Drama began not as a written text but as a civic ritual in ancient Athens, where the dominant culture of the fifth century BC effectively invented theatre. The earliest surviving drama, Aeschylus' The Persians, won first prize at the City Dionysia competition in 472 BC, yet the playwright had been writing plays for more than twenty-five years by that time. This competition, which may have begun as early as 534 BC, institutionalized three genres: tragedy, comedy, and the satyr play. The word drama itself derives from the Greek term meaning deed or act, rooted in the verb to do, emphasizing that the poet was a maker of plots rather than a writer of verses. Thespis, credited with the innovation of an actor who speaks and impersonates a character, interacted with the chorus, a traditional part of non-dramatic poetry. While five dramatists are known to have survived, only a small fraction of their work remains today, including complete texts by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, and Menander. The structure of these plays was directly influenced by collaborative production and collective reception, presupposing a performance before an audience that was essential to the form.
Roman Adaptations
Following the expansion of the Roman Republic into Greek territories between 270 and 240 BC, Rome encountered Greek drama and began its own regular theatrical tradition in 240 BC. Livius Andronicus wrote the first important works of Roman literature, tragedies and comedies, while Gnaeus Naevius followed five years later, though no plays from either writer have survived. By the beginning of the second century BC, a guild of writers known as the collegium poetarum had been formed, and drama was firmly established in Rome. The surviving Roman comedies are all fabula palliata, based on Greek subjects, and come from two dramatists: Titus Maccius Plautus and Publius Terentius Afer. Plautus, the more popular of the two, wrote between 205 and 184 BC, and twenty of his comedies survive, including his farces which are best known for the wit of his dialogue and his use of a variety of poetic meters. Terence wrote six comedies between 166 and 160 BC, all of which have survived, and his double-plots enabled a sophisticated presentation of contrasting human behavior. While no early Roman tragedy survives, historians know of three early tragedians: Quintus Ennius, Marcus Pacuvius, and Lucius Accius. From the time of the empire, nine of Seneca's tragedies survive, all of which are fabula crepidata, adapted from Greek originals, including his Phaedra, which was based on Euripides' Hippolytus.Medieval Mysteries
Beginning in the early Middle Ages, churches staged dramatized versions of biblical events known as liturgical dramas to enliven annual celebrations. The earliest example is the Easter trope Whom do you Seek, which spread through Europe to Russia, Scandinavia, and Italy by the 11th century, excluding Islamic-era Spain. In the 10th century, Hrosvitha wrote six plays in Latin modeled on Terence's comedies but which treated religious subjects, marking the first known plays composed by a female dramatist and the first identifiable Western drama of the post-Classical era. In England, trade guilds began to perform vernacular mystery plays, which were composed of long cycles of many playlets or pageants. Four cycles survive: York with 48 plays, Chester with 24, Wakefield with 32, and the so-called N-Town with 42. The Second Shepherds' Play from the Wakefield cycle is a farcical story of a stolen sheep that its protagonist, Mak, tries to pass off as his new-born child asleep in a crib. Morality plays emerged as a distinct dramatic form around 1400 and flourished in the early Elizabethan era in England, where characters were used to represent different ethical ideals. Everyman includes figures such as Good Deeds, Knowledge, and Strength, reinforcing the conflict between good and evil for the audience. The Castle of Perseverance depicts an archetypal figure's progress from birth through to death, while Horestes brings together the classical story of Orestes with a Vice from the medieval allegorical tradition.