STUDYING DRAMA
CONVENTIONS ASSOCIATED WITH WORDS
WRITTEN AND SPOKEN
Dialogue
 Monologue (others on stage)
 Soliloquy (alone on stage)
 Verbal irony (double entendre)
 Aside (to audience)

ALWAYS KEEP IN MIND:
likely or possible effects of the words
 movements and gestures either included or
implied
 limitations and possibilities of different types of
theaters

CONVENTIONS ASSOCIATED WITH
CHARACTER PORTRAYAL
Protagonist vs. antagonist
 Anti-hero
 Stock character (i.e. the clown)
 Eponymous character (i.e. Othello)
 Backstory
 Flashbacks (analepsis)
 Flash forwards (prolepsis)
 Deliberately construed entrances and exits
 Gestures and repetitive actions (the absence of
words)

DRAMA VS. NOVEL
How might a playwright be limited in a way that
the novelist is not?
 What strategies can a playwright use to convey
characters?

CONVENTIONS ASSOCIATED WITH PLOT
Freytag’s triangle – exposition, rising
action/exciting force/complication, climax, falling
action, dénouement
 Prologue/epilogue
 Curtain lines – delivered at the end of an act or
scene
 Dramatic irony
 Comic relief
 Deus ex machina – introduction of an unexpected
or improbable event that leads to a solution to
some dramatic problem

OPENING SCENES
How does the scene engage the audience?
 What effect does the playwright want this scene
to have on the audience?
 What purpose does the scene serve in the play as
a whole?

CONVENTIONS RELATED TO STAGING AND
PERFORMANCE
Set
 Lighting and sound
 Stage business – actions that are incidental to
the immediate action
 Freeze frame –meaning conveyed through silence
and stasis
 Breaking of the fourth wall (curtain) – actors
acknowledging or speaking to the audience
 Moving beyond the script – how the play is to be
enacted, and thus many meanings rather than a
single meaning. First understand generally what
is happening; then think about the ways in which
this could be enacted on the stage

AUDIENCE: VIEWER VS. READER
How are they/their needs different?
 What strategies are employed for each different
audience?

SHAKESPEARE
STRUCTURAL PATTERN
Introduction to characters.
Problem(s) emerge and/or confusion occurs, resulting in extreme emotions
and disintegration of social restraint.
Chain of events.
Chaos ensues.
Chain of events continues.
More chaos and confusion.
More events leading to…
Climax.
In a tragedy, leading to the death of one or more characters.
Re-establishment of order.
THEMATIC TOPICS OF SHAKESPEARE
conflict – external and internal (protagonist)
 appearance vs. reality
 order and disorder – causes of breakdown tend to
include jealousy, love, hate, and ambition
 change – centered on protagonist
 love

THEMES ARE OFTEN DEVELOPED IN ONE
OF THREE WAYS:
1.
2.
3.
Individual character/characters experience
some personal difficulties or inner turmoil,
perhaps moral or spiritual, that causes some
mental conflict
The family, society, or the country is affected by
turmoil
Nature or the universe may be disordered, or
supernatural events may be involved
LANGUAGE OF SHAKESPEARE

blank verse
unrhymed iambic pentameter (unstressed, stressed)
 used by “high” characters, in keeping with their
elevated natures


prose
just as carefully structured and organized as verse
 used by “low” or comic characters
 used for sub-plots

This is general/simplistic; look at the context of the
specific episode to determine why Shakespeare has
chosen to use the language in the specific form.
SHAKESPEARE USES LANGUAGE TO:
create atmosphere and setting (due to lack of
backdrops, set pieces, etc.)
 conjure vivid images that are linked to central
themes
