1. Drama
Understanding a Play

2. Plot Mountain in Drama Exposition: Opening moments
Location (symbols and metaphors)
Meeting of characters
What happened before the curtain rose
What is happening now

3. Puts forces on crash course to meet each other
Rising Action:
We get involved
Puts forces on crash course to meet each other
Protagonist/Antagonist-journey towards each other
Dramatic situation: Usually describes the protagonist’s motivation and the forces that oppose its realization

4. Basic meeting of protagonist/antagonist
Climax:
Basic meeting of protagonist/antagonist
Tension reaches its greatest height
Does NOT HAVE to be dramatic
Dramatic question about to be answered

5. Events that occur as a result of the climax
Falling Action:
Events that occur as a result of the climax
We know the action will end soon
Recognizable in tragedies: the protagonist’s fortunes proceed downhill to an inexorable end

6. Resolution/Denouement: Final moments of the play
All the action is tied up
Characters may be enriched and wiser

7. Characters Protagonist: The leading character(s)
Usually a good force and the one the audience roots for
Antagonist:
The character that comes in conflict with the main character
Does not always have to be “bad” or a person

8. Foreshadowing Always a type of foreshadowing in a play
Can take place as early as the exposition
Always be looking for clues while reading

9. The primary unresolved issue in a drama as it unfolds
Dramatic Question(s)
The primary unresolved issue in a drama as it unfolds
The result of artful plotting, raising suspense and expectation in a play’s action as it moves toward its outcome

10. Subplot Double plot A secondary arrangement of incidents
Involves someone besides the protagonist
Usually occur in Shakespeare’s plays

11. Stage Business
Nonverbal action that engages the attention of an audience
Can be as small as a doorknob turning, creating SUSPENSE

12. Unities
3 formal qualities recommended by Italian Renaissance literary critics to unify a plot in order to give it a cohesive and complete integrity
Action: Single series of interrelated actions—must be entirely serious or funny
Time: play takes place within 24 hours
Place: play takes place in a single location

13. Closet Drama A play designed to be read aloud rather than performed
Do you think Trifles fits this definition?

14. Ex.: classical Greek theater or the Elizabethan theater
Conventions
Customary methods of presenting an action, usual and recognizable devices that an audience is willing to accept
Ex.: classical Greek theater or the Elizabethan theater

15. Soliloquy
A dramatic monologue in which we seem to overhear the character’s innermost thoughts uttered aloud

16. Theme
The general point or truth about human beings that may be drawn from the play

17. COMEDY
An important difference between comedy and tragedy lies in the attitude toward human failing that is expected of us.
Comedies present situations differently so there is a clear line between humor and tragedy.

18. Comedy Originated in festivities to celebrate spring
Ritual performances in praise of Dionysus
Whatever makes us laugh (broad definition)
Can be an entire play or only a part in the play (comic character or a comic situation)

19. Tends to be critical of people, their manners, and their morals
Satiric Comedy
Human weakness or folly is ridiculed from a vantage point of supposedly enlightening superiority
Tends to be critical of people, their manners, and their morals

20. High Comedy
Relies more on wit and wordplay than on physical action for its humor
Points out the pretension and hypocrisy of human behavior
Avoids jokes about physical appearance

21. Epigram
Brief and witty statement that memorably expresses some truth, large or small
“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”

22. A witty satire set in elite or fashionable society
Comedy of Manners
A type of High Comedy
A witty satire set in elite or fashionable society
Popular in the Restoration Period (period after 1660 when Charles II reopened the London playhouses after being closed by the Puritans for being “immoral”)

23. Low Comedy Opposite extreme of humor
Places great emphasis on physical action and visual gags
Verbal jokes do not require much intellect to appreciate
Revels in making fun of whatever will get a good laugh
Satirizes human failings
Drunkenness, stupidity, lust, senility, trickery, insult, clumsiness

24. Burlesque A type of Low Comedy
A humorous parody or travesty of another play or kind of play
Usually makes fun of serious situations
“Scary Movie(s)” Anyone?

25. Farce Another type of Low Comedy
Features exaggerated character types in ludicrous and improbable situations, provoking laughter about sexual mix-ups, crude verbal jokes, horseplay, etc.
Descendant of commedia dell’arte

26. commedia dell’arte
Developed by guilds of professional Italian actors in the mid-sixteenth century
Playing stock characters, masked commedia players improvised dialogue around a given scenario (brief outline marking entrances of characters and the main course of action)

27. Features pratfalls, pie throwing, fisticuffs, and other violent action
Slapstick Comedy
Type of farce
Features pratfalls, pie throwing, fisticuffs, and other violent action
“The Three Stooges”

28. A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Romantic Comedy
Plot focuses on one or more pairs of young lovers who overcome difficulties to achieve a happy ending (usually marriage)
A Midsummer Night’s Dream

29. Ends sorrowfully and disastrously—outcome seems inevitable
TRAGEDY
A play that portrays a serious conflict between human beings and some superior, overwhelming force
Ends sorrowfully and disastrously—outcome seems inevitable

30. Tragedy
Protagonist undergoes a reversal of fortune, from good to bad, ending in catastrophe

31. Tragic Flaw
A fatal weakness or moral flaw in the protagonist that brings him or her to a bad end.

32. Tragedy Conventional Structure
Prologue:
Preparatory Scene
Ex. Oedipus asking the suppliants why they have come and the priest telling about the plague ravaging Thebes

33. The song for the entrance of the chorus Episodes:
Parados:
The song for the entrance of the chorus
Episodes:
Action of play (like a scene or act)
Separated by danced choral songs or odes

34. The chorus usually has the final lines.
Exodos:
The last scene in which the characters and chorus concluded the action and departed
The chorus usually has the final lines.

35. Aristotle’s Concept of Tragedy
Protagonist—the hero or chief character is a person of “high estate” (royalty)
Tragic hero is fallible
Downfall is a result of hamartiathe hero’s error or transgression or his flaw or weakness of character
Hubris extreme pride, leading to overconfidence

36. Aristotle Cont…
5. Purgation (or katharsis) final effect of the playwright’s skillful use of plotting, character, and poetry to elicit pity and fear from the audience
refers to the feeling of emotional release or calm the spectator feels as the end of tragedy
 Taught the audience compassion for the vulnerabilities of others and schooled in justice and other civic virtues

37. Reversal reversal in fortune
Aristotle Cont…
Recognition the discovery of some fact not known before or some person’s true identity
Reversal reversal in fortune
 Usually occurs when a certain result is expected and instead its opposite effect is produced