People defending popular dramatist (6)
I believe the answer is:
racine
'dramatist' is the definition.
(Racine is an example)
'people defending popular' is the wordplay.
'people' becomes 'race' (people can mean a national group or race).
'defending' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'popular' becomes 'in' ('in' can mean trendy).
'race' going around 'in' is 'RACINE'.
(Other definitions for racine that I've seen before include "French writer" , "French dramatist, author of Phedre, d. 1699" , "in Wisconsin" .)