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Noble characters should not be depicted as vile (reprehensible actions are generally due to non-noble characters in Corneille's plays). Tragedy deals with affairs of the state (wars, dynastic marriages); comedy deals with love. For a work to be tragic, it need not have a tragic ending.
The Greek word for “actor” is hypocrites, which means “answerer” or “interpreter,” but the word cannot tell us anything about tragedy’s origins, since we do not know when it came into use. [6] Also, Easterling says: There is .. much to be said for the view that hypokrites means 'answerer'. He answers the questions of the chorus ...
Stock characters from Commedia dell'Arte — which gave each character a standard costume, so easily identifiable — continued across many types of theater, dramatic storytelling, and fiction. A stock character is a dramatic or literary character representing a generic type in a conventional, simplified manner and recurring in many fictional ...
They share some elements of tragedy, insofar as they feature a high-status central character, but they end happily like Shakespearean comedies. Almost three centuries after Shakespeare's death, the scholar F. S. Boas also coined a fifth category, the " problem play ," for plays that do not fit neatly into a single classification because of ...
Both Eastern and Western cultural traditions ascribe special significance to words uttered at or near death, [4] but the form and content of reported last words may depend on cultural context. There is a tradition in Hindu and Buddhist cultures of an expectation of a meaningful farewell statement; Zen monks by long custom are expected to ...
Also apophthegm. A terse, pithy saying, akin to a proverb, maxim, or aphorism. aposiopesis A rhetorical device in which speech is broken off abruptly and the sentence is left unfinished. apostrophe A figure of speech in which a speaker breaks off from addressing the audience (e.g., in a play) and directs speech to a third party such as an opposing litigant or some other individual, sometimes ...
Poetic justice describes an obligation of the dramatic poet, along with philosophers and priests, to see that their work promotes moral behavior. [10] 18th-century French dramatic style honored that obligation with the use of hamartia as a vice to be punished [10] [11] Phèdre, Racine's adaptation of Euripides' Hippolytus, is an example of French Neoclassical use of hamartia as a means of ...
Senators are also supernumerary characters at Timon's second feast. The Roman Senators, two of them speaking roles, appear in Coriolanus, both as friends and enemies to the title character. Two Senators and a Tribune discuss the prospects of their impending war with the Britons, in Cymbeline. Many major characters in the Roman plays are Senators.