Drama Terms Flashcards
Comedy
A type of drama in which the characters experience reversals of fortune, usually for the better. In comedy, things work out happily in the end. Comic drama may be either romantic–characterized by a tone of tolerance and geniality–or satiric. Satiric works offer a darker vision of human nature, one that ridicules human folly. Shaw’s Arms and the Man is a romantic comedy; Chekhov’s Marriage Proposal is a satiric comedy.
Tragic hero
A privileged, exalted character of high repute, who, by virtue of a tragic flaw and fate, suffers a fall from glory into suffering. Sophocles’ Oedipus is an example. See Tragedy and Tragic flaw.
Resolution
The sorting out or unraveling of a plot at the end of a play, novel, or story.
Characterization
The means by which writers present and reveal character. Although techniques of characterization are complex, writers typically reveal characters through their speech, dress, manner, and actions. Readers come to understand the character Miss Emily in Faulkner’s story “A Rose for Emily” through what she says, how she lives, and what she does.
Unities
The idea that a play should be limited to a specific time, place, and story line. The events of the plot should occur within a twenty-four hour period, should occur within a give geographic locale, and should tell a single story. Aristotle argued that Sophocles’ Oedipus the King was the perfect play for embodying the unities.
Connotation
The associations called up by a word that goes beyond its dictionary meaning. Poets, especially, tend to use words rich in connotation. Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” includes intensely connotative language, as in these lines: “Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright / Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, / Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
Denotation
The dictionary meaning of a word. Writers typically play off a word’s denotative meaning against its connotations, or suggested and implied associational implications. In the following lines from Peter Meinke’s “Advice to My Son” the references to flowers and fruit, bread and wine denote specific things, but also suggest something beyond the literal, dictionary meanings of the words: To be specific, between the peony and rose Plant squash and spinach, turnips and tomatoes; Beauty is nectar and nectar, in a desert, saves– … and always serve bread with your wine. But, son, always serve wine.
Falling action
In the plot of a story or play, the action following the climax of the work that moves it towards its denouement or resolution. The falling action of Othello begins after Othello realizes that Iago is responsible for plotting against him by spurring him on to murder his wife, Desdemona.
Dialogue
The conversation of characters in a literary work. In fiction, dialogue is typically enclosed within quotation marks. In plays, characters’ speech is preceded by their names.
Props
Articles or objects that appear on stage during a play. The Christmas tree in A Doll’s House and Laura’s collection of glass animals in The Glass Menagerie are examples.
Character
An imaginary person that inhabits a literary work. Literary characters may be major or minor, static (unchanging) or dynamic (capable of change). In Shakespeare’s Othello, Desdemona is a major character, but one who is static, like the minor character Bianca. Othello is a major character who is dynamic, exhibiting an ability to change.
Rising action
A set of conflicts and crises that constitute the part of a play’s or story’s plot leading up to the climax.
Onomatopoeia
The use of words to imitate the sounds they describe. Words such as buzz and crack are onomatopoetic. The following line from Pope’s “Sound and Sense” onomatopoetically imitates in sound what it describes: When Ajax strives some rock’s vast weight to throw, The line too labors, and the words move slow. Most often, however, onomatopoeia refers to words and groups of words, such as Tennyson’s description of the “murmur of innumerable bees,” which attempts to capture the sound of a swarm of bees buzzing.
Pathos
A quality of a play’s action that stimulates the audience to feel pity for a character. Pathos is always an aspect of tragedy, and may be present in comedy as well.
Tragedy
A type of drama in which the characters experience reversals of fortune, usually for the worse. In tragedy, catastrophe and suffering await many of the characters, especially the hero. Examples include Shakespeare’s Othello and Hamlet; Sophocles’ Antigone andOedipus the King, and Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman.
Conflict
A struggle between opposing forces in a story or play, usually resolved by the end of the work. The conflict may occur within a character as well as between characters. Lady Gregory’s one-act play The Rising of the Moon exemplifies both types of conflict as the Policeman wrestles with his conscience in an inner conflict and confronts an antagonist in the person of the ballad singer.
Catharsis
The purging of the feelings of pity and fear that, according to Aristotle, occur in the audience of tragic drama. The audience experiences catharsis at the end of the play, following the catastrophe.
Monologue
A speech by a single character without another character’s response.
Complication
An intensification of the conflict in a story or play. Complication builds up, accumulates, and develops the primary or central conflict in a literary work. Frank O’Connor’s story “Guests of the Nation” provides a striking example, as does Ralph Ellison’s “Battle Royal.”
Exposition
The first stage of a fictional or dramatic plot, in which necessary background information is provided. Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, for instance, begins with a conversation between the two central characters, a dialogue that fills the audience in on events that occurred before the action of the play begins, but which are important in the development of its plot.
