Drama and Dramatic Form Basics

Study Notes

Drama: A work designed to be represented on a stage by actors, or a serious play dealing with an important problem.
Dramatic Form: The organization of a script, including speaker lists, speech, and stage directions.

Dramatis Personae: A list of characters in a play, provided at the beginning of the script.
Act: A chunk of action in a play, often divided into scenes; Shakespeare's plays have five acts.
Scene: A division of action within an act, denoted by a small Roman numeral.
Line: A single line of writing in a play, noted with Arabic numbers.

Pathetic Fallacy: An artistic device where Nature reflects a character's feelings and/or the mood of the events in the literature.
Stage Direction: A direction by the playwright to the actors in the script, indicating how to speak and move during a particular line or scene.
Monologue: A single fictional speaker gives an extended speech, revealing their personality and significant life events.
Dialogue: Spoken exchanges between two or more speakers in a play.

Dramatic Irony: When a character says something, but the audience knows more than the character does about other characters or events.
Aside: When a character says something privately to another character while others are on stage, or to the audience.
Comic Relief: A humorous scene, incident, or remark within a serious or tragic drama, providing relief from tension.
Prologue: An opening section of a longer work, establishing character, theme, action, or setting.

Blank Verse: Unrhymed iambic pentameter, commonly used in Shakespeare's plays.
Pun: A play on words with multiple meanings.
Soliloquy: A character speaking their true thoughts and feelings while alone on stage.
Chorus: Originally a group of masked male dancers, now often a single figure, speaking or chanting as part of ceremonies in Greek drama.

Comedy: A literary work, especially a play, with a happy ending, often featuring misunderstandings and mistaken identity.
Tragedy: A form of drama exciting pity and/or fear in the audience, typically involving persons of stature and a reversal of Fortune, providing catharsis or emotional cleansing.