| Term | Definition |
|---|
| play | work of storytelling in which actors represent the characters |
| dialogue | exchanges of speech |
| pantomime (dumb show) | mimed dramatic performance whose purpose is to prepare the audience for the main action of the play to follow |
| drama | form of literary composition designed for performance in the theater |
| dramatist | playwright |
| closet drama | play or dramatic poem designed to be read aloud rather than performed |
| convention | any established feature or technique in literature that is commonly understood by both authors and readers |
| soliloquy | a speech by a character alone onstage in which he or she utters his or her thoughts aloud |
| theme | generally recurring subject or idea conspicuously evident in a literary work |
| plot | particular arrangement of actions, events and situations that unfold in a narrative |
| protagonist | central character in a literary work |
| exposition | opening portion of a narrative or drama |
| foreshadowing | technique of arranging events and information in such a way that later events are prepared for, or shadowed, beforehand |
| dramatic question | primary unresolved issue in a drama as it unfolds |
| double plot (subplot) | second story or plotline that is complete and interesting in its own right |
| climax | moment of greatest intensity in a story, which almost inevitably occurs toward the end of the work |
| resolution (conclusion or dénouement) | final part of a narrative, the concluding action or actions that follow the climax |
| suspense | enjoyable anxiety created in the reader by the author's handling of the plot |
| stage business | nonverbal action that engages the attention of the audience |
| rising action | part of the play or narrative, including the exposition, in which events start moving toward a climax |
| crisis | point in a drama when the crucial action, decision or realization must be made, marking the turning point of the protagonist's fortunes |
| falling action | events in a narrative that follow the climax and bring the story to its conclusion |
| unities | three formal qualities recommended by Italian Renaissance literary to critics to unify a plot in order to give it a cohesive and complete integrity |
| symbol | person, place or thing in a narrative that suggests meanings beyond its literal sense |
| conflict | central struggle between two or more forces in a story |
| tragic flaw | fatal weakness or moral flaw in the protagonist that brings him or her to a bad end |
| comedy | literary work aimed at amusing an audience |
| satiric comedy | genre using derisive humor to ridicule human weakness and folly or attack political injustices and incompetence |
| high comedy | comic genre evoking so-called intellectual or thoughtful laughter from an audience that remains emotionally detached from the play's depictions of the folly, pretense and incongruity of human behavior |
| epigram | very short poem, often comic, usually ending with some sharp turn of wit or meaning |
| comedy of manners | realistic form of comic drama that deals with social relations and sexual intrigues of sophisticated, intelligent, upper-class men and women, whose verbal fencing and witty repartee produce the principal comic effects |
| Restoration period | In England, the period following the restoration of Charles II to the throne in 1660; reintroduced a strong secular and urbane element back into English literature |
| low comedy | comic style arousing laughter through jokes, slapstick humor, sight gags and boisterous clowning |
| burlesque | incongruous imitation of either the style or subject matter of a serious genre, humorous due to disparity of the treatment of the subject |
| commedia dell'arte | form of comic drama developed by guilds of professional Italian actors in the mid-sixteenth century |
| slapstick comedy | kind of farce, featuring pratfalls, pie throwing, fisticuffs and other violent actions |
| romantic comedy | form of comic drama in which the plot focuses on one or more pairs of young lovers who overcome difficulties to achieve a happy ending |
| satyr play | type of Greek comic play that was performed after the tragedies at the City Dionysia; structure was similar to a tragedy |
| orchestra | circular level performance space at the base of a horseshoe-shaped amphitheater where twelve, then later fifteen, young, masked, male chorus members sang and danced the odes interspersed between the dramatic episodes |
| skene | temporary wooden stage building in which actors changed masks and costumes when changing roles |
| episode | incident in a large narrative that has unity in itself |
| éxodos | last scene |
| mask | full facial masks made of leather, linen or light wood, with headdress; allowed male actors to embody the conventionalized characters of the tragic and comic stage |
| cothurni | high thick-soled boots worn by Greek and Roman tragic actors in late classical times to make them appear taller than ordinary men |
| hamartia | offense committed in ignorance of some material fact (without deliberate criminal intent) and therefore free of blameworthiness |
| hubris | overweening pride, outrageous behavior or the insolence that leads to ruin |
| purgation (katharsis) | purification; refers to the feeling of emotional release or calm the spectator feels at the end of a tragedy |
| recognition | the moment when ignorance gives way to knowledge, illusion to disillusion |
| reversal (peripeteia) | reversal of fortune |
| realism | attempt to reproduce faithfully the surface appearance of life, especially that of ordinary people in everyday situations |
| picture-frame stage | held the action within a proscenium arch; only one seat (royal patron or sponsor) enjoyed complete perspectivist illusion |
| proscenium arch | architectural picture frame or gateway that separated the auditorium from the raised stage and the world of the play |
| box set | three walls joined in two corners and a ceiling that tilted as if in perspective |
| naturalism | type of fiction or drama in which the characters are presented as products or victims of environment and heredity |
| Symbolist movement | international literary movement that originated with nineteenth-century French poets; avoided direct statement and exposition in an attempt to achieve a resemblance of music |
| expressionism | dramatic style developed between 1910 and 1924 in Germany; used episodic plots, distorted lines and exaggerated shapes to draw an audience into a dreamlike subjective realm |
| arena theater (theater in the round) | modern, nontraditional performance space in which the audience surrounds the stage on four sides |
| flexible theater | modern, nontraditional performance space in which actor-audience relationships can be flexibly configured, with movable seating platforms |
| antihero | protagonist who is lacking in one or more of the conventional qualities attributed to a hero |
| comic relief | appearance of a comic situation, character or clownish humor in the midst of a serious action |
| theater of the absurd | post World War II European genre depicting the grotesquely comic plight of human beings thrown by accident into an irrational and meaningless world |
| feminist theater | plays which explore the lives, problems and occasional triumphs of contemporary women |
| new naturalism | term describing some American plays of the 1970s and 1980s frankly showing the internal and external forces that shape the lives of unhappy, alienated, dehumanized and often impoverished characters |
| tragicomedy | play that stirs not only pity and fear but also laughter |
| párados | song for the entrance of the chorus |
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