closet drama
- noun
- /ˈklɒzɪt ˈdrɑːmə/
- Literature
:
drama de armario
- Many famous authors have written closet dramas, allowing readers to engage with the text without a theatrical performance.
Examples
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Because Romantic closet dramas, in their rejection of the nineteenth-century stage, vehemently declared their allegiance to print literature, it makes sense to read them in the context of poetics.
Academic text (2017) -
However, she also merges stage drama and closet drama by inscribing the facets of the embodiment into the poetics of these pieces, in addition to simply bolstering the number of stage directions.
Academic text (2017) -
On the one hand, these plays, which are sold as books and not acting scripts, imitate Romantic closet dramas; on the other, these works, which play with performativity, refuse that straightforward classification.
Academic text (2017) -
The book club decided to read a classic closet drama that explores deep philosophical themes.
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As an interesting addition to the curriculum, the teacher introduced a closet drama that students could analyze in class.
How Performable
Surface Forms
Morphology
The components 'closet' (private chamber) + 'drama' (play) suggest a play associated with privacy or private reading, so a learner can infer some relation to non-public performance. However, the specific convention that such a play is intended to be read rather than staged is a literary/cultural detail that is not fully predictable from the parts alone, so prior exposure or explanation is usually required.
Etymology
The term closet drama may come from the old meaning of closet as a small private room or study, where a drama would be read quietly instead of being performed on stage. So the phrase came to mean 'a play written to be read rather than performed'.