logo

play

What is Play? Definition, Usage, and Literary Examples

Play Definition
The History of Plays
The Elements of Plays
The Types of Plays
The Function of Plays
A Brief History of Eastern Plays
Plays vs. Screenplays
Theatrical Superstitions
Notable Playwrights
Examples in Literature
Further Resources on Plays
Related Terms

Play Definition

A play (PLAY) is a literary work written for the theater that dramatizes events through the performance of dialogue and stage directions. The authors of plays, called playwrights, structure the performances into acts and scenes, which help build the tension and present the story in a compelling way for audiences. There are a few types of plays, such as those written for the stage, for radio (radio plays), and for television or motion pictures (screenplays).

Plays are typically divided into two main genres: dramas, which are serious in tone and often tragic, and comedies, which are lighthearted and funny. All plays, however, aim to entertain and share meaningful insights into this human experience. Even when plays are more experimental or absurdist in nature, they speak to emotional truths and inspire critical thought.

The word play, meaning a dramatic performance, originates from the early fourteenth century, with roots in the Greek paizo, meaning “to act.”

The History of Plays

The history of the modern play traces back to the dramas of antiquity. Western drama began in ancient Greece, where dramatists wrote plays to compete in national competitions honoring Dionysus, the god of wine and ecstasy. These plays were either comedies, tragedies, or satyr plays, a kind of bawdy burlesque. Not many survived into the modern era. The works of Aeschylus (the Oresteia, Prometheus Bound), Euripides (Medea, The Trojan Women), and Sophocles (Oedipus Rex, Electra) are among the few that remain intact and are still performed today.

When the Roman Empire expanded into Grecian provinces, the Romans encountered the popularity of performed dramas and scattered this concept throughout the rest of Europe. A natural byproduct of this growth was that writers interpreted dramas in different ways, expanding them beyond the three basic categories of comedy, tragedy, or satyr play. Plays possessed greater nuance and sophistication, and the subjects explored were more varied and diverse.

Greco-Roman dramatist Livius Andronicus (Achilles, Gladiolus) and Gnaeus Naevius (Aegisthus, Lycurgus) were the first major playwrights of the era, though only fragments of their work have survived. They set the stage—both literally and figuratively—for the Roman dramatists to follow, including Plautus (Casina, Mostellaria), Lucius Accius (Decius, Brutus), and Seneca the Younger (Thyestes, Phaedra).

Plays in the Middle Ages

By the Middle Ages, plays—like much of life in the Medieval world—had largely become the domain of the church. Mystery plays focused primarily on performances of Biblical stories and events. These evolved into the morality plays of the 15th century, which were didactic dramas still heavily influenced by the Bible. Morality plays consisted of allegorical characters who teach the audience archly moral lessons through simple, plot-driven stories. Examples include the anonymously authored plays The Castle of Perseverance and Everyman.

As the Middle Ages progressed, playwrights started dabbling outside the sacred, with historical plays honoring kings of the past. Morality plays gradually declined in popularity, and by the early 16th and 17th centuries, more secular topics gained traction in the theater. English Renaissance theater of this era gave the world some of its best known plays and playwrights, like William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream), Christopher Marlowe (Edward the Second, Tamburlaine the Great), and Ben Jonson (The Alchemist, Volpone).

The penchant for dramatizing—and, often, celebrating—past monarchies remained strong, though plays began to deal with other, more daring subjects and storylines. By the Restoration, comedies like George Etherege’s The Man of Mode and William Wycherley’s The Country Wife were unabashedly frank and boldly sexual for the times.

Plays in the Modern Era

Most scholars consider the modern age of Western drama to have first blossomed in the 19th century. It was during this period that trailblazing plays really started to delve into realistic themes, confront real-world issues, and offer social criticisms, while also expanding the form to embrace experimentation with style and language. A Doll’s House and Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen, Mother Courage and Her Children and The Caucasian Chalk Circle by Bertolt Brecht, The Cherry Orchard and The Seagull by Anton Chekhov, and The House of Bernarda Alba and Blood Wedding by Federico García Lorca are just a few of the pioneering works of this period.

