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Grade 10 English > Dramatic Terms > Flashcards

Dramatic Terms Flashcards

1
Q

What is an Act in a play?

A

A major division in a play. An act can be subdivided into scenes.

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2
Q

What is an Antagonist?

A

A character or force against which another character struggles.

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3
Q

What defines an Antihero?

A

A protagonist or central character who lacks the qualities typically associated with heroism.

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4
Q

What is an Aside?

A

Words spoken by an actor directly to the audience, but not ‘heard’ by the other characters on stage.

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5
Q

What is Blocking in drama?

A

Movement patterns of actors on the stage, usually planned by the director to create meaningful stage pictures.

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6
Q

What is a Catastrophe in a play?

A

The action at the end of a tragedy that initiates the denouement or falling action of a play.

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7
Q

What is Catharsis?

A

The purging of the feelings of pity and fear. According to Aristotle, the audience should experience catharsis at the end of a tragedy.

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8
Q

What is a Character in drama?

A

An imaginary person that inhabits a literary work. Dramatic characters may be major or minor, static (unchanging) or dynamic (capable of change).

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9
Q

What is a Chorus in Greek tragedy?

A

A group of characters who comment on the action of a play without participating in it.

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10
Q

What is the Climax of a play?

A

The turning point of the action in the plot of a play and the point of greatest tension.

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11
Q

What is Comedy in drama?

A

A dramatic work in which the central motif is the triumph over adverse circumstance, resulting in a successful or happy conclusion.

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12
Q

What is Comic Relief?

A

Comic relief serves a specific purpose: it gives the spectator a moment of ‘relief’ with a light-hearted scene after a succession of intensely tragic dramatic moments.

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13
Q

What is Conflict in drama?

A

The conflict between opposing forces in a play can be external (between characters) or internal (within a character) and is usually resolved by the end of the play.

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14
Q

What is a Complication in a play?

A

An intensification of the conflict in a play.

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15
Q

What are Literary Conventions?

A

Defining features or common agreement upon strategies and/or attributes of a particular literary genre.

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16
Q

What is a Cyclic Plot?

A

A plot in which the play ends in much the same way it began, rendering the action of the play futile for the characters involved.

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17
Q

What does ‘intervention’ mean in the context of drama?

A

The Latin phrase means, literally, ‘a god from the machine.’ It refers to the use of artificial means to resolve the plot of a play.

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18
Q

What is ‘diction’?

A

The manner in which words are pronounced, a style of speaking.

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19
Q

What is ‘dramatic irony’?

A

A device in which a character holds a position or has an expectation reversed or fulfilled in a way that the character did not expect but that the audience or readers have anticipated.

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20
Q

What defines a ‘dynamic character’?

A

A character that undergoes an important change in the course of the play, such as changes in insight, understanding, commitment, or values.

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21
Q

What is a ‘flashback’?

A

An interruption of a play’s chronology to describe or present an incident that occurred prior to the main time-frame of the play’s action.

22
Q

What are ‘flat characters’?

A

Relatively simple minor characters in a play.

23
Q

What is a ‘foil’ in literature?

A

A character whose situation parallels that of the main character while contrasting in behavior, response, or character.

24
Q

What is ‘foreshadowing’?

A

A literary technique that introduces an apparently irrelevant element early in the story, with its significance becoming clear later.

25
Q

What is the ‘fourth wall’?

A

The imaginary wall that separates the spectator/audience from the action taking place on stage.

26
Q

What does ‘gesture’ refer to in a play?

A

The physical movement of a character during a play.

27
Q

What is a ‘linear plot’?

A

A traditional plot sequence in which the incidents in the drama progress chronologically.

28
Q

What is a ‘monologue’?

A

A speech by a single character without another character’s response.

29
Q

What is a ‘motif’?

A

A recurrent element in an artistic work that is generally tied to the themes or overall idea of the piece.

30
Q

What is ‘motivation’ in character development?

A

The thoughts or desires that drive a character to actively pursue a want or need, known as the objective.

31
Q

What is the ‘point of attack’?

A

The point in the story of a play where the plot begins.

32
Q

What is a Prologue?

A

Either the action or a set of introductory speeches before the first entry of the chorus.

33
Q

What are Props in a play?

A

Articles or objects that appear on stage during a play. Props can also take on a significant or even symbolic meaning.

34
Q

What is a Protagonist?

A

The main character of a literary work.

35
Q

What is Reversal or Peripeteia?

A

The point at which the action of the plot turns in an unexpected direction for the protagonist - from failure to success or success to failure.

36
Q

What are Round Characters?

A

He or she seems like a ‘real’ person. The round character contrasts with the flat character who serves a specific or minor literary function in a text, and who may be a stock character or simplified stereotype. If the round character changes or evolves over the course of a narrative or appears to have the capacity for such change, the character is also dynamic.

37
Q

What is Satire?

A

A literary work that criticizes human misconduct and ridicules vices, stupidities, and follies.

38
Q

What is a Scene?

A

A traditional segment in a play used to indicate a change in time, location, provide a jump from one subplot to another, introduce new characters, or rearrange the actors on the stage.

39
Q

What is Scenery?

A

The physical representation of the play’s setting (location and time period) that emphasizes the aesthetic concept or atmosphere of the play.

40
Q

What is a Soliloquy?

A

A speech meant to be heard by the audience but not by other characters on the stage. In a soliloquy, only the audience can hear the private thoughts of the characters.

41
Q

What are Stage Directions?

A

A playwright’s descriptive or interpretive comments that provide readers as well as actors with guidance.

42
Q

What is Staging?

A

The position of actors on stage, the scenic background, the props and costumes, and the lighting and sound effects.

43
Q

What is a Static Character?

A

A literary or dramatic character who undergoes little or no inner change; a character who does not grow or develop.

44
Q

What is a Subplot?

A

A secondary plot that usually shares a relationship with the main plot, either thematically or incidentally, often dealing with secondary characters in the play.

45
Q

What is Subtext?

A

Internal motivations or responses never explicitly stated in the dialogue, but understood either by the audience or the characters themselves.

46
Q

What is Suspension of Disbelief?

A

Accepting something as real or representing the real when it obviously is not real.

47
Q

What is a Stock Character?

A

A recognizable character type found in many plays.

48
Q

What is a Subplot?

A

A subsidiary or subordinate or parallel plot that coexists with the main plot.

49
Q

What is a Tableau?

A

A motionless dramatic scene created by actors to depict the appearance of a moment frozen in time.

The plural of tableau is tableaux.

50
Q

What is Tragedy in drama?

A

A type of drama in which the characters experience reversal of fortune, usually for the worse.

51
Q

What is a Tragic Flaw?

A

A weakness or limitation of character, resulting in the fall of the tragic hero.

52
Q

What defines a Tragic Hero?

A

A privileged, exalted character of high repute, who, by virtue of a tragic flaw and/or fate, suffers a fall from a higher station in life into suffering.

Grade 10 English (2 decks)

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