dramatic works
Theater composition genre
Dramatic works are compositions intended for theatrical performance—plays, screenplays, and similar texts where story unfolds through dialogue and action rather than narration.
The term appears most often in legal and copyright contexts, distinguishing scripts and stage productions from novels, poems, or musical compositions: The copyright covers dramatic works and their adaptations.
- musical theaterStaged entertainment combining song
- melodramaSensational, emotionally overwrought drama
- morality playDrama teaching ethical lessons
- scriptwritingComposing film or TV text
- dramatic monologuePoem as character's speech
scenes · fourth wall · theater · Greek tragedy · tragic hero · plot · acts · final act · playwright · film · immersive theater · climax · tragicomedy · experimental theater · resolution · catharsis · curtain · opening night
- creative worksbooks, autobiography, memoir, novels, diary
- Greek classicsHomer, Iliad, Plato, Odyssey, Aristotle
- Greek LiteratureHomer, myths, Greek poetry, fables, Iliad
- Renaissance LiteratureShakespeare, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, The Prince, Don Quixote
- ShawPygmalion, Saint Joan, Geneva, Eliza Doolittle, Henry Higgins
- Victor HugoLes Miserables, Notre-Dame de Paris, Jean Valjean, Quasimodo, Cosette
dramatic worksnovels
Extended prose fiction
poetry · lyric poetry · prose fiction · epic poetry · essays
dramatic workssilent reading
Absorbing text without vocalizing
visual art · sculpture · painting · photography · printed matter