DRAMA

1) Primary text: the main body of the play spoken by the characters,
2) Secondary text: all the texts accompanying the main text.
3) Dramatis personae: list of characters in a play
4) Multimedia elements: stage, background, furniture, decoration.
5) Epic theatre: developed as a reaction against the realistic theatrical tradition. There are
instances where a mediator comparable to the narrator of a narrative text appears on stage
6) Alienation effect: when you can empathize with the main character, between the good and
bad situations. It recalls humanity in the audience, creates feelings.
7) Chorus:
8) Perspective: the way in which people see the situation of the characters.
9) Dramatic irony: jokes that use a little background to understand the jokes.
10) Story: the succession of acts told in order and in a narrative way. What is told
11) Plot: the problems that happen in the story.
12) Plot-line: each of the events or problems that happen in the story and involve a group of
characters.
13) Linear/ non-linear plots: linear plots follow a chronological order; non-linear plots are
used to distract and confuse the audience and follow an achronological order.
14) Analytic drama:
15) Unity of plot:
16) Unity of time and place:
17) Mimesis: focuses essentially on showing the story
18) Subplot: plot that is less important than the main plot, and it focuses on secondary
characters.
19) Freytag’s pyramid: Freytag used a pyramid to show the parts of a play.
20) Exposition: when a problem appears, and the plot begins.
21) Complicating action: when the problem is affecting the characters, the middle of the plot.
The characters are presented in greater detail
22) Peripety:.
23) Falling action:
24) Catastrophe: when a tragedy happens in the play and it affects the main character.
25) Dénouement: unknotting the plot
26) Closed structure: when all the plotlines are solved by the end of the story.
27) Open structure: when the plotlines aren’t solved by the end of the story.
28) Theatre of the absurd:
29) Dramatic conventions: follow certain known practices and traditions
30) Poetic justice: when a character receives whether a punishment or a reward depending on
the way he or she had made the actions during the story.
31) Realism: when a play focuses on real life problems, it allows characters to identify
themselves with characters in the play
32) Naturalism:
33) Stage props
34) Word scenery: when audience has to imagine the scenery.
35) Symbolic space: when spaces in a play are used as symbols.
36) Succession: when events happen one after another
37) Simultaneity: when two or more events happen at the same time
38) Temporal frames:
39) Word painting
40) Played time: actions in the past that have happened during the play.
41) Playing time: actions in the present that are happening in the play.
42) Duration: time spent during the play.
43) Ellipsis: when discourse time skips to a later part in story time
44) Speed up: when story time is longer than discourse time.
45) Slow down: when discourse time is longer than story time.
46) Pause: when discourse time keeps in a stand-still while story time continues
47) Order: the way in which events happen
48) Flashback: when time skips into the past
49) Flash-forward: when time skips into the future.
50) Ab ovo beginning: when the story begins a the start of the story.
51) In media res beginning: when the story starts without background, and when things have
already happened.
52) In ultima res: when the story starts at the end of the story and uses flashbacks to know
what have happened before.
53) Frequency: the time that passes between one event and another.
54) Singulative: when an event happens once and is mentioned once.
55) Repetitive: when an event happens once but is mentioned many times
56) Iterative: when an event happens many times but is mentioned only once.
57) Major characters: personajes principales
58) Minor characters: personajes secundarios
59) Eponymous hero: when the main character gives the name to the play (Hamlet)
60) Multi-dimensional character: when many characteristics of a character are given.
61) Dynamic character: when a character has personality development during the play.
62) Mono-dimensional character: when one or few characteristics of a character are given.
63) Static character: when a character has no personality development during the play.
64) Flat character: mono-dimensional + static
65) Type: a character that follows stereotypes.
66) Revenger type: a character that appears to take revenge.
67) Foil character: a minor character that makes a major character shine (sherlock and
wattson)
68) Hamartia:
69) Catharsis: when a disaster happens in the play
70) Character constellation
71) Hero:
72) Protagonist: the main character of a play
73) Antagonist: the enemy of the protagonist
74) Character configuration
75) Authorial characterization: when the narrator characterizes a character.
76) Figural characterization: when a character characterizes another character.
77) Self-characterization: when a character characterizes themselves.
78) Dialect: tells where a person comes from.
79) Sociolect: tells what social class a person does belong to
80) Telling names
81) Pragmatic function of language: when language is used to explain terms.
82) Poetic function of language:
83) Monologue: when a character talks to someone, but the speaker is the only one who is
talking.
84) Dialogue: when two or more characters hold a conversation.
85) Soliloquy: when a character talks to themselves
86) Aside:
87) Ad spectatores: when a character talks to the audience.
88) Turn allocation:
89) Stichomythia. when two characters discuss something and there is a dialogue where the
characters have each one a turn to speak.
90) Repartee
91) Wit
92) Wordplay
93) Amphitheatre: comes from the Greek theatre, the stage is in the middle.
94) Mystery and morality play: plays that occurred in the market of the village, and the
audience interacted a lot with the characters.
95) Apron stage: surrounded by the audience in three sides, so ignoring the public was very
difficult, characters used ad spectatores a lot.
96) Proscenium stage / picture frame stage: was called like this because the perspective from
the audience was like watching a picture
97) High comedy: jokes that used intellect, serious purpose
98) Low comedy: jokes that used farce and absurd humour, farce, emphasis on situation
comedy
99) Romantic comedy: tells the story of two lovers and the problems that they have, that don’t
allow them to get together. Usually there are fantastic elements.
100) Satiric comedy:
101) Comedy of manners
102) Farce
103) Comedy of humours: four humours belong to four different
parts of the body (blood, choleric, phlegmatic, melancholic). One of this humours is used
in the play, attributed to a character
104) Melodrama: play of drama mixed with music.
105) Senecan tragedy
106) Revenge tragedy: a play where the main character takes
revenge.
107) Dumb show / Play within the play
108) Domestic tragedy: a play that centers in a family, in the issues
of one family
109) Antihero: a character that is the enemy of the hero, is useless
110) Tragicomedy: comedy + tragedy