More Notes

CHARACTERIZATION IN DRAMA

Characterization is the means by which a writer reveals a character’s personality. In a work of fiction, a character may be developed through a variety of different methods, including direct statements about the character’s personality and insights into the character’s thoughts and feelings. Similarly, the verse dramas written before Ibsen’s time often included soliloquies in which characters revealed their innermost thoughts directly to the audience. In contrast, realistic dramas generally do not include soliloquies, because in real life people rarely recite their thoughts aloud. As a result, characters in a realistic drama must be developed through physical appearances, comments, and actions and through other characters’ remarks about them. Everything the audiemce learns about the characters, including their names and occupations, must be revealed through the characters’ comments, actions, and appearances. Yet the dialogue cannot be written with the sole intention of conveying details about the characters. Instead, the dialogue must seem natural and realistic, as if it were taken from real-life conversations.