, but it is not known what), but only for the name of the author, which undoubtedly belongs to the one who wears it *. Fame is not given for nothing; many works, very often associated with material hardships, are worth it to the dramatic author; and this, dear to him, fame not only does not he himself, but others use, but he is also condemned to see how his fame is being misused, making it a signboard to deceive the public.
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* It happened to the authors themselves to get on such performances. The situation is unenviable! Sometimes the work dear to the author is distorted to the last possible extent, the viewers get a completely wrong concept about it, and the author cannot not only protest, but even make some remark to the artists or an entrepreneur, who has the right to even prevent the author from entering the stage.
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ARTISTS
c) Having an extensive gratuitous repertoire at hand, entrepreneurs do not even care about careful performance to strengthen the plays on stage, which, firstly, spoil the young audience, developing an inelegant taste in it, and, secondly, harm the artists. However, in recent times When, with the development of classes of provincial merchants and bureaucrats, the business of entrepreneurship begins to bring significant benefits, in many cities rather wealthy people take up this business, who have the opportunity to pay dearly to the artists and make the costs of external production. But even in this case, the free use of other people's plays only harms the development of dramatic art in the provinces. Paying artists quite dearly, entrepreneurs try to bail out their money only with variety, giving new plays almost daily. There are many talented artists in the provinces; they could make up a good supply for replenishing the metropolitan troupes, which are poorer in talent from year to year; but provincial actors, exploited by entrepreneurs, ruin their talents early. Forced to play constantly new plays, they by necessity get used to not learning roles, to play according to a prompter, and thus early lose their artistic conscientiousness and acquire routine and shamelessness - qualities from which it is almost impossible to free themselves later. Such artists, despite their natural talents, cannot be useful to the capital's theaters.
Thus, the absence in our legislation of provisions protecting dramatic property, on the one hand, delaying dramatic performance, diverting mental forces to other branches of literature, and on the other - developing a negligent and disrespectful attitude towards art, is the main reason for the decline of stage literature and the low level of performing arts in Russia.
If it were not for the unpunished use of someone else's right, then entrepreneurs, having paid the authors for the right to perform, would have to rehearse and furnish the plays thoroughly in order to get the money spent and get their own benefit, which, in any case, would be for it would be beneficial for them and would propel the talents of the artists and the performing arts, and would develop taste in the public. With the development of taste, the need for aesthetic pleasures develops instead of coarse and sensual pleasures, which cannot but be wished for in our provinces.
BASIS EXISTING IN RUSSIAN LEGISLATION FOR DETERMINING DRAMATIC PROPERTY RIGHTS
The general spirit of our legislation, the principles it adopted to define the rights of writers and artists, and some individual legalizations provide solid grounds for determining the rights of dramatic property.
These are the grounds.
1) There are two views on the basic, fundamental principle of copyright law in Europe: the rights of authors are brought either under the category of property, or under the category of privileges. The first view was worked out and approved by the government commission), established in 1861 in Paris, under the chairmanship of Walewski, and the second is presented with particular detail in Proudhon's famous pamphlet: "Majorats litteraires". Russian legislation, like all European legislation, recognizes and names the rights of authors, artists and musicians to their works - property(vol. X, part 1, article 420, note 2, ed. 1857) and determines the period of use of this property - the longest of all existing - 50 years (article 283 of the Census Code).
The main quality of legislative wisdom is the consistency, for the sake of which the once adopted principle of ownership for works of art and mental labor should be extended to dramatic works. It is unthinkable to suppose that legislation, considering all works of mind and art as belonging to their creators on the basis of property rights, made an exception only for some dramatic authors and based the rights of dramatic authors on a privilege that the government may or may not give.
2) Our legislation has already defined musical property, similar to the dramatic one. If - identical with the right of performance - the right to perform operas and oratorios has already been recognized for their authors (Art. 349 Cens, mouth), then the recognition of the rights of dramatic property appears as a further inevitable step in the successive course of Russian legislation.