From the late 19th to the mid-20th century, experimentation developed into its own theatrical style. A prime example is the Theatre of the Absurd, which tackled themes like existentialism and the inherent meaninglessness of human existence. Experimental playwrights played with conventional plot structure, narrative, and voice to challenge audiences and encourage social change. In addition to the works of Brecht, experimental theater included mainstays like Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot, Happy Days), Eugène Ionesco (Rhinoceros, Exit the King), and Harold Pinter (The Birthday Party, The Homecoming).

American plays came into their own in the 20th century. Playwrights centered the American experience in exciting, often risky new ways, presenting authentic portrayals of modern life: intense stories of fractured family relationships (Long Day’s Journey Into Night by Eugene O’Neill, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee, A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry); dramas documenting the Southern mythos and the fragility of the spirit (The Little Foxes by Lillian Hellman, A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley); raucous, boundary-pushing comedies (Arsenic and Old Lace by Joseph Kesselring, Born Yesterday by Garson Kanin, Brighton Beach Memoirs by Neil Simon); biting social commentaries (The Crucible by Arthur Miller, A Soldier’s Play by Charles Fuller, How I Learned to Drive by Paula Vogel); and plays that, for the first time, empowered marginalized communities with their own voices and histories (the Pittsburgh Cycle/Century Cycle by August Wilson, The Normal Heart by Larry Kramer, Angels in America: Millennium Approaches and Perestroika by Tony Kushner).

The Elements of Plays

A typical play contains the following elements: acts and scenes, characters, dialogue, plot, setting, and stage directions.

Acts and Scenes

Playwrights break the action of their plays into larger sections called acts, with individual acts broken up into smaller sections called scenes. Each scene is essentially a vignette that presents a pivotal moment in the plot or in the development of the characters. Some plays—such as Samuel Beckett’s Endgame and Arthur Miller’s A Memory of Two Mondays—are one-act plays, where all the drama unfolds in a single act; a playwright may or may not divide them into smaller scenes.

Characters

The characters are the people whom the play is about, with the dramatic action resulting from their choices, behaviors, and relationships. Characters are central to the plot of any play because, without them, the playwright cannot tell the story. Most often, characters are their own unique identities, but, in some cases, they might be allegories or archetypes; examples of the latter include the characters in Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe and in The Skin of Our Teeth by Thornton Wilder.

Dialogue

Dialogue is just as important as character in any play because it propels the action forward and informs the audience about what’s happening onstage, who the characters are, and their relationships to one another. Dialogue encompasses all the spoken parts of the play. This takes the form of conversations between characters or asides spoken to the audience. Ancient and classical playwrights frequently wrote dialogue in verse, but this is largely outdated, with modern dialogue and language replacing more formal rhythms and structures.

Some plays consist only of monologues, dialogue spoken by one character at a time, usually directly to the audience. For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf by Ntozake Shange and The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler are two popular examples. A one-person show or solo performance is a play-length monologue delivered by one performer; they may play one character or multiple characters. Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 by Anna Deavere Smith and God Said Ha! by Julia Sweeney are both one-person shows.

Plot

The plot is the sequence of events linking the story together and presenting it in a cohesive, compelling way. Plot consists of five general elements: an introduction that introduces the characters and setting; rising action; a climactic scene or scenes; falling action; and a resolution. Many plays use this approach to tell a linear story, though some—especially those that are more experimental in nature—may jump around in time and deliberately alter the audience’s sense of reality; Six Degrees of Separation by John Guare is an example of the latter.

Setting

The setting is where the action of the play takes place. Setting can refer to both the geographic area (city, state, country) and the exact location of the action in a given scene (a specific room in a house, an office, a public space like a park or a beach, etc.). For many playwrights, setting is so critical that it almost becomes another character in the play; for instance, see the American South of Tennessee Williams, the New England of Eugene O’Neill, and the New York of Neil Simon.

Stage Directions

Stage directions are the only other text that appears in a play script. They are not spoken; instead, they function as directions to the actors, director, and other creatives producing the play. They stipulate when characters enter and exit a scene; how actors should speak or react to certain lines; what the sets should look like; and any supplemental information that enhances the experience of the play, such as specific musical selections, types of lighting to use, and sound effects to employ. Some playwrights, like William Shakespeare, include minimal stage directions, while others, like Samuel Beckett, are notorious about productions adhering strictly to the meticulous stage directions they’ve defined.

