Verse drama and dramatic verse

A verse drama is a drama that is mostly written in metric bound language. The occasional occurrence of verses, in the form of scattered songs, is not sufficient to classify a drama as verse drama, but large parts of the main text must be written in verse. Until the 18th century, the verse drama was the only dramatic writing, then increasingly dramas were written in prose. However, the term " poetic drama " is used to distinguish from prose form is detectable only since the early 20th century.

Aristotle defines in his Poetics the drama itself as " imitation in verse ." Ancient and medieval dramas are almost exclusively written in verse form, with different time signatures were prevalent in different eras. In the German literature up to about 1600 the doggerel was widespread, which was then displaced by the Alexandrians, and finally in the 18th century blank verse. In classical French drama of the Alexandrians was predominant, while alternate blank verse and prose passages in the plays of William Shakespeare. In Shakespeare translations, the use of German literature with the verse drama reflects. Early German translations of Shakespeare Verspassagen mostly ignored and translated it as prose; so it is with Christoph Martin Wieland's all Shakespeare translations to prose texts as well as in their completions by Johann Joachim Eschenburg. It was not until August Wilhelm von Schlegel tried to faithfulness to the original versions of poetry in blank verse, which he met with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and the poets of the Sturm und Drang on consent.

Since the late 19th century an increasing importance came dramas that were written in prose, to which eventually rather urged the verse drama to the edge. Major prose dramatists of this period were about Henrik Ibsen and Anton Chekhov, while Hugo von Hofmannsthal and William Butler Yeats important representatives of verse drama of this era were. A later theoretical advocates of verse drama was TS Eliot, who regarded it as a superior form and own, relatively free metrics developed, which were based on the spoken everyday language.

A domain of the verse drama is always also the musical theater.