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The term "play" can encompass either a general concept or specifically denote a non-musical play. In contrast to a "musical", which incorporates music, dance, and songs sung by characters, the term "straight play" can be used. For a brief play, the term "playlet" is occasionally employed. The term "script" pertains to the written text of a play.
Word play is closely related to word games; that is, games in which the point is manipulating words. See also language game for a linguist's variation. Word play can cause problems for translators: e.g., in the book Winnie-the-Pooh a character mistakes the word "issue" for the noise of a sneeze , a resemblance which disappears when the word ...
Ben Jonson coined the term "playwright" and is the first person in English literature to refer to playwrights as separate from poets. The earliest playwrights in Western literature with surviving works are the Ancient Greeks. William Shakespeare is amongst the most famous playwrights in literature, both in England and across the world.
Four commedia dell'arte characters, whose costumes and demeanor indicate the stock character roles that they portray in this genre. In fiction, a character is a person or other being in a narrative (such as a novel, play, radio or television series, music, film, or video game).
Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially novels, plays, and poems. [1] It includes both print and digital writing. [2] In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include oral literature, much of which has been transcribed.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines the "well-made play" as one "written in a formulaic manner which aims at neatness of plot and foregrounding of dramatic incident rather than naturalism, depth of characterization, intellectual substance, etc." [2] The Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance (2004) elaborates on the definition: "A dramatic structure [designed] to provide a constantly ...
An act is a major division of a theatre work, including a play, film, opera, ballet, or musical theatre, consisting of one or more scenes. [1] [2] The term can either refer to a conscious division placed within a work by a playwright (usually itself made up of multiple scenes) [3] or a unit of analysis for dividing a dramatic work into sequences.
The 1522 cover of Mundus et Infans, a morality play. The morality play is a genre of medieval and early Tudor drama. The term is used by scholars of literary and dramatic history to refer to a genre of play texts from the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries that feature personified concepts (most often virtues and vices, but sometimes practices or habits) alongside angels and demons, who ...