Vocabulary of drama

1. Vocabulary of drama

2. Motif • A recurring object, concept, or structure in a work of literature. • A motif may also be two contrasting elements in a work, such as good and evil. • A motif is important because it allows one to see main points and themes that the author is trying to express, so that one might be able to interpret the work more accurately.

3. Rhetorical Question • A question not meant to be answered such as “Why can’t we just get along?” • The question is used as a rhetorical device, posed for the sake of encouraging its listener to consider a message or viewpoint. • Though these are technically questions, they do not always require a question mark nor an answer.

4. Melodrama • Sensational dramatic piece with exaggerated characters and exciting events intended to appeal to the emotions. • This nineteenth century view of drama appeals to the emotions. Based on stock characters who are either villainous or virtuous, these sensational plays have happy endings. • Like many contemporary television shows, melodramas feature static characters who deal with the world but fail to experience real growth, development, or insight

5. Narration in drama • For the most part, plays have no narrators. (There are a few notable exceptions to this rule.) • The audience must glean critical information from the action on stage.

6. Dramatic irony in drama • Playwrights use dramatic irony when they allow the audience to know more than the characters do about a specific situation or incident. • In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the audience hears the fiendish plot of Claudius and Laërtes. Both are determined to see Hamlet dead. Moments later, Hamlet responds to news of the King’s great wager and his own impending duel with Laërtes by saying, “[…] how ill all’s here about my heart” (V.ii. 186).