6.3–Key Components of a Dramatic Text

In order to analyze a play, most readers turn to a copy of the script as opposed to an actual performance. This strategy is partially due to ease—a performance, after all, is a unique moment in time, whereas a script may be reviewed recursively at the reader’s leisure.

The Dramatis Personae or Character List

At the onset of many plays is a list of the characters that appear in the play. Historically called a dramatis personae (Latin for “masks of the drama”), this list assists a reader in identifying who’s who in the play. Especially if you do not have access to visual or verbal cues that an actor exhibits while on stage, it can be difficult to discern who a character is, let alone their individual wants, motivations, or impact. The dramatis personae is an easy place to turn back to to remind yourself of a particular character and their relationship to a central character.

Acts and Scenes

Similar to how a long novel is broken up into books and chapters, long plays are divided into acts and scenes. Scenes represent shorter divisions. While modern playwrights will insert their own scene breaks (usually corresponding to a change in location or time), older playwrights often did not provide scene breaks. When you read an earlier play, like Shakespeare’s Othello or Sophocles’ Antigone, you will see scene breaks determined by an editor. These editorial breaks do not always correspond to a literal scene change or even a thematic change; rather, they may correspond to the entrance of a new character.

Acts, the longer division, typically inform the larger structure of the play. There are three common act structures that you are likely to encounter: one-act, three-act, and five-act plays. The aptly named one-act plays are shorter texts (usually 20–30 minute performance length) that consist only of one act. While one-act plays have ancient origins, this form is particularly popular for experimental theater and modern playwrights writing for competitions. In her early edited anthology of one-act plays, Helen Louise Cohen compares the structure and function of the one-act play to short stories: the one-act’s “plot must from beginning to end be dominated by a single theme; its crises may be crises of character as well as conflicts of will or physical conflicts; it must by a method of foreshadowing sustain the interest of the audience unflaggingly, but ultimately relieve their tension; it must achieve swift characterization by means of pantomime and dialogue; and its dialogue must achieve its effects by the same methods as the dialogue of longer plays, but by even greater economy of means.”^[1] If you encounter a one-act play, you may find that strategies for reading short stories, especially strategies that focus on character and theme, are especially useful.

Two-act and three-act plays are the most common modern structure in English literature. Two-act structures, as their name implies, contain two acts and are usually split by an intermission where the audience breaks from watching the play. Often, playwrights will use the intermission to signal a jump in time. When used to structure the story (as opposed to following time conventions), playwrights may use the second act to comment on the first and to switch the tone from more comic to serious.

The three-act structure is extremely popular in both classical Greek plays and modern film. At its most basic, the first act covers the play’s exposition and inciting incident. Act two contains the rising action, which includes both the midpoint (usually a twist or subversion of expectations) and the major climax. The play then concludes with the falling action and resolution as part of the third act.

While two- and three-act plays may be the most ubiquitous, the five-act play may very well be the form you’re most familiar with. Early English drama, particularly the drama of Shakespeare and many of his contemporaries, is separated into five acts. This structure, codified by German writer Gustav Freytag in 1863, is markedly similar to the three-act structure, with the major difference being that the second and third acts in the three-act structure are further separated into two acts in the five-act structure. In Freytag’s view, the structure is thus:

While many plays will fall into one of these categories, the important thing to remember is that these structures are meant to represent common narrative beats, or elements that audiences expect to see. Playwrights and performers alike often experiment with structure, sometimes subverting or removing it altogether for a larger effect on an audience. Non-western drama also follows its own narrative structures and will resist these forms since these plays were not designed with those structures in mind.

So why study structure? Structure ultimately provides a reader and watcher with a set of familiar expectations. These expectations simultaneously make the experience more enjoyable and accessible to the intended audience. Moreover, understanding a play on its metatextual level allows someone engaging with the play to better understand its themes and what was important contextually to the playwright and their intended audience.

When reading, act and scene breaks can be useful places to pause and reflect on the current action of the play.

Stage Directions

When reading a play, you will predominantly be looking at dialogue. However, you may occasionally find other text interspersed among characters waxing poetic, reflecting on their personal circumstances, plotting regicide, falling in love, or telling naughty jokes. These paratextual elements, called stage directions, are usually set off from the rest of the script by italics or some other visual cue that indicates that these lines are not meant to be read but to be performed or to be used in the staging of a play.

The number and types of stage directions vary from play to play and playwright to playwright. Earlier playwrights, for example, do not tend to offer many stage directions as these were not considered of importance in their textual transmittal and early publishing. In the example below from Act 2, scene 2 of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, the play contains two short stage directions for the character of Malvolio:

VIOLA. She took the ring of me. I’ll none of it.

MALVOLIO. Come, sir, you peevishly threw it to her, and

Her will is it should be so returned. [He throws

down the ring.] If it be worth stooping for, there it

Lies in your eye; if not, be it his that finds it.

He exits. (2.2.13–16)

In the Folger edition quoted here, editors Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine choose to represent stage directions in italics. They also insert the stage directions interlinearly (meaning within the dialogue lines themselves), as opposed to in the margins or separately from the dialogue line. If we view the page as a whole, we can see that both of these stage directions do not “count” as line numbers.

These two stage directions, while formatted similarly, differ significantly in their purpose and creation. The second stage direction, “He exits,” is a common stage direction marking the exit of a character. While exceptions occur, the entrances and exits of characters are usually noted in modern editions. You may also see the Latin word Exeunt, meaning “they all exit” at the end of a scene to indicate that all characters are leaving the stage. The purpose is utilitarian and, in this instance, found in the copy text (a primary text that textual editors use to base major editorial decisions on) that Mowat and Werstine used for their edition.

The first stage direction, “He throws down the ring,” differs from the more neutral “he exits” by offering an editorial comment on how Malvolio gives the ring he is carrying to the disguised Viola. As readers, we can tell that this is a decision made by the editors and not found in their prior text because of the use of brackets. In this moment (and in Viola’s following comments on the ring), readers know that Malvolio has somehow given Viola the ring, but the manner is left up to our imagination without the stage direction. Perhaps Malvolio stiffly hands the ring to Viola, and perhaps even realizes in the moment that Viola is in disguise. Other options include simply dropping the ring with no force other than gravity or tossing it to Viola. Regardless of where our imaginations go, the takeaway is thus: stage directions, especially those that comment on how the play is to be performed, shape our intended reading and understanding of key lines. Use these directions to inform your own readings, but also consider ways you can resist or think of performance possibilities beyond a given stage direction.

Themes

Unsurprisingly, plays comment (sometimes inadvertently) on the societies they are written and performed in. The particular topics that a play discusses and offers comment on are called themes. In order for a topic or idea to be a theme, it should occur throughout the play and usually in different guises with different characters. This level of repetition is beneficial for both an audience who does not have the advantage of re-reading a particular passage and for a director who wants to emphasize certain ideas when adapting the script to the stage.

Frequently, comments on a given theme take the form of a clear moral or “lesson,” but that is not always the case. Indeed, many plays are performed regularly because what they have to say about a particular theme is so adaptable. Moreover, since plays are remade every time they are performed, themes and their significance change.