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Because Their Hearts Were Pure…..Audience Education Guide
MELODRAMA…what is it all about?
The word Melodrama has many types of uses in modern vernacular. It mutations are plentiful yet the
origin of its definition comes from "music drama" which means the using music to increase emotions or to
signify characters. This has been a theatrical tool since the Greeks and could be found throughout the
heyday of Melodrama and now in cinema and musicals.
During the 19th century melodrama was the primary form of theatre. Its structure contained a simplified
moral universe with good and evil embodied in stock characters. It was a serious play written to arouse
intense audience emotions through blood curdling events, terrific suspense, and horrifying details centering
on unethical situations. Motivation and logic in the plotline were not important.
It was and still is an excellent example of a very structure and predictable plot along with the use of
costume, sets, lighting and music to represent the character's emotional states and the plot’s dramatic
tensions. Fast moving plots full of violent and terrible events (murders, suicides, fires, train crashes, guilty
secrets, and real estate scandals) took precedence over characterization with virtuous heroes and heroines
beset by disasters and under attack by sinister villains which were all depicted through very emotional and
presentational performance styles. Usually the typical heroine was placed in a ghastly predicament from
which the hero, owing to entanglements from other evil scheme, was unable to rescue her.
In addition, deus ex machina (Greek translation- God from the machine) the sudden appearance of an
solution as an answer to a complicated situation was many times the concluding plot point use to solve the
protagonist’s dilemma. Thus, the public never questioned why things turned out as they did and could
always take comfort that all would turn out well in the end because “Good always triumphs over evil!”
Melodrama directors, producers and playwrights of this period fervently believed, with reasoning
sometimes based on “scientific” evidence, that if the play followed a certain narrative pattern then the
audience would give the correct instinctual emotional response to the production.
In addition, the audience did not just sit passively in performance. The interaction between them and the
performer was always apparent and much enjoyed. So for in the dramatization of Dickens’s Oliver Twist the
actor playing Bill Sykes in dragging Nancy across the stage by her hair could readily turn to the galleries for
a chorus of boos which he would then incite more with another swift kick to Nancy.
Also, it should be noted due to this audience interaction the larger than life acting style of the Melodrama
was perhaps a necessity due to the cavernous gas lit theaters that the actors had to work in. These huge
Cathedrals type spaces made the actor hardly visible and barely audible unless he tore that “passion to
tatters” with histrionic gestures and vocal gymnastics of slow sonorous speeches which would seem
comical by today's standards. Yet, for their day those performers would regard themselves to be realistic
and full of emotional truth in their performance style.
The popularity of melodrama was huge in its heyday. Word of mouth, opinion columns and publicity
fueled the pulbic's demand. As a pop culture movement it falls much in line with the old Aristotelian
aesthetic philosophy that Art’s entertainment for the community’s passions is a worthwhile activity. It
supplies the general masses with a cathartic release to purge those wild, unruly and dangerous emotions
that seethed in the public’s soul. The same could be said of today’s professional sporting events which
mirror the rowdy audience/spectator/fan/publicity environment of the melodrama.
Then as the 19th century moved into its twilight the melodrama style saw experimentations with stage
technology spectacle as a drawing power way for public attendance. Simulating gigantic natural disasters,
massive ship wrecks, horse races and large scale destruction on the stage these jaw dropping sights would
have struck a chord with today’s summer movie blockbuster fair.
Melodrama Tidbits
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In the early 1800’s, most were romantic, exotic, or supernatural.
In the 1820’s, they became more familiar in settings and characters.
In the 1830’s, became more elevated: "gentlemanly" melodrama.
Almost never five acts – usually 2-5 (five acts reserved for "serious" drama).
Types of Melodrama:
Animal (along with the Romantic concept of nature).
Equestrian: horses, often on treadmills.
Canine: like Lassie.
And many others:
Nautical. Disaster. Western. Frontier.
Evils of Big Cities. Farming. Parlor.
The most successful and popular melodrama in America: Uncle Tom’s Cabin – the novel by Harriet
Beecher Stowe (1852) had several dramatizations: George L. Aiken’s was the most popular--1853.
The Mellerdrammer of Melodrama
Despite other influences melodrama reached its zenith of popularity in the public considering it as a serious
play form around the 1850s. It is believed that following this time the emergence of the burlesque
beginnings of its form began to surface which then evolved into the “mellerdrammer”.
Burlesque, which in today’s perceptions is known as a word to describe old fashion strip club shows of the
1960s and back is actually a genre word used to describe a form of theatrical comedy. Its modern
equivalent can most readily seen on television shows like Saturday Night Live or on the Simpsons. The four
forms of Burlesque are:
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2.
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4.
TravestyMock Hero and/or EpicParodyCaricature-
Poking fun at revered and lofty subjects.
A person or subject that is not of heroic proportions humorously elevated.
Imitation of a work of literature’s form or idea.
Exaggeration of a manner of speaking, posture or viewpoint.
Burlesques were usually short in their format; many times know as afterpieces, or curtain raisers which
sandwiched the main theatrical event of the evening. Running anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes they were
never taken seriously. They could also be found in such variety show forms as- vaudeville, music halls,
burlesque reviews or follies, along aside comics, political satire, circus acts, singers, magicians, dancers,
jugglers and other entertainers. With the wealth of theatrical melodramas of the 19th Century burlesques of
them were standard entertainment fair toward the latter part of the 1800s.
Around the turn of the 20th Century it is believed the full length melodrama burlesques in the realm of full
production spoofs or takeoffs began to surface into the form known as the Mellerdrammer. Containing a
mixture of slapstick, one liners, pantomimes, sing a longs and much audience interaction the
mellerdrammer became very popular and still continues on today. In America its main activity can be
found in amateur theatre activity and professional entertainment movements of the Midwestern and
Western states.
Tonight’s Because Their Hearts Were Pure or The Secret of the Mine, written by Morland Cary and copyrighted in
1950s, is, to the theatre aficionado, a mellerdrammmer and represents one of the types of scripts that are
being done today when this genre surfaces for an appearance in theatrical activity.