| A | B |
|---|
| Act | a major division of a drama |
| Arena Stage | open-aired amphitheaters |
| Aside | A statement intended to be heard by the audience or by a single other character but not by other characters on the stage |
| Blank Verse | unrhymed iambic pentameter |
| Catastrophe | struggle in a tragedy is the event that marks the ultimate fall of the central character |
| Central Conflict | struggle faced by the main character |
| Character | a person who figures in the action of a literary work |
| Climax | the high point of interest or suspense |
| Comedy | any work with a happy ending |
| Complication | develops the conflict to a high point of intensity |
| Crisis | That point in the development of the conflict at which a decisive event occurs that causes the main character's situation to become better or worse |
| Dialogue | the speech of actors in a play |
| Falling Action | the fortunes of the main character decline |
| Foreshadowing | The act of presenting materials that hint at events to occur later in a plot |
| Inciting Incident | the point in the plot where something decisive happens to determine the future course of events and the eventual working out of the conflict |
| Irony | A difference between appearance and reality |
| Monologue | long speeches given by actors |
| Motif | any element that recurs in one or more works of literature or art |
| Picture Stage | Another name for proscenium stage |
| Playwright | author of a play |
| Plot | A series of events related to a central conflict, or struggle |
| Proscenium Stage | a box-like area with three walls (or curtains) and a removed "fourth wall" through which the audience viewed the action |
| Repetition | The writer’s conscious reuse of a word, phrase, sentence or clause |
| Scene | The entrance of one or more characters |
| Script | the written form of the play |
| Simile | a comparison using like or as |
| Soliloquy | A speech given by a lone character on stage |
| Spectacle | all the elements of the drama presented to the senses of the audience—the lights, sets, curtains, costumes, makeup, music, sound effects, properties, and movements of the actors, including any special movement such as pantomime or dance |
| Stage Directions | Notes provided by the playwright to describe how something should be presented or performed on the stage |
| Thrust Stage | a platform that jutted into an area open to the sky |
| Tragedy | a drama that told the story of the fall of a person of high status |
| Tragic Flaw | a personal weakness that brings about the fall of a character in a tragedy |