The Types of Plays

Dramas and comedies are the two main genres of plays, but you can further split these into more detailed subgenres.

Farces

A farce is a comedy with an overly ridiculous plot, buffoonish characters, and exaggerated situations. Farces rely on a sense of the lighthearted and absurd, and they’re intended to be great fun for the audience. Popular farces include The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, Boeing-Boeing by Marc Camoletti, and Noises Off by Michael Frayn.

Documentary Theater

Documentary theater dramatizes real-life events, often by using existing materials—interviews, newspaper and magazine articles, government records, etc.—to tell the story. Some productions will utilize multimedia footage to bring the experience more fully and realistically into the theatrical space. Fact-based dramas stretch as far back as ancient Greece, but documentary plays as their own theatrical form are largely the product of more contemporary playwrights and activists like Heinar Kipphardt, Anna Deavere Smith, and the Tectonic Theater Project.

Melodramas

A melodrama overemphasizes the emotions of its characters and the emotional underpinnings of the story to elicit a response from the audience. Melodramas can be soap operatic or campy, but most aim to appeal to the viewer’s emotional sensitivities. Many mystery and morality plays of the Middle Ages, Shakespeare plays, and operas are melodramatic.

Operas and Musical Theater

Operas and musical theater are plays set to music, and the actors sing some or all of the dialogue. Opera tends to be more classical in style, with sweeping musical arrangements, swelling and overly emotive voices, and lavish sets and costumes. Musical theater has a generally lighter tone; a musical theater production is likelier to include spoken dialogue between the songs, more subdued—but still impressive and often majestic—vocal stylings, and fun, engaging plotlines. Verdi’s La Traviata and Puccini’s La Bohème are two world-famous operas, while Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg’s Les Misérables and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton are modern classics of musical theater.

Tragedies

There was a time when all plays were either comedies or tragedies; if all or most of the main characters were not dead by the final curtain, the play was a comedy, regardless of the tone of the rest of the play. Tragedies of the classical theater include The Bacchae by Euripides and Antigone by Sophocles. Modern tragedies may not end in mass death, but they still typically conclude with a sense of bleakness or despair; see ‘night, Mother by Marsha Norman and Bent by Martin Sherman.

The Function of Plays

Plays are, primarily, a form of entertainment. Yet, from their earliest days, plays have been a vehicle for inspiration, humor, critical thought, and transformation. Plays introduce audiences to characters, settings, and situations they might not encounter in their everyday lives; or, if they do encounter them, plays may inspire new ways of thinking about these subjects.

Plays can shed a light on the messier sides of human nature—like family and other interpersonal conflicts, the pain of social change and rebirth, and the struggles of mental illness, to name just a few—thereby illuminating our shared humanity. Many plays, even those not specifically classified as comedies, include lighter moments of levity, proving there is always time and space for laughter.

Ultimately, plays tell stories without the exposition of novels and other literary forms, and this allows the audience to connect directly with what the characters say and how they behave on stage. Plays are a remarkably straightforward and immersive art form that produce genuine, sometimes even life-changing experiences.

A Brief History of Eastern Plays

Eastern theater flourished in India in the form of Sanskrit dramas between the 1st and 10th centuries. In China, the first plays premiered during the Shang Dynasty, which began in 1600 BCE. Japanese theater emerged later, starting in the 16th and 17th centuries, with Kabuki theater combining plays, music, and dance.

All these approaches brought Eastern influences to the art of the play, with each country offering something distinct. For instance, in India, the Islamic Conquests discouraged play production, so afterwards, natives focused on creating plays about indigenous issues as a way to reassert their heritage. Colonial rule also shaped India’s plays, with great emphasis on the experience of living under the British Raj.

In China, plays honored historical figures or told morality tales with stock characters. Miming, dancing, singing, and comedic performance were common aspects of popular plays. During the reign of Empress Ming, puppeteers presented plays with shadow puppets. A changing world and Western influences dramatically impacted modern Chinese theater, though, as an art form, plays are no longer the big draw in China that they once were.

