Closet drama

A closet drama is a play that is not intended to be performed onstage. It is intended to be read by a solitary reader, or, sometimes, to be read out loud in a group. While all plays can be read as literature without being performed, closet dramas were never intended for the stage at all.

The philosophical dialogues of ancient Greek and Roman writers such as Plato were written in the form of conversations between "characters" and are therefore similar to closet drama. In fact, it is speculated that Plato based his dialogue form on scripts for mime farces, if they existed as early as the fourth century. (The earliest extant mimes date to the Alexandrian period).

The tragedies of Seneca in the first century BC, though modelled on Greek tragedy, were probably never meant for performance. They were intended to be read or recited at small gatherings of the wealthy [1]. The emperor Nero, a pupil of Seneca's, may have performed some of them, however. Some of the drama of the Middle Ages was also of this type, such as the drama of Hroswitha of Gandersheim, or dialectical works such as The Debate of Body and Soul or the Interludium de Clerico et Puella. John Milton's play Samson Agonistes, written in 1671, is an example of Early modern drama never intended for the stage.

Closet drama written in verse form became very popular in Western Europe after 1800; these plays were by and large inspired by Classical models. Faust, Part 1 and Faust, Part 2 by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, among the most acclaimed pieces in the history of German literature, were written as closet dramas. Nonetheless, both plays are often performed onstage today in Germany and France. Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, as well as a host of other figures, also devoted much time to the closet drama.