 video lecture I'm going to continue with my discussion on history of theatre. In the last video lecture I've already talked about the emergence of drama, then I talked about Greek theatre, theatre which came up during the Middle Ages, then later I talked about the renaissance and about the Jacobian age. Now in this video lecture I'm going to talk about restoration theatre and theatre which followed restoration age. But before we talk about restoration theatre it is first important to understand that why theatres were banned. What was the reason why theatres were banned from 1642 to 1660? Because after Jacobian age came the reign of King Charles I and something happened during the reign of Charles I which led to the ban of theatres. So in order to summarise the entire story I would like to tell you that King Charles I had problems with parliament due to which parliament removed them from the throne and parliament took the charge and parliament was dominated with Puritans thus Puritanism spread in England from 1642 to 1660. As you know that Puritans were against theatre they were extremely rigid devotional people and due to their strict religious belief they did not like theatres. Just like theatres were not liked by Roman Catholic Church. Similarly even Puritans did not like theatre and Oliver Cromwell who was the protector of England when Charles I was removed from the throne. During that time we find that Oliver Cromwell banned the theatre for next 18 years. Later after 18 years when Charles II with the sum of Charles I was re-stole to the throne theatres were re-opened and then came restoration age. But before that you must also remember the thing that restoration age somewhere was very much influenced by French ideals because King Charles II had this upbringing in France so he was quite influenced by the French manners and thus you find influence of French manners in the restoration theatre as well. When theatres opened in 1660 two important changes come. Number one change was that women became a part of theatres so they were acting also and they also started their journey as a playwright and that is when Afra went with the first female playwright and she wrote this fabulous work called Rover. So first important change is that females made their entry into the stage. The second important change which happened during this period was that comedy of manors which is a new set of theatrical performance started during this period. Comedy of manor was started by George Etheridge in his work called Love in a Thumb. And this comedy of manors talked about the elaborative style of high-class people and you'll find that all the theatre which was theatrical performance which was a part of restoration age only focused on the manners of high-class people and they only kind of stick to the subject of high-class men aristocratic families and their lifestyle. So they had no moral message they were purely written for entertainment purpose and that is what angered Jeremy Collier due to which he wrote this wonderful pamphlet called Immortality and Profaneness in English Stage. So in this pamphlet he criticized the theatres which were written during restoration age and thus we can see that restoration comedy and restoration theatres are not so much appreciated again now. They are counted as the inferior form of drama. We celebrate the Aesopheaton Theatre, we celebrate Jacobian theatres but hardly people praise the plays which were written during restoration age. So this was about the restoration theatre now let's see how theatre moved forward. After restoration age came the age of enlightenment and during the age of enlightenment we don't find great playwrights coming in because the energy of all the great writers were focused more on writing prose pieces. It was a time when novels started and people celebrated the written word so people started celebrating novels pamphlets essays so it was a time when all these things were in the full bloom. Later came romantic age and during romanticism when it started in Germany and then came back to England we find that plays were written which was said to be melodramas so all the romantic plays fall under the category of melodrama. Melodrama means a kind of play in which hero always succeeds okay and all these plays had a common theme that they showed how a hero used to struggle with the unjust society so that theme was very common during the plays which were written during romantic age. We have two great romantic writers that you must remember to great romantic playwrights that you should definitely read if you're preparing for UGC net english. One is Johan Vulcon von Gorth who has written a famous play called Faust which you can see how it is connected with Dr Faustus. The second important playwright is Alexander Dubis who has written a play called Three Musketeers. Now if you have ever watched the movies London, Millenia, I'm pretty sure that you must know about this world Three Musketeers because there was a reference in the movie about this book. So these two writers were extremely marvelous and they were writing some really really amazing plays. You can get a list of all the important writers playwrights poets and novels that you must study if you're preparing for UGC net english on my website arkadakalva.com there's a list of 700 writers which I have covered as a part of my online course. If you like that list you can even subscribe to my online audio course in which I give you detailed notes, audio lectures on all these writers. So coming back to the discussion on the romantic age you might not come across great romantic writers from England but Romanticism was a vast movement. It started in Germany and it spread across Europe. So there were so many other playwrights who were writing in other parts of Europe during the same period and they were working hard in order to create some really marvelous plays which we celebrate even today. After Romanticism came the literary movement of realism. Now realism is a movement which was a reaction towards romantic idealism. So in Romanticism everything was glorified and people used to worship nature and find solace in nature whereas realism in the place written as a part of realism theatrical group we find that those plays were dark and they talked about dark human truths just like if you look at plays of Anton Chikov who was a realist writer who wrote this wonderful play called Cherry Orchid. On the other hand we had other writers like Leo Tolstoy who started the entire genre of psychological realism in Russia. So he began writing plays which talked about characters life. Basically these plays cooped up the characters life, their inner thinking, psychological processes. So all these things were a part of realism which started just after Romanticism ended. Influenced by realism came another theatrical group which is called naturalism. Naturalism and realism both have so much in common. Both of them depicted truth. Both of them depicted the honest picture of society and naturalism was quite influenced by Charles Darwin's theory of survival of fitness. We also find that when you read more about naturalist theatre you see that almost all the plays written under naturalist theatre talked about how class and hierarchy is inscapable and we cannot escape it, we cannot get out of it and how they serve as barriers to our success. So that is the common theme which was taken up by naturalist writers. As a part of naturalist theatre study you must remember these two works. The first work is an essay which is written by Emile Zola called Naturalism in Theatre in which he talks about the traits that you must remember which are a former part of naturalist theatre. The second important work that somewhere tells you or summarizes the entire naturalist theatre is Augustine Burns' play Miss Julie. If you read this play you will be able to connect so much with naturalism and you will see almost all the characteristics of naturalist theatre in this play. So make sure that you remember these two works, Emile Zola's Naturalism in Theatre and Augustine Burns' Miss Julie. Naturalism was going on at its own pace but on the other hand we find that as World War I started the entire humanity was shocked to see the repercussions. The entire humanity was shocked to see how technology can lead to such a great war and this led to another theatrical group which started writing about Common Man and we have writers like Arthur Miller, T. S. Eliot, we have writers like Tennis R. William who are writing about Common Man and Arthur Miller has written this beautiful essay which is called Tragedy and Common Man in which he says that theatre must depict the light of Common Man. So the entire focus of the theatre shifted to Common Man. You can see how during the restoration period people were talking about high-class people, aristocratic people and now in the modern period people are only talking about Common Man like you and me. So this was the central idea of the modern theatre. They talked about the sense of alienation, the pain that a modern man went through. Daily we find that theatre progresses more and then comes Theatre of Absurd which talks about how the entire human existence has no meaning. Everything is so absurd, there is no meaning, there is no truth, everything is shattered, sense of alienation is dominating this world and this was celebrated in the plays of Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter. So this is how theatre moved. Now if you look from the beginning you see that theatre has progressed a lot from the time when theatre was performed as a part of Greek culture and if you compare it to today's scenario you see that there are so many changes which happened over a period of time. Some changes became part of the theatrical culture while others were rejected. Some changes came sustained over a period of time and later it was rejected because they became outdated and this is how drama kept on progressing. There are a lot more topics that I will be exploring in my video lectures so stay tuned to my channel, do subscribe to my channel so that you are notified every time I post a video. I post videos every Saturday and every Saturday exclusively for net aspirants and I would be really appreciative if you can give this video a big fan thumbs up and you can also share your views in the comment section below. You can also go to my facebook, instagram and google plus pages and look at the go net quiz that I'm providing. If you like that quiz you can share and like those pages so that other people are also benefited out of it. 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