3) Dramatic art, belonging to its literary side to verbal art, the other side - the stage - fits the definition of art in general. Everything that is called stage performance in the play depends on special artistic considerations that have nothing to do with literary ones. Artistic considerations are based on the so-called knowledge of the scene and external effects, i.e. on purely plastic terms. Thus, dramatic creativity by its nature has a close, analogous resemblance to artistic creativity. If artistic property has already been recognized, then dramatic property, as a form of it, deserves recognition.
4) Article 321 of the Censorship Charter defines artistic property: it consists in the fact that the artist, in addition to the right to a thing, also has the exclusive right to "repeat, publish and reproduce his original work in all possible ways, peculiar to this or that art ". If all artists are given the exclusive right to reproduce their works in all ways that are characteristic of their art, then there is no reason to suppose that dramatic writers of the two ways of publicizing were left only one, unprofitable and unusual for their art. There can be no doubt that the literary way of publishing dramatic works is unprofitable for the authors. In a rare provincial town, you can find more than one copy of a famous play, while the same play was re-watched by the whole town at its theater. The author's creation is widespread, but the benefits of its distribution are in the wrong hands.
5) Although dramatic property has not yet been defined by the Censorship Charter, it is already installed our legislation: article 2276 of the Penal Code ed. 1857 (Art. 1684 ed. 1866) prohibits, on pain of punishment, the presentation of a dramatic work in public without the permission of the author. By virtue of this clause, all proprietors of private theaters now in existence must be imprisoned in a restraining house if dramatic writers wish to persecute them. But since, in the absence of positive laws on the rights of dramatic property, it is almost impossible for the authors to prove and calculate the losses caused to them (although compensation for losses is awarded to them by the same Art. 1684), and the criminal prosecution of theater owners is not only completely useless, but also coupled with expenses, the owners of private theaters remain unpunished for violators of the law and property rights. But this order of things should not continue, since it violates the main foundations of civil improvement: respect for the law and inviolability of someone else's property.
These are the grounds, which are found in our legislation, according to which dramatic writers can consider their right to dramatic property already recognized and ready to be exercised. To be a valid law with a practical application, dramatic property lacks only those positive definitions that exist in the Censorship Charter for other types of property - for literary, artistic and musical.
Definitions (grounds of ownership, terms of use and order of protection), which are desirable for dramatic property, will not constitute anything new in our legislation: they are directly derived from the already existing legalizations about artistic property, which is identical with dramatic property.
The compiler of the note dares to think that the provisions presented below satisfy the aforementioned conditions as far as possible.
DRAFT DRAMATIC PROPERTY LAW
1) Writers and translators of dramatic plays, in addition to the right of literary ownership of their works (Art. 282 Cens, mouth.), Enjoy dramatic property throughout their entire lives. It consists in the author's right to authorize the public presentation of his works.
This paragraph is drawn up on the basis of Art. 321 Cens. mouth Lifetime use of copyright is hardly open to opposition. A working person has the right to be provided for during his old age and illness; and what better and more just can he be provided, if not the fruits of his own labors?
2) Public representations should be those for which, on the basis of Art. 194 XIV volume of the Code of Laws (Charter on the prevention and suppression of crimes), permission of the police is requested.
3) The right of dramatic property after the death of the author passes to his heirs by law or by will, if during his lifetime it was not transferred to them to someone else.
Art. 323 Cens. mouth
4) The term of use of the right of dramatic property, to whom the right is transferred, lasts no longer than 50 years from the date of the death of the author or from the date of the publication of his posthumous work.
Fairness and relevance in the draft of the 3rd and 4th §§, in addition to the analogy in the legalizations of artistic property, in everything identical with the dramatic, have stronger and more substantial grounds behind them.
a) The works are stage and so short-lived; the repertoire changes almost daily. How many plays are left in the repertoire of the closest authors, loved by the public - Kukolnik, Polevoy, Prince Shakhovsky, Zagoskin, Lensky? None. The term of use of the dramatic work is already short; a lot, if after the death of a dramatic writer one or two of his plays survive for another year. Why deprive his heirs of this little? At present, of all our more than a century-old dramatic literature, only two plays remain on the stage: The Inspector General and Woe from Wit; if in the next century there will be two or three such plays that can bring benefits to theaters for a long time without losing their value, then justice requires that theaters share at least some part of their benefits with those heirs for whom the author worked during his lifetime ...
