Drama and Poetry Vocabulary

Flashcards for key vocabulary terms in drama and poetry.

Accent (Drama)

Manner of speaking or pronunciation, as in a foreign accent; also the emphasis or stress placed on a particular syllable or word.

Act (Drama)

A major unit or division of a play.

Action (Drama)

The movement or development of the plot or story in a play; the sense of forward movement created by the sense of time and/or the physical and psychological motivations of characters.

Aesthetic distance (Drama)

The physical or psychological separation of the audience from the action of a play, needed to maintain the artistic illusion of the play.

Allegory (Drama)

A dramatic work in which there is a one-to-one correspondence between the literal meaning and the underlying, or allegorical, meaning of the work.

Antagonist

The opponent or adversary of the hero or main character of a drama; one who opposes and actively competes with another character in a play, most often with the protagonist.

Anti-hero

A protagonist who does not have the heroic qualities of the traditional protagonist.

Audience

The people who watch the performance; those for whom the performance is intended.

Blocking (Drama)

The path formed by the actor’s movement on stage, usually determined by the director with assistance from the actor and often written down in a script using commonly accepted theatrical symbols.

Catharsis (Drama)

The feeling of release felt by the audience at the end of a tragedy; the audience experiences catharsis, or is set free from the emotional hold of the action, after experiencing strong emotions and sharing in the protagonist’s troubles.

Character

A person portrayed in a drama, novel, or other artistic piece.

Characterization

How an actor uses body, voice, and thought to develop and portray a character.

Choreography

The movement of actors and dancers to music in a play.

Chorus (Greek Drama)

A group of performers who sing, dance, or recite in unison; in Greek drama, the chorus was the group of performers who sang and danced between episodes, narrated off-stage action, and commented on events.

Comic relief (Drama)

A break in the tension of a tragedy provided by a comic character, a comic episode, or even a comic line.

Conflict

The internal or external struggle between opposing forces, ideas, or interests that creates dramatic tension.

Dénouement (Drama)

The solution, clarification, and/or unraveling of the plot of a play.

Description

In responding to dramatic art, the process of telling what was seen and heard during the performance.

Deus ex machina (Drama)

Literally, “god from the machine”; refers to the character in classical Greek tragedy who entered the play from the heavens at the end of the drama to resolve or explain the conflict; in modern drama, refers to any arbitrary means of plot resolution.

Dialogue

Spoken conversation used by two or more characters to express thoughts, feelings, and actions.

Diction (Drama)

Selection and pronunciation of words; clarity of speech.

Entrance (Drama)

Stage direction indicating the act of entering the play area during a performance.

Epilogue

A summary speech delivered at the end of a play that explains or comments on the action.

Exit (Drama)

Stage direction; to leave the stage.

Exposition

The part of a play that introduces the theme, chief characters, and current circumstances.

Falling action

The series of events following the climax.

Foil

One who by strong contrast underscores the distinctive characteristics of another and, sometimes, prevents someone or something from being successful.

Fourth wall (Drama)

The invisible wall of a set through which the audience sees the action of the play.

Intermission (Drama)

A brief break between acts, in which the house lights come on and the audience may leave their seats.

Irony

An implied discrepancy between what is said and what is meant. There are several forms of irony.

Lighting (Drama)

The placement, intensity, and color of lights to help communicate environment, mood, or feeling.

Lines (Drama)

The dialogue of a play; the words actors say in performance.

Monologue

A long speech made by one actor; a monologue may be delivered alone or in the presence of others.

Mood (Drama)

The tone or feeling of the play, often engendered by the music, setting, or lighting.

Playwright (Drama)

A person who writes a play.

Plot

The events of a play or arrangement of action, as opposed to the theme.

Plot development

The organization or building of the action in a play.

Prologue

A speech which introduces a play.

Props (Drama)

Short for properties; any article, except costume or scenery, used as part of a dramatic production; any moveable object that appears on stage during a performance, from a telephone to a train

Protagonist

The main character or hero in a play or other literary work.

Rising action

A series of events following the initial incident and leading up to the dramatic climax.

Role (Drama)

The character portrayed by an actor in a drama.

Scene (Drama)

A small section or portion of a play.

Scenery (Drama)

The theatrical equipment, such as curtains, flats, backdrops, or platforms, used in a dramatic production to communicate environment.

Script (Drama)

The written dialogue, description, and directions provided by the playwright.

Set (Drama)

The physical surroundings, visible to the audience, in which the action of the play takes place.

