DRAMA/ CLASSICAL TRAGEDY
Terms:
Stage directions: words in a script that tell actors in a play when and where to exit or enter or
how to gesture or move at certain moments.
Exposition: that part of a short story or play, usually early on, that provides background
information on plot, setting, and character.
Dialogue: in fiction or drama, the spoken words of characters in conversation with one another.
Soliloquy (asides): a relatively long philosophical or reflective speech by a character in a play,
alone onstage, who is presumably talking to himself but whose words are heard by the audience.
Suspense: an aspect or effect of plot in which a reader is able, based on information already
provided, to guess or predict what will happen next or ultimately, but is unable to be certain of
this prediction because some information has been withheld. Akin to a reader’s anticipation.
Plot line: see "Narrative" handout. Initial conflict, rising action, climax, falling action,
resolution/denouement.
Denouement: signifies the moment of final resolution of the conflict in a plot.
Dramatic Irony: a difference between appearance and reality. In drama, irony may involve the
audience knowing something of which a character is unaware and the character acting in a way
that is markedly different from the truth of the situation as the audience knows it.
Comedy: a kind of drama that aims to amuse and that ends happily. All pieces come together at
the end.
Tragedy: broadly, a literary pattern in which a person of some status undergoes a decline in
fortunes and ends in catastrophe, with the actions and their consequences treated seriously; more
narrowly, that pattern presented in drama, or a particular kind of play that conforms to the tragic
pattern.
Classical Tragedy: presents the decline of a person of high degree from fortune to disaster
through a combination of his own actions, his moral character, and the operation of cosmic
forces such as fate or divine will.
Revenge Tragedy or Blood Tragedy: makes a revenge motive central to the plot and depicts
bloody and violent actions on stage as that revenge is worked out.
Middle-class or Bourgeois Tragedy: centers on a middle-class character whose misfortune result
from a situation in ordinary life, not a situation of cosmic or national significance.
Qualities of Classical Tragedy:
 A reversal of fortune, from good to bad
 Often someone dies, undeservedly
 People are left unhappy
 Audience is affected emotionally
 Tragic hero who suffers from a tragic flaw (ie, Hamlet’s indecision)
 Tragic hero must recognize what has happened to him: often he discovers something
previously unknown or something he knew but misconstrued
 Tragic flaw, the fates, or errors in judgment often lead to the downfall of tragic hero
 Tragic hero: the main character of a tragedy; typically, the tragic hero is a person of high
social standing and moral character whose decline in fortune and ultimate disaster are
presented as the inevitable result of his or her moral qualities combing with
circumstances.
 Tragic hero is assumed to achieve a moral triumph through the insight, recognition that
comes with the decline of fortune he undergoes.
 Tragic hero: usually larger than life, not generally an ordinary type man.
Why do we still read Classical Tragedy?
 "Universal" appeal
 They present people struggling with destiny and invoke important philosophical issues
 Ancient texts established the 5 part structure still in dramatic practice