In Japan, noh was a spiritual play drawn from Buddhist and Shinto scriptures, while kyogen was a play that presented the spiritual concepts of noh in slapstick ways. Kabuki followed, with its bright colors and painstaking choreography. Bunraku introduced puppets into play performance. These were all early forms of Japanese theater. More recent developments include shingeki, launched in the early 20th century, which depicted contemporary issues and themes through natural, realistic acting. Sho-gekijo plays, which debuted in the 1980s, were plays created by amateur theater groups with one goal: to entertain the masses.

Compared to Western plays, Eastern plays are more apt to integrate music, dance, and puppetry into the finished performance. They also include themes and history unique to the countries where the plays originated.

Plays vs. Screenplays

A screenplay is a play written for the big or small screen. Screenwriters format screenplays differently than they would with a stage play. Instead of stage directions, they use industry-specific lingo that details important scene information, like location, time of day, and how one scene should transition to the next. Dialogue is centered on the page. Like stage plays, screenplays tend to follow the basic five elements of plot. 

Theatrical Superstitions

When actors perform in plays, many adhere to old superstitions reputed to ensure a successful performance. Specific plays are, in some cases, tied to specific superstitions. One of the most famous involves Macbeth by William Shakespeare, long considered a cursed play. Legend has it that if you’re an actor who says the name of the play while inside a theater, you too will be cursed. This is why many actors refer to Macbeth as “the Scottish play.”

Another theatrical superstition is that one should never wish an actor good luck before a performance. It’s not entirely known where this superstition originated, though a popular theory is that directly wishing a person luck could invoke the opposite. So, an alternate method is to say something completely different, i.e., “Break a leg.”

Whistling in a theater is also considered bad luck for actors. Again, the origins are murky, but because stage crew often communicate in whistles when moving sets and other equipment, an actor who whistles could confuse or endanger a working crewmember.

And be sure to always leave a light on in the theater. This is called a ghost light, and it’s thought that it provides company for all the ghosts that haunt the theaters on their journeys in the spirit world.

Notable Playwrights

Examples in Literature

1. Euripides, Medea

Euripides’s Greek tragedy follows Medea as she exacts an unthinkable revenge against her wayward husband, Jason. Jason left Medea with the hopes of marrying a woman of higher class and rank. Medea follows him, with their two children in tow, and brings him back into her confidence. Once she regains his trust, she murders their two children. Jason mourns the loss of his children and any hope he had of a profitable remarriage as Medea flees in a chariot.

2. Ntozake Shange, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf

Shange’s 1976 choreopoem is a play comprised of a series of music- and dance-connected monologues—vignettes capturing the experiences of seven African American women, named only by the colors they wear. They each share stories of racism, sexism, anger, pain, and, ultimately, empowerment. Among the monologues are that of the Lady in Yellow, who talks about losing her virginity; the Lady in Blue, who discusses having an abortion; and the Lady in Orange, who preaches her love of dance, saying she dances to keep from crying, a sentiment with which the other ladies onstage can relate.

3. John Patrick Shanley, Doubt: A Parable

Shanley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2004 play is a character study set at a New England Catholic school. Sister Aloysius Bouvier is the principal who rules the school with an iron fist. Sister James is a young nun and teacher still finding her place, both in the school and in the cloistered life. Father Flynn is a charismatic priest who challenges the old ways so championed by Aloysius. When Aloysius suspects Father Flynn of molesting a young African American boy, she embarks on a personal and ruthless crusade to find the truth, even if it means destroying everyone involved in the process. Ultimately, she succeeds in getting Father Flynn reassigned, but she expresses her doubts about his guilt. Shanley left the ending ambiguous to encourage audiences to come to their own conclusions about Father Flynn and the rightness, or wrongness, of Aloysius’s actions.

Further Resources on Plays

Broadway Direct does a deep-dive into 13 theater superstitions.

Learn more about Asian drama in this detailed presentation.

New York Theater breaks down the 50 best plays of the last 100 years.

Curious about how to write a play? Check out this tutorial from Playwriting 101.

Studio Binder delves into the process of formatting a screenplay.