AP English
Boyd
GLOSSARY OF LITERARY TERMS
DRAMA
(stage direction)
ALARUM
(stage direction)
ASIDE
(stage direction)
EXEUNT
(EK-see-unt)
(stage direction)
FLOURISH/
SENNET
(stage direction)
RETIRE/
WITHDRAW
(stage direction)
WITHIN
(stage direction)
ADVANCES
(stage direction)
BELOW
ANTAGONIST
APRON
BEAR BAITING/
BULL BAITING
a loud disturbance or conflict.
BLANK VERSE
unrhymed verse, especially the unrhymed iambic pentameter
most frequently used in English dramatic, epic, and reflective
verse.
(chiefly British) refers to a satirical play or parody on some
contemporary theme.
itinerant open-air street players such as jugglers, conjurers or
acrobats. May have derived from the term “buskin,” which
referred to the long boot worn by actors in Greek tragedy, and
gradually came to mean any itinerant performer.
in Aristotle's Poetics, the “purging” or “cleansing” of terror and
pity, which the audience develops during the climax of a tragedy.
a pair of lines of meter in poetry; it usually consists of two lines
that rhyme and have the same meter.
the husband of an unfaithful wife (can also be used as a verb);
the cuckold grows horns.
BURLESQUE
BUSKER
CATHARSIS
(kuh-THAR-sus)
COUPLET
CUCKOLD
a part of an actor’s lines supposedly not heard by others on the
stage and intended only for the audience.
used as a stage direction in a printed play to indicate that a
group of characters leave the stage.
a fanfare (of horns, trumpets, etc.) to announce the
entrance or exit of a person of distinction.
seeks seclusion; moves back or away without actually
exiting the stage; recedes.
an inner position, place, or area close to, but not actually on, the
stage.
Moves forward; moves against another.
an archaic stage direction used in 16th century plays to denote
the relative position of an actor to one "above.”
the opponent or adversary of the hero or protagonist of a drama.
the area of the stage extending beyond the proscenium.
an immensely popular contest in
which trained bulldogs attacked a
tethered bear, bull or, less
frequently, a pony or an ape. In
1591 an order issued from the
privy-council forbidding plays to be
acted on Thursdays because bearbaiting and such pastimes had
usually been practiced on that day.
Animal baiting was officially banned
by the English Parliament in 1835.
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DENOUEMENT
(day-noo-MAH)
the final scene or scenes in a play devoted to tying up the loose
ends after the climax (although the word originally meant "the
untying").
DEUS EX
MACHINA
(day-us eks
MAH-kuh-nuh)
Literally, the god from the machine. Refers to the character
(usually a god) in classical Greek tragedy who enters the play
from the heavens at the end of the drama to resolve or explain
the conflict. This actor was usually lowered by means of a cranelike device known as a mechane. The term has come to mean
any arbitrary means of plot resolution.
also known as the inner proscenium, this is a temporary structure
used to reduce the opening of the permanent proscenium.
Particularly useful for touring companies, where the troupe has to
play on a variety of stage sizes.
highly comic, lighthearted, gleefully contrived drama, usually
involving stock situations (such as mistaken identity or
discovered lovers’ trysts), punctuated with broad physical stunts
and pratfalls.
the imaginary fourth wall that is removed from box set to enable
the audience to see the action on stage. The term now applies to
the “wall” separating audience and performers on any type of
stage or even film and television. Thus, the term “breaking the
fourth wall” refers to an actor speaking directly to the audience.
the flaw in character which leads to the downfall of the
protagonist in a tragedy; “tragic flaw.”
perhaps the best-known stock character to have originated from
the Commedia dell'Arte. Originally a sharp-witted servant in Italy,
he became a simpleton in France and a lackadaisical lover in the
British Theater. Best recognized by his tight-fitting suit of silk
diamonds in contrasting colors.
(also spelled hybris) excessive pride or self-confidence;
arrogance.
the most common meter in English verse; it consists of a line ten
syllables long that is accented on every second beat.
itinerant entertainers of the medieval period in Europe. The term
embraces ballad-singers, acrobats, jugglers, and animal trainers.
