I actually find in America, there's a slight snobbery about actors who go back and forth between big heavy dramas and popcorn fare. That always intrigues me, because that doesn't exist in the same way in Britain. And I imagine it would be worse. In terms of the sort of class, and the sort of snobby, slightly on the back-foot thing Britain has. But it's much more prevalent in America. I'm really intrigued by it. I don't know why that is. But I'm aiming to break down those barriers by being in a Shakespeare film and a Smurfs film within six months of each other.
Drama, instead of telling us the whole of a man's life, must place him in such a situation, tie such a knot, that when it is untied, the whole man is visible.
A third variety of drama ... begins as tragedy with scraps of fun in it ... and ends in comedy without mirth in it, the place of mirth being taken by a more or less bitter and critical irony.
The drama is complete poetry. The ode and the epic contain it only in germ; it contains both of them in a state of high development, and epitomizes both.
Whence had they come The hand and lash that beat down frigid Rome? What sacred drama through her body heaved When world-transforming Charlemagne was conceived?
JACK That is nonsense. If I marry a charming girl like Gwendolen, and she is the only girl I ever saw in my life that I would marry, I certainly won't want to know Bunbury. ALGERNON Then your wife will. You don't seem to realize, that in married life three is company and two is none. JACK That, my dear young friend, is the theory that the corrupt French Drama has been propounding for the last fifty years. ALGERNON Yes; and that the happy English home has proved in half the time.
Comedy is more difficult than drama. I think it's really difficult to make someone laugh because people have very different comedic sensibilities. In drama, you can get away with being a great actor and surrounded by great actors and having good writing. But in comedy you have to listen and you have to perform with a certain rhythm, because if you don't, it's like playing a wrong note in the orchestra and you can hear the off key and it will fall flat and you won't get that instant response.
I'm not a plumber who accidentally blew up or a math professor who accidentally backed into notoriety. I have a master's from Yale drama, and I auditioned for this. So obviously I want to be in the limelight in some capacity, or I want to be in entertainment in some capacity.
Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart. The nearer I approach the end, the plainer I hear around me the immortal symphonies of the worlds which invite me. . . . For half a century I have been writing thoughts in prose, verse, history, drama, romance, tradition, satire, ode, and song. I have tried them all, but I feel I have not said a thousandth part of that which is within me. When I go down to the grave, I can say "I have finished my day's work," but I cannot say "I have finished my life's work."
On the Greek stage a drama, or acted story, consisted in reality of three dramas, called together a trilogy, and performed consecutively in the course of one day.