b) The consideration that human life is subject to accidents and that everyone can suddenly die, should significantly lower the price of dramatic property. Who would want to acquire dearly and to establish for themselves such works that tomorrow may go into free public use?
c) The value of dramatic property, already diminished by the assumption of an accidental death of a writer, will decrease more and more for him, the weaker his health will be and the closer he moves to old age and, consequently, the more he will need material support. Finally, who will pay at least something for the last labor to the poor, dying worker, when this labor, perhaps tomorrow, can be taken for free? Thus, the right to a dramatic property only on paper will remain for life, but in fact it will die no longer with the owner, but before him. And the older or more painful the author is, the earlier his right will die and the more helpless it will be.
d) In the states Western Europe where dramatic literature is more developed (France, Italy, etc.), dramatic property is hereditary and the term of its use is constantly increasing. When in France the posthumous period for the use of dramatic property was five years, this is what Beaumarchais wrote in his petition to the Legislative Assembly on December 23, 1791:
Toutes les proprietes legitimes se transmettent pures et intactes d "un honime a tous ses descendants. Tous les fruits de son industrie, la terre qu" il a defrichee, les choses qu "il a fabriquees, appartiennent, jusqu" a la vente qu " ils ont toujours le droit d "en faire, a ses heritiers, quels qu" ils soient. Personne ne leur dit jamais; "Le pre, le tableau, la statue, fruit du travail ou du genie, que votre pere vous a laisse, not doit plus vous appartenir, quand vous aurez fauche, ce pre, ou grave ce tableau, ou bien moulu cette statue pendant cinq ans apres sa mort; chacun alors aura le droit d "en profiter autant que vous".
Personne ne leur dit cela. Et pourtant quel defrichement, quelle production emanee du pinceau, du ciseau des homines leur appartient plus exclusivement, quelle production emanee du pinceau, du ciseau des hommes leur appartient plus exclusivement, plus legitimement que l "oeuvre du theater echappee, etie du poete lui couta plus de travail?
Cependant, tous leurs descendants conservent leurs proprietes; le malheureux fils d "un auteur perd a la sienne au bout de cinq ans d" une jouissance plus que douteuse, au meme souvent illusoire, - spectacle cette tres-courte heredite pouvant etre eludee par les directeurs desles, en laissant reposer les pieces de D auteur qui vient de mourir pendant les cinq ans qui s "ecoulent jusqu" a 1 "instant ou les ouvrages, aux termes du premier decret, deviennent leur propriete, il s" ensuivrait que les enfants tres malheureux des gens de lettres, dont la plupart ne laissent de fortune qu "un vain renom et leurs ouvrages, se verraient tous exheredes par la severite des lois *.
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* Any legal property passes intact and intact from a person to all his descendants. All the fruits of his activity - the land he plowed, the things he produced - belong to his heirs, whoever they are, who always have the right to sell them. No one will ever say to them: "A meadow, a picture, a statue - the fruit of labor or inspiration left to you by your father - should no longer belong to you, - after you have mowed this meadow, engraved this picture or cast this statue for five years after his death; after this period, everyone will have the right to use them in the same way as you. " 6) No original and translated dramatic work, even if it has already been printed or played, can be publicly presented without the permission of the author or translator.
Nobody will tell them that. And yet, why should arable land or the work of a brush or a chisel be a more exclusive and more legitimate property of people than a theatrical work produced by the poet's genius, did they cost them more work?
However, all their heirs retain their property rights, and the poet's ill-fated son is deprived of his right after five years of using it - the use of it is more than dubious and even often imaginary, since theater owners can bypass this very short-term inheritance right without putting on the stage plays by the deceased writer for five years, after which these works, by virtue of the first decree, become common property. As a result of this, the ill-fated children of writers, in most cases leaving behind only fruitless fame and their writings, are completely bereft of inheritance due to the cruelty of the laws.
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As a result of this petition, the five-year term was extended for another five years. But the French did not stop there: the government commission, chaired by Minister of State Walewski, completed in April 1863 a project on literary and artistic property: in this project, the Commission was not even satisfied with a 50-year term ("Commision de la propriete litte-raire et artistique ", Paris, 1863).