Stage directions (Drama)

Instructions in the script that tell the actors what to do and where to move on stage; may also provide information about the setting.

Tableau (Drama)

A technique in creative drama in which actors create a frozen picture, as if the action were paused; plural is tableaux.

Tension (Drama)

The atmosphere created by unresolved, disquieting, or inharmonious situations that human beings feel compelled to address; the state of anxiety the audience feels because of a threat to a character in a play.

Theme (Drama)

The basic idea of a play; the idea, point of view, or perception that binds together a work of art.

Wings (Drama)

Offstage areas to the right and left of the acting/onstage area.

Anaphora (Poetry)

The repetition of a word or phrase, usually at the beginning of a line.

Alliteration (Poetry)

The repetition of sounds in a sequence of words.

Allegory (Poetry)

Narrative with two levels of meaning, one stated and one unstated.

Apostrophe (Poetry)

Direct address to an absent or otherwise unresponsive entity (someone or something dead, imaginary, abstract, or inanimate).

Assonance (Poetry)

The repetition of vowel-sounds.

Beat (Poetry)

A stressed (or accented) syllable.

Binary (Poetry)

Dual, twofold, characterized by two parts.

Blank verse (Poetry)

Unrhymed iambic pentameter.

Caesura (Poetry)

An audible pause internal to a line, usually in the middle.

Chiasmus (Poetry)

From the Greek letter Chi ( Χ ), a crossed rhetorical parallel.

Climax (Poetry)

The high point; the moment of greatest tension or intensity.

Consonance (Poetry)

The repetition of consonant-sounds.

Couplet (Poetry)

Two lines of verse, usually rhymed.

Heroic couplet (Poetry)

A rhymed iambic pentameter couplet.

Diction (Poetry)

Word choice, specifically the class or kind of words chosen.

Elegy (Poetry)

A reflective poem that laments the loss of something or someone.

End-stopped line (Poetry)

A line that ends with a punctuation mark and whose meaning is complete.

Enjambed line (Poetry)

A run-on line that carries over into the next to complete its meaning.

Foot (Poetry)

The basic unit of accentual-syllabic and quantitative meter, usually combining a stress with one or more unstressed syllables.

Iamb (Poetry)

An unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.

Trochee (Poetry)

A stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable.

Anapest (Poetry)

Two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable.

Dactyl (Poetry)

A stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables.

Spondee (Poetry)

Two stressed syllables.

Pyrrhic (Poetry)

Two unstressed syllables.

Free verse (Poetry)

Poetry in which the rhythm does not repeat regularly.

Imagery (Poetry)

The visual (or other sensory) pictures used to render a description more vivid and immediate.

Medial (Poetry)

Describes the middle of a line

Meter (Poetry)

A regularly repeating rhythm, divided for convenience into feet.

Metonomy (Poetry)

A figure of speech in which something is represented by another thing that is commonly and often physically associated with it.

Ode (Poetry)

A genre of lyric that tends to be a long, serious meditation on an elevated subject.

Prosody (Poetry)

The study of versification, i.e. the form—meter, rhyme, rhythm, stanzaic form, sound patterns—into which poets put language to make it verse rather than something else.

Refrain (Poetry)

A phrase or line recurring at intervals.

Reversed foot (Poetry)

A foot whose pattern of stresses and unstressed syllables is exactly opposite that of the original.

Rhythm (Poetry)

The patterns of stresses, unstressed syllables, and pauses in language. Regularly repeating rhythm is called meter.

Scansion (Poetry)

The identification and analysis of poetic rhythm and meter.

Simile

A figure of speech that compares two distinct things by using a connective word such as "like" or "as."

Speaker (Poetry)

The "I" of a poem, equivalent to the "narrator" of a prose text.

Stanza (Poetry)

A “paragraph” of a poem: a group of lines separated by extra white space from other groups of lines.

Symbol

An image that stands for something larger and more complex, often something abstract, such as an idea or a set of attitudes.

Symbolism

The serious and relatively sustained use of symbols to represent or suggest other things or ideas.

Synecdoche

A figure of speech in which a part of something is used to represent the whole.

Terminal (Poetry)

Describes the end of the line.

Tone

The speaker’s or author’s attitude toward the reader, addressee, or subject matter.

Trope

A figure of speech, such as a metaphor

Valediction

An act or utterance of farewell.

Variation

Brief deviation from the metrical framework.

Allegory (Prose)

A story that is used to represent a more general message about real-life (historical) issues and/or events.

Alliteration

A series of words or phrases that all (or almost all) start with the same sound.