1.
Anagnorisis: Tragic hero's discovery or recognition of crucial facts or of their true identity of which they were previously ignorant. Usually as a startling discovery or moment of epiphany.
2.
Antihero: A protaganist of a modern play who has the converse of most of the traditional attributes of a hero. They often learn that the world isolates them in an existane devoid of God and absolute values
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Buffoon: A comic character - akin to the CLOWN, fool & jester - given to boasting and indencency
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Burlesque: Ridiculous exaggeration and distortion for comic purposes. The sublime may be absurd, honest emotions turned to sentimentality, serious subjects treated frivolously. Discrepancy between matter and style
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Catharsis: Sympathy of the audience for the tragic hero, who often suffers unjustly but is neither completely innocent. The protaganist's misfortune inspires pity because it is worse than he/she deserves, and the audience recognize it as equally occurable to them.
6.
Clown/Fool: Character charged with injecting, or sustaining moments of comic relief. Under the guise of foolish simplicity - often a mask for shrewd insight and even wisdom - and under the protection of the 'jester's license,' these figures comment humorously on the main characters and their actions, mocking prententions and hypocracy
7.
Comic Relief: A humorous scence, incident, or remark within an essentially serious or even tragic drama. It evokes laughter as a release from the tension of the serious action and often follows scenes of intense emotion.
8.
Confidant: Trusted freind or colleague in whom the protaganist will confide their innermost thoughts or feelings. Often helpful to characterization depth, more effective than a soliloquy
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Deeds & Words: Most obvious means by which we begin to understand a character will come with what they and and do. Often a significant disparity between what they say and what they actually achieve. A character's words provide the context against which their actions may be judged.
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Deus Ex Machina: Machine like intervention, contrived event is a plot weakness
11.
Diction: Type of language used, often critical in determining the mood or portrayal of a character. Often the language can speak volumes of the characters. For example, Othello does not talk to people, he makes speeches at them.
12.
Dramatic Irony: Creates a discrepancy between what a character believes or says and what the reader of audience member knows to be true
13.
Farce: Dramatic piece intensed to excite laughter, depends less on plot & character than on improbable situations, the humour arising from gross incongruitis, coarse wit, or horseplay
14.
Foil: Character whose behavior and values ocntrast with those of another character in order to highlight temperament of the protangnist
15.
Fourth Wall: Invisible wall of a room through which the audience conventionally witness what occurs on stage. Breaking this wall is used when a character or the use of some device makes the actors "aware" that they are being watched by an audience.
16.
Freytag's Pyramid: Exposition, Complication, Climax of Action, Falling Action, Denouement
17.
Hamartia: Meaning to err or to make a mistake. It is usually the false step taken by the protaganist. This can include a tragic flaw, misjudgement, ignorance etc.
18.
High Comedy: Form of comedy that relies more on wit and wordly than on physical action for its humour. Avoids derisive humour, tries to address the audience's intelligence by pointing out the pretension and hypocrisy of human behaviour
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Hubris: Overweening pride or insolence that results in the misfortune of the protaganists of a tragedy.
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Low Comedy: Places greater emphasis on physical action and visual gags, its verbal jokes do not require much intellect
21.
Monologue: A single fictional speaker gives an extended speech, either as if alone on stage or as if speaking to a fictional audience.
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Pantomime: Acting without words, using your whole body and expressions
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Peripeteia: Reversal of fortune from good (success) to bad (failure)
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Plot: Plot concerns the story of the play. However it also concerns the entire structure of the play. A sense of ordered structure is effective Drama, even when teh actual play itself is bout some form of chaos.
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Proscenium (Stage): Arch that frames a box set and holds the curtain, thus creating the invisible fourth wall through which the audience sees the action of the play
26.
Psychological Novel/Play: Unusual emphasis on interior characterization and on the motives, circumstances, and internal action hat spring and develop from external action.
27.
Report: Sort of things the other character have to say about the character in question. Often used to fill in background details
28.
Romantic Irony: (Irony of Instant Deflation) consists of creating what appears to be a firm assertion or picture of something, only to reveal that what was promised in the original is, in fact, quite different.
29.
Satire: Literary art of ridiculing a folly or vice in order to expose or correct it. Usually some human frailty, evoking attitudes of amusement, contempt, scorn, or indiganation toward its faulty subject in hope of somehow improving it
30.
Situational Irony: Exists when there is an incongruity between what is expect to happen and what actually happens due to forces beyond human comprehension and control
31.
Soliloquy / Aside: Expanded and developed speech in which dramatic character speakes his thoughts out loud. An aside is similar, though shorter in length and often only a single conversation, perhaps even one word. Soliloquy is given alone, while an aside can just be a whisper.
32.
Stage Presence: Use the physical presence on the stage of that character to suggest certain things about their 'inner' person - physical gestures, intonations, delivery of lines
33.
Tableau: Striking incidental scene, as of a picturesque group.
34.
Theatre of the Absurd: Form of drama that emphasizes absurdity of human existence by employing disjointed, repetitous and meaningless dialogue, confusing situations, and plots that lack realistic or logical dramatic development. Hallmark of the attitude is the sense that the unshakeable basic assumptions of former ages have been discredited as cheap, and even childish illusions. A world that can be explained by reasoning, however faulty, is a familiar world. But in a universe that is suddenly deprived of illusions of light, man find himself a stranger. His is an irremediable exile, because he is depreived of memories of a lost homeland as much as he lacks the hope of a promised land to come.
35.
Tragedy: Courageous individuals confronting powerful forces within or outside themselves with a dignity that reveals the breadth and depth of the human spirit in face of failure, defeat, or even death.
36.
Tragi-Comedy: Mixuture of emotions in which "seriousness stimulates laughter, and pain pleasure." Tragicomedy's affinity with satire and "dark" comedy have suggested a tragicomic impulse in modern absurdist drama
37.
Tragic Hero: Person of high estate who has the potential for greatness - must be brought from happiness to misery and should be a person who is better than ordinary people -- a king. The person is pre-eminently virtuous and just, but their misfortune is brought about, in part, by and error in judgement. They meet their shortcoming with dignity and do not waver from a decided course of action
38.
Tragic Irony: A form of dramatic irony found in tragedieis, where the character often searches for a culprit only to find themselves as the prime suspect
39.
Verbal Irony: A figure of speech that occurs when a person says one thing but means the opposute
