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Early Playwriting Essay

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The roots of playwriting date back to the times of Ancient Greece, where these early plays were written for annual Athenian playwriting competitions. This early format paved the way for poetry and the early forms of playwriting. However, playwriting was far from the professionalized format we know of today. The first playwriting manual was created by Aristotle in the early 4th century BCE, when he outlined the key aspects of performance literature: plot, character, thought, diction, music, and spectacle. Unlike the diverse and contrasting plays of today, early playwriting focused on mythical Greek tragedy and “conflict-driven” plays—a structure still used today by perhaps the most Aristotelian of contemporary playwrights: David Mamet. As

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