Drama- Literary Terms
Drama- Literary Terms
Drama is a serious literary work usually intended for performance before an audience. It is a literary form designed for the theatre, in which the representation is by actors who impersonate the characters and perform the action and dialogue. In Poetic Drama the dialogue is written in verse instead of prose. Comedy, Tragedy, Chronicle plays, Masque, Miracle and Morality plays are dramatic species; Act, atmosphere, chorus, plot and character, setting, soliloquy and dramatic illusion, stock characters are dramatic components; Expressionism, Realism and Nationalism and Symbol are dramatic styles. Although play is often used as a synonym for drama, the two terms differ slightly in meaning. A play is a drama intended for performance before a theatrical audience.
Thus although all plays are dramas not all dramas are plays because some dramas (for example, closet dramas) are meant not to be performed but rather to be read as poems, this type of Dramas are not plays. The word drama may also be used in a narrower sense to refer to a serious play, movie, or television show.
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