Drama
Understanding a Play
Plot Mountain in Drama
Exposition:
• Opening moments
• Location (symbols and metaphors)
• Meeting of characters
• What happened before the curtain rose
• What is happening now
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
Climax:
• Basic meeting of protagonist/antagonist
• Tension reaches its greatest height
• Does NOT HAVE to be dramatic
• Dramatic question about to be answered
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
Resolution/Denouement:
• Final moments of the play
• All the action is tied up
• Characters may be enriched and wiser
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
Foreshadowing
• Always a type of foreshadowing in a play
• Can take place as early as the exposition
• Always be looking for clues while reading
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
Subplot
Double plot
• A secondary arrangement of incidents
• Involves someone besides the protagonist
• Usually occur in Shakespeare’s plays
Stage Business
• Nonverbal action that engages the attention of
an audience
• Can be as small as a doorknob turning, creating
SUSPENSE
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
Closet Drama
• A play designed to be read aloud rather than
performed
• Do you think Trifles fits this definition?
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
Soliloquy
• A dramatic monologue in which we seem to
overhear the character’s innermost thoughts
uttered aloud
Theme
• The general point or truth about human beings
that may be drawn from the play
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.
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)
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
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
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.”
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”)
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
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?
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
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)
Slapstick Comedy
• Type of farce
• Features pratfalls, pie throwing, fisticuffs, and
other violent action
• “The Three Stooges”
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
TRAGEDY
• A play that portrays a serious conflict between
human beings and some superior, overwhelming
force
• Ends sorrowfully and disastrously—outcome
seems inevitable
Tragedy
• Protagonist undergoes a reversal of fortune,
from good to bad, ending in catastrophe
Tragic Flaw
• A fatal weakness or moral flaw in the
protagonist that brings him or her to a bad end.
Tragedy Conventional
Structure
Prologue:
Preparatory Scene
Ex. Oedipus asking the suppliants why they have
come and the priest telling about the plague
ravaging Thebes
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
Exodos:
The last scene in which the characters and chorus
concluded the action and departed
The chorus usually has the final lines.
Aristotle’s Concept of
Tragedy
1. Protagonist—the hero or chief character is a
person of “high estate” (royalty)
2. Tragic hero is fallible
3. Downfall is a result of hamartiathe hero’s
error or transgression or his flaw or weakness
of character
4. Hubris extreme pride, leading to
overconfidence
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
Aristotle Cont…
6. Recognition the discovery of some fact not
known before or some person’s true identity
7. Reversal reversal in fortune
 Usually occurs when a certain result is
expected and instead its opposite effect is
produced