TERMINOLOGY FOR DRAMA
DRAMA
A form of literature that tells a story through performances by
actors in front of an audience.
DIALOGUE
Tell a story; a conversation; a person speaking
STAGE DIRECTIONS
Help the cast and production staff bring the text to life.
SOLILOQUY
A long speech expressing private thoughts, delivered by a
character who is alone onstage; audience really how a
character truly feels about something.
A long speech delivered by one character to another or a
group of characters.
(not alone)
Private remark to another character or even directly to the
audience that none of the other characters appears to notice.
MONOLOGUE
ASIDE
CHORUS
A character(s) whose words may connect scenes or convey the
collective thoughts or feelings of the community.
TRAGEDY
The play starts off happier than it ends; ending many deaths
TRAGIC HERO
An outstanding person of high rank with some personality
flaw.
TRAGIC FLAW
A characteristic of the main character’s personality leads him
to make a catastrophic mistake.
COMIC RELIEF
To relieve tension, playwrights often include humorous scenes
of characters to provide comic relief; the characters are often
of a lower class.
DRAMATIC IRONY
This occurs when the audience knows something that a
character(s) do not.
COMEDY
The play starts off on a bad note but ends positively; often
includes marriages.
MOTIVATION
Is what causes a character to act in a particular manner.
BLANK VERSE
Unrhyming lines of iambic pentameter (10 syllables in a line
with 5 of the syllables stressed)
PROSE
Not poetry; regular sentences;
Shakespeare assigns prose to lower
born characters.
IAMBIC PENTAMETER
Iambic=unstressed syllable followed by
a stressed syllable (aboard, about,
above); pentameter=5 stressed
syllables in a line
PUN
When someone uses a word playfully, often with
homonyms with a different meaning
LOADED DICTION
Words with strong connotation (emotional
response to a word)
IMAGERY
Word picture; words that refer to the five
human senses
TONE
The author’s attitude toward the subject; how is
tone created in two ways: diction and imagery.
MOTIFS
Is a repeating pattern in literature or music