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e. A play is a form of drama that primarily consists of dialogue between characters and is intended for theatrical performance rather than mere reading. The creator of a play is known as a playwright . Plays are staged at various levels, ranging from London's West End and New York City's Broadway – the highest echelons of commercial theatre ...
The origin of the one-act play may be traced to the very beginning of recorded Western drama: in ancient Greece, Cyclops, a satyr play by Euripides, is an early example. The satyr play was a farcical short work that came after a trilogy of multi-act serious drama plays.
Shakespeare's plays are a canon of approximately 39 dramatic works written by the English poet, playwright, and actor William Shakespeare. The exact number of plays as well as their classifications as tragedy, history, comedy, or otherwise is a matter of scholarly debate. Shakespeare's plays are widely regarded as among the greatest in the ...
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 ...
A closet drama (or closet play) is a play created primarily for reading, rather than production. Closet dramas are traditionally defined in narrower terms as belonging to a genre of dramatic writing unconcerned with stage technique. Stageability is only one aspect of closet drama: historically, playwrights might choose the genre of 'closet ...
Heroic drama is a type of play popular during the Restoration era in England, distinguished by both its verse structure and its subject matter. [1] [2] The subgenre of heroic drama evolved through several works of the middle to later 1660s; John Dryden 's The Indian Emperour ( 1665 ) and Roger Boyle's The Black Prince ( 1667 ) were key ...
Medieval theatre. Nineteenth–century engraving of a performance from the Chester mystery play cycle. Medieval theatre encompasses theatrical in the period between the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century and the beginning of the Renaissance in approximately the 15th century. The category of "medieval theatre" is vast, covering ...
Melodrama. Mélodrame painted by Honoré Daumier between 1855 and 1860, depicting a typical Parisian scene as was the case on Boulevard du Temple. A modern melodrama is a dramatic work in which the plot, typically sensationalized and for a very strong emotional appeal, takes precedence over detailed characterization.