Topic 3 of 5 · Form 3
Drama
Plays are written for performance; consider the audience's experience, staging, stage directions, entrances and exits, and the visual and dramatic impact of scenes.
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Understanding drama
Plays are written for performance; consider the audience's experience, staging, stage directions, entrances and exits, and the visual and dramatic impact of scenes.
Dramatic methods
Dialogue and subtext, soliloquy and aside, dramatic irony, conflict and tension, climax, contrasts between scenes, comic relief, symbolism and setting.
Characters and themes
How characters are revealed through their words and actions and what others say; how relationships change; how themes develop through the action.
Shakespeare and modern drama
For Shakespeare, consider verse and prose, imagery patterns and context; for modern drama, consider realism, staging and social themes.
Extract questions
Locate the extract in the play, consider what has just happened, explain how the writer makes the moment dramatic, and use specific details from the extract.
Check yourself
- What is dramatic irony?
- What is the purpose of a soliloquy?
- Give one function of comic relief in a tragedy.
Show answers
- When the audience knows something a character does not.
- To reveal a character's private thoughts and feelings to the audience.
- It relieves tension and can heighten the impact of later tragic scenes by contrast.
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