melodrama
(ˈmɛləʊdrɑːmə, mɛləʊˈdrɑːmə)
[Alteration of melodrame, after drama.]
1. In early 19th c. use, a stage-play (usually romantic and sensational in plot and incident) in which songs were interspersed, and in which the action was accompanied by orchestral music appropriate to the situations. In later use the musical element gradually ceased to be an essential feature of the ‘melodrama’, and the name now denotes a dramatic piece characterized by sensational incident and violent appeals to the emotions, but with a happy ending.
| 1809 Southey Lett. (1856) II. 181 They have made a melo-drama of ‘Mary the Maid of the Inn’. 1818 C. E. Walker Sigesmar the Switzer Pref., The following trifle was written two years back, during the rage for Melo⁓dramas. 1836 Gentl. Mag. Apr. 423 It [a ‘comedietta’] is one of those tissues of domestic calamities..which..were a few years since denominated melodramas. 1883 D. Cook Nts. Play II. 333 Mr. Sims's ‘Lights o' London’, is a five-act melodrama of the good old Adelphi pattern. |
| attrib. 1879 Stevenson Trav. Cevennes, Cheylard & Luc, The kitchen..was the very model of what a kitchen ought to be; a melodrama kitchen, suitable for bandits or noblemen in disguise. |
b. The species of dramatic composition or representation constituted by melodramas; the mode of dramatic treatment characteristic of a melodrama.
| 1814 New Brit. Theatre I. 216 In tragedy and comedy the final event is the effect of the moral operations of the different characters, but in the melo-drama the catastrophe is the physical result of mechanical stratagem. 1838 Dickens Nich. Nick. xxx, This Mr. Crummles did in the highest style of melo-drama. 1889 D. Hannay Capt. Marryat viii. 122 Amine [in The Phantom Ship] is a very acceptable heroine of melodrama. 1902 Daily Chron. 22 Aug. 8/7 Melodrama thrives solely upon exaggeration. |
2. transf. A series of incidents, or a story true or fictitious, resembling what is represented in a melodrama; also, in generalized sense, melodramatic behaviour, occurrences, etc.
| 1814 Sir R. Wilson Priv. Diary (1861) II. 306 The world will approve the catastrophe of the melodrama which metes out signal punishment to Joachim the first in the last act of his life. 1816 Scott Antiq. xii, She beheld..the old beggar who had made such a capital figure in the melo-drama of the preceding evening. 1854 Emerson Lett. & Soc. Aims, Immort. Wks. (Bohn) III. 285 My idea of heaven is that there is no melodrama in it at all. 1891 J. Leckie Life & Relig. 117 Open your eyes and look round you on the strange melodrama of life. |