The Commission, proud of its work, writes in its report: "Quand des actes semblables ont pris place dans la legislation d" un pays, ils doivent y rester pour la gloire du souve-rain qui les a introduits, pour l "honneur de la nation qui a su les comprendre et aussi pour servir d "exemple et d" enseig-nement "*.
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* When such decrees were included in the country's legislation, they should remain in it, to the glory of the monarch who legitimized them, to the honor of a petition that knew how to evaluate them, and also in order to serve as an example and a lesson. (Translated from a copy of Morozov.)
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5) The right of dramatic ownership of works can be sold or assigned by the author during his lifetime; in this case, it completely passes to the acquirer and his legal heirs. The transfer of the right to dramatic property is carried out in compliance with all the formalities established by law for such transactions.
Art. 325 Cens. mouth
The fact that the authors did not prosecute the violators of the dramatic law within two years (Art. 317 Cens, mouth) does not in the least mean that the authors waive their right. Non-prosecution for a period of two years only frees from the court and its consequences the person who has taken advantage of someone else's property, but does not in the least transfer to him the right to repeat his offense. Otherwise, you can come to such an absurdity that a violation of the law can acquire any right. The inviolability of dramatic property is established by the law of 1857, and everything written after 1857 must belong to the authors. The owners of theaters have had enough of the mercy that they are not persecuted.
Such a provision in the Dramatic Property Charter is absolutely necessary for the following reasons:
a) Private theaters are scattered throughout Russia; about which plays are given in Yekaterinburg, Buzuluk, Sterlitamak, Staraya Russa, Kremenchug - the authors who live mainly in the capitals cannot have any information. Maintaining agents in all cities of Russia will represent more costs than benefits for authors.
b) The remoteness from the capitals and the weakness of supervision can tempt the owners of private theaters and involve them in an offense, for which, if persecuted, they will have to pay dearly and still be imprisoned in a restraining house. The concept of the crime of counterfeiting is not yet clear enough in our provinces; without warning by the police, a large number of cases of copyright infringement can be expected for the first time, which is not at all desirable due to the severity of the punishment.
c) Prevention of misdemeanors and crimes for which the law threatens severe punishment is one of the main duties of the police power.
8) For unauthorized performance in front of the public of a dramatic work belonging to anyone on the rights of dramatic property, the perpetrators, in excess of responsibility under Art. 1684 Code about nak., are subjected, in favor of the one whose right is violated, to collect double payment for all seats in the theater in which the aforementioned performance took place. In clubs and gatherings, the price for all seats in theater halls is determined by the admission fee charged to guests on the days of performances - and in no case less than 1 ruble in silver.
Art. 351 Cens. mouth imposes for an unauthorized performance before the public of an opera or oratorio the penalty of a "double tax" received for the performance in which such a piece was played; but this amount of collection is inconvenient: 1) calculating the collection from any performance, especially after some time, with the uncontrolledness of our theaters, presents insurmountable difficulties; 2) there is some inconsistency in this amount of the penalty. Unauthorized performance in front of the public of someone else's work is counterfeiting; for all types of counterfeiting, the criminal penalty is the same; the same should be the monetary penalty. For a counterfeit print of someone else's book, the counterfeiter pays for all copies, both sold and unsold; And for a counterfeit performance of someone else's play, the counterfeiter is awarded to pay for seats in the theater only sold?
Art. 351 Cens. mouth would be completely inapplicable to performances given in clubs and gatherings: members and seasonal visitors, having paid a lump sum for their annual or seasonal ticket, do not pay anything to enter the performances; therefore, the more a club has members, i.e. the richer he is, the less, if foreclosed, he will pay for copyright infringement, since with a large number of members, guests paying for admission to the performance, the most limited number may be admitted, and the performance fee will be negligible. Meanwhile, the harm from counterfeit performance of someone else's play depends not on the price of seats, but on the number of visitors. Thus, a gratuitous counterfeit presentation is much more unprofitable for authors than an expensive one. In the latter case, it will be available to a few, and in the first, to the entire public. For clubs, completely gratuitous performances are also not unprofitable: the audience, attracted by a gratuitous performance, with a profit covers the club's expenses for the performance by an increased demand for food, wine, cards, etc. and the very fees from it in the imperial theaters, from which the authors receive a reward: who would want to pay for a seat in the theater, if, as a member, he can see the same play in the club for free? If a play, according to its merits, can give ten fees at the imperial theater, then now it will give only no more than five, and the other five are lost to the author: they are held in clubs from which the authors receive nothing. Dramatic writers have long expected the government to take action to end this blatant violation of their property rights.
