The Two Worlds of Esber presents an analysis of the dramatic structure and poetic features of Ottoman Turkish verse drama. Drama as a literary genre emerged in Turkey in the course of the nineteenth century. Until then the theatre tradition had been handed down orally. From the eighteen sixties onward verse drama was written with the structure of classical French plays and with the literary characteristics of Ottoman Turkish poetry. In modern Turkey verse plays are still being written and performed.
The verse play Esber of the writer and diplomat Abdülhak Hamit (1852-1937) is considered one of the best plays of the most important author of the genre. Written in 1880, it tells the story of Iskender (Alexander the Great) conquering the Punjab in India, the kingdom of Esber and his sister Sumru.
In The Two Worlds of Esber the central question is whether it is possible to apply a Western method of analysis to a non-Western verse drama such as Esber. The theory of Bernard Beckerman, as developed in his Dynamics of Drama (1979), provided a universally applicable method of tension analysis. In The Two Worlds of Esber Ottoman Turkish verse drama reveals for the first time its dramatic structure, its poetic language and its relationship with Western and Ottoman Turkish dramatic and literary traditions.
