1.
Act: one of the main divisions of a play or opera
2.
Antagonist: the character who strives against another main character. This character opposes the hero or protagonist in drama
3.
Aside: a line thrown to the audience, not intended to be heard by other characters
4.
Comedy: a ludicrous and amusing event or series of events designed to provide enjoyment and produce smiles or laughter usually written in a light, familiar, bantering, or satirical style
5.
Dialogue: a verbal exchange between two or more actors
6.
Dramatic Irony: the words or acts of a character may carry a meaning unperceived by the character but understood by the audience
7.
Foil: a character in a play who sets off the main character or other characters by comparison
8.
Foreshadowing: the introduction early in a story of verbal and dramatic hints that suggest what is to come later
9.
Iambic Pentameter: lines that ideally have 5 unstressed syllables, each followed by a stressed syllable
10.
Motivation: occurs when the reader or audience is offered reasons for how the characters behave, what they say, and the decisions they make
11.
Props: short for "properties,"--the pictures, furnishings, historical nuances, and so on, that provide the stage's background
12.
Protagonist: the leading character of a drama, novel, etc. This is not always the hero, but is always the principal and central character whose rival is the antagonist
13.
Pun: a play on words or the humorous use of a word emphasizing a different meaning or application
14.
Scene: a division with no change of locale or abrupt shift of time
15.
Shakespearean Sonnet: a fourteen-line lyric poem consisting of three quatrains (four line stanzas) and a concluding couplet (two rhyming lines)
16.
Soliloquy: a monologue intended to represent the inner workings of a character's mind
17.
Tragedy: a drama that ends in a catastrophe (usually death) for the main character and often for several other important characters