9) Cases of violation of the right of dramatic property are carried out, in a civil and criminal manner, on the basis of legalizations established for the protection of copyright property rights of Art. 319 - 320 Cens. mouth and Art. 217 Const. citizen legal proceedings.
10) Permission for public performance of dramatic works is given by their authors or translators or persons who have the right of dramatic ownership to them, with a precise designation of the person to whom the permission is granted and the time of use of that permission.
Note. With the permission to publicly present the play, no other rights are transferred from the author to the person who is given permission, except for the right of personal use under the conditions indicated in the permission. Permission given to one person does not deprive the author of the right to authorize the performance of the same play to others.
11) Translations and alterations of foreign plays, after their promulgation by means of printing, go to common use... In the same way, translations and alterations are made for general use if the theater, which has them in exclusive use, renounces its right, allowing the presentation of them to some other theater.
Translations and alterations do not require any special work and abilities, and therefore cannot claim any other remuneration other than the usual literary fee for such works.
OBJECTIONS AGAINST DRAMATIC PROPERTY RIGHT
Reasoning about dramatic property is not new in our society and literature; some of the statements by dramatic writers have already met with objections, strong and energetic in tone, but hardly such in practice. The main objections are:
1) Dramatic writers for their works are sufficiently rewarded with fees from the imperial theaters, and their further claims only testify to their selfishness.
First, in this objection, even if we admit the validity of its first proposition, the mistake is that the legal question is examined from a moral point of view. Moral teachings about human vanity and greed are valid only in general and abstract judgments about virtue; but in cases based on property rights, on obligations, they are in the least inappropriate. No matter how much the debtor lavishes moral maxims before creditors, such as that "not the one who is poor who has little, but the one who desires a lot" and "not the one who is happy who has much, but the one who is satisfied with little," they they will not be satisfied and their claims will still remain claims requiring material satisfaction.
Secondly, this objection, apart from logical inconsistency, is not true. The remuneration given to dramatic authors by the imperial theaters is not sufficient; on the contrary, it is very insufficient, almost negligible. The imperially approved regulation on the remuneration of authors and translators for plays has existed unchanged since November 13, 1827; now, after 42 years, not only the fee for works of art, but in general the prices for all labor have risen significantly, and only the authors of dramatic plays are forced to work at the rate of 1827. Almost everywhere for a play that has already been printed, which makes up a whole performance, the minimum remuneration is 10% of the collection, and for handwritten ones it is much more significant; in our country, only for plays in verse, in 5 or 4 acts, the author receives 10%, and then - not from the full collection, but from two-thirds; and for five-act comedies and dramas in prose, printed and unpublished, - fifteenth of two-thirds, i.e. only 4 4/9% of the full charge. Not to mention France, where the author of two or three plays can make himself a secure position, in Italy, according to the latest copyright law (1862), a dramatic writer can receive for 5 acts of comedy in prose up to 15% of the total collection in metropolitan theaters and , in addition, 10% each from provincial theaters; and in Italy there are as many cities as there are almost as many theaters. We advise the author not to be greedy and be content with only four with a small percentage from two theaters throughout Russia!
A four-percent pay, although in no way representing a remuneration for labor, could be for the authors at least a kind of help or material support in the event that the metropolitan theaters, using their monopoly, wanted to expand the range of their activities to the limits indicated by the need. ; but that is not the case either.