FALSE
PROSCENIUM
FARCE
FOURTH WALL
HAMARTIA
(hah-mar-TEE-uh)
HARLEQUIN
HUBRIS
(HEW-brus)
IAMBIC
PENTAMETER
JONGLEUR
(zhong-LOOr)
JOURNEYMAN
MACHIAVEL
(MAK-yuh-vel)
MASQUE
in Elizabethan theater, members of a company who both acted
and held an ownership interest in the company. Journeymen
worked under a master in much the same manner as they had in
medieval guilds.
a type of stage villain found in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama;
a broad category of ruthless schemers, atheists, and poisoners.
form of entertainment during the late middle ages, Renaissance
through the Reformation, which combined poetry, music, scenery
and elaborate costumes. Like mystery plays and pageants,
masques constitute a connection between classical theater and
modern theater. Masques grew out of folk ritual in which guests
would visit a nobleman or king and deliver gifts on some special
occasion or holiday. In masques during the 17th Century, it was
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not unusual for royalty to participate in masques an oft-cited
example being Louis XIV's portrayal of the Sun-King in the Ballet
Nuit.
MUSES
PATHOS
(PAY-thoze)
PLAY-WITHIN-THEPLAY
PROSCENIUM
ARCH
(proh-SEEN-eeyum)
PROTAGONIST
there were nine muses in Greek mythology -- the daughters of
Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory. Three of these were
particularly connected with theater: Melpomene, the muse of
tragedy; Terpischore, the muse of dancing; and Thalia, the muse
of comedy.
“passion,” in Greek; also “suffering.” The word refers to the
depths of feeling evoked by tragedy; it is at the root of our words
“sympathy” and “empathy,” which also describe the effect of
drama on audience emotions.
a play that is “presented” by characters who are already in a
play; like “The Murder of Gonzago,” which is presented by
“players” in Hamlet. Many plays are in part about actors and
plays and contain such plays-within-plays; these include Anton
Chekhov's Seagull, Jean Anouilh's Rehearsal, and
Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream and Taming of the
Shrew.
the arch that frames a stage, separating it from the auditorium.
the leading actor of a play, who is often set in conflict with an
antagonist. The term derives from ancient Greek theater in which
it described the first actor to speak. Originally, Greek theater
consisted of one principal actor and a chorus. As two and then
three actors were added, they were referred to as the
Protagonist, Deuteragonist, and Tritagonist.
RAKED STAGE
a sloped stage, angled so that the
rear (upstage) area is higher than the
forward (downstage) area. A raked
stage was standard theatre
architecture in the seventeenth
century and is often used today in
scene design but rarely in a theatre's
permanent architecture.
SCRIM
a loosely woven material used on stage, often to represent glass
or some other transparent substance. If lighting is thrown on the
front of a scrim drop, with no lighting behind, it becomes opaque.
If lighting on the front is reduced and the scrim is lit from behind,
it becomes transparent to the audience. Lighting can therefore
be used to “remove” a wall and permit the audience to see the
action on the other side, while understanding that they are
seeing “through” the wall. An example of this can be seen in
South Pacific during the follies when backstage area of the follies
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SHARERS
SOLILOQUY
SUBPLOT
SUSPENSION OF
DISBELIEF
TABLEAU
THREE UNITIES
VERISIMILITUDE
Boyd
plays downstage in front of a scrim and the actual “performance”
takes place upstage, behind the scrim. By changing the lighting,
the scene can be shifted from action taking place “backstage” to
that “onstage.”
term from Elizabethan theater to describe those members of the
company who owned a part interest in the wardrobe and
playbooks, as opposed to apprentices, who were not paid, and
hired men, who paid a fixed wage.
an utterance or discourse by a person who is talking to himself or
herself or is disregardful of or oblivious to any hearers present
(often used as a device in drama to disclose a character’s
innermost thoughts).
a secondary plot in a play, usually related to the main plot by
play's end. The Gloucester plot in King Lear and the Laertes plot
in Hamlet are examples.
the goal of any theater company in presenting or performing a
play is to cause the audience to suspend their disbelief, or to
momentarily forget that what they are watching is a performance,
but is, in an emotional sense, “real.”
a “frozen moment” onstage, with the actors immobile, usually
employed at the end of a scene, as the curtain falls or the lights
dim.
unities of time, place and action, the three elements of drama
introduced into French dramatic literature is actually based on a
misinterpretation of Aristotle's Poetics. They demanded that a
play should consist of one action, represented as occurring in not
more than 24 hours, and always in the same place. According to
The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre, Aristotle “insists
only on the unity of action, merely mentions the unity of time, and
says nothing about the unity of place.” The influence of
Shakespeare in England was such that the three unities were
never adopted as a rule of dramatic construction.
the appearance of truth. The value that players strive for in their
attempt to suspend the audience's disbelief. This is not to be
confused with realism or naturalism, for the depiction of truth can
take form even in symbolic works.
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