Shakespeare’s “All the world’s a stage…”
- The medieval and Renaissance idea of the Theatrum Mundi (The Theater of the World)
- The Hermetic idea that life is a divine drama
- The Royal Art idea that we are participants in the Great Story
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.
Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been contrasted with the epic and the lyrical modes ever since Aristotle's Poetics (c. 335 BC)—the earliest work of dramatic theory.[2]
The term "drama" comes from a Greek word meaning "deed" or "act" (δρᾶμα, drâma), which is derived from "I do" (δράω, dráō). The two masks associated with drama represent the traditional generic division between comedy and tragedy.
In English (as was the analogous case in many other European languages), the word play or game (translating the Anglo-Saxon pleġan or Latin ludus) was the standard term for dramas until William Shakespeare's time—just as its creator was a play-maker rather than a dramatist and the building was a play-house rather than a theatre.[3]
The use of "drama" in a more narrow sense to designate a specific type of play dates from the modern era.
The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a collective form of reception. The structure of dramatic texts, unlike other forms of literature, is directly influenced by this collaborative production and collective reception.[5]
Library of Light Edition 1.0 — Last revised: June 2026