Until the spring of 1853 he existed in Moscow for dramatic performances the big Petrovsky theater - and that was small for the entire Moscow public; since that time, with the gradual development of a class of middle and small merchants and officials, the Moscow public more than doubled; in addition, several railways every morning deliver nonresident audience to Moscow from 14 or 15 provinces, for which one of the main conditions of a trip to Moscow is to visit the theater. What? Now - two or three big Russians dramatic theater? No: Russian performances have been transferred to the Maly Theater, which is half the size of the Bolshoi. In Moscow, the average public, both Moscow and nonresident, has absolutely nowhere to go: for it there is neither the theater, into which it strives, nor other pleasures; only taverns remain. Meanwhile, the average audience needs the theater more than any other: it is just beginning to wean itself from domestic and tavern drinking, it is just beginning to get a taste for elegant pleasures, but there is no place for it in the theater. This audience will not go to armchairs for nothing, being embarrassed by their costume and their manners; she needs coupons, - and there are only 54 numbers for the whole of Moscow, and besides, the price for them, due to the increased demand for tickets, equaled in the hands of the businessmen with the price of the front row seats. The profiteering of the business, which is inevitable where the demand greatly exceeds the supply, having significantly raised the prices of seats, made them inaccessible to people, albeit educated, but insufficient, to whom the majority of student youth and young officials belong; for the merchant class, the high cost would not hurt, but there are no places, not even expensive ones. Many families in Moscow have given up even all attempts to be in the theater: what is the probability of getting a ticket when ten applicants for each seat appear at the box office? Leaving aside the question: should an aesthetic, noble pastime be made expensive and inaccessible rarity, let us turn to something else: how much will a dramatic author receive for his works at a low percentage and with such a course of action?
The privileged theater does not want to take the money that is offered to it, with which the audience flocks to it; from this, and the authors receive less than half of what they could receive in the capitals, even with the present meager remuneration. So, sufficient is insufficient and considerable is very small.
But, firstly, poverty is not a prerequisite for entrepreneurship; today a poor entrepreneur keeps the theater, and tomorrow a rich one can take over the same theater. Secondly, there is no reason to assume that dramatic authors are richer than entrepreneurs and therefore must support them with their work. Third, such a coercive tax on dramatic authors in favor of the poor is too high: according to the most moderate calculation, it accounts for more than half of all the income that the author receives from his work. Fourth, it is hardly fair to deprive dramatic authors of the opportunity to do a good deed, that is, the opportunity to donate your work to a really poor person. Fifth, not all entrepreneurs can be called poor: most of them have the means to pay 100 rubles to useful actors. a month and a benefit performance in the winter, and the best actors - up to 200 rubles. per month and up to 4 benefits per year. The best actors in the capital in the provinces were usually offered 1000 rubles. for 10 performances and a benefit, provided in 1000 rubles, and now they offer even better conditions. The people who can afford such spending are not poor. A smart entrepreneur should only sacrifice one performance per season in favor of the authors, and he will be disappointed with them for a whole year of using their plays. If it were even required to devote two performances in favor of the authors, then there would be almost no harm to entrepreneurs.
The remark about the poverty of provincial cities, on which the author's fees would be taxed, does not even deserve refutation. If a city is very poor, then no one will run a theater in it without an author's fee; if the theater exists, but the fees are so small that it is enough only to feed the owner, then the author's part will be so insignificant that no one will be flattered by it. In general, the authors have no intention of ruining the development of theatrical art in Russia; on the contrary, they will have to try by all means to strengthen and support it as a source of their own income. And why should one assume that dramatic authors, desiring recognition of their right, certainly reckon on provincial theaters?
Finally, a final objection:
If it is difficult, then it is still possible; if it were impossible, then there is nothing to say. In any case, there is a lot of excessive solicitude for dramatic authors in this objection; maybe they will not be afraid to work in order to get what they should. As long as the right to receive has not been exercised, it is tricky to judge whether it will be difficult or not difficult to receive it; it turns out to be in practice. Maybe it will be easy. Of course, if every dramatic author wants to conduct his own business with entrepreneurs separately from others, then their mutual relations will be difficult; but if dramatic writers form a society and elect commissioners from among their midst, who, on behalf of the whole society, are allowed to enter into relations with the owners of private theaters, conclude conditions with them, monitor their execution and prosecute violators of the right of dramatic property, then the whole matter will be greatly simplified.
Ostrovsky Alexander Nikolaevich (1823-1886) - an outstanding Russian playwright, corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences.
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