dramatis personae
- noun
- /drəˈmætɪs pərˈsoʊni/
- Literature
:
dramatis personae
- In the play's introduction, the dramatis personae are outlined to help the audience understand who is who.
Examples
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Sure, you would need some sort of synopsis/dramatis personae up front, as well as a "debaffler" section at the end, like Fantagraphics did with Krazy Kat, to explain all the in-jokes and topical references.
Blog text (9) -
Through Basil and a dramatis personae sharing so much with him, Waugh's novel suggests that the wheel of history, rather than driving his helpless characters, might in fact be driven by their avid embrace of their own dehumanization.
Academic text (2000) -
Citizens of Port Sebastian, behold the dramatis personae of whom I speak.
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Joyce has a name-your-baby book that will be very useful in her future line of work, and I have my list of dramatis personae.
Fiction book (1994) -
The experience of "strife and tediousness," but also the textual appearance of these words, writes wrinkles onto the bodies of the dramatis personae.
Academic text (2017) -
Waiting time for Mary is marked and measured by a calculus emanating from the dramatis personae of the marriage plot in the person of the would-be seducer, Harry Carson.
Academic text (2016) -
Moreover, these individuals are not all main "dramatis personae"—his minor characters have often attained prominence, too, for their irrepressible and uniquely developed personalities.
Academic text (2010) -
Moreover, in the lists of dramatis personae, Strindberg sometimes designates his characters by name, sometimes only by blood or other relationship (father, daughter, son-in-law), sometimes by profession, and sometimes by abstraction (Mr. X, Miss Y).
Academic text (1996) -
A metatext "tells at least three stories: (a) the story of what happens to the dramatis personae; (b) the story of what happens to the naive reader; (c) the story of what happens to itself as a text (this third story being potentially the same as what happens to the critical reader)" (Eco, Role of the Reader 205).
Academic text (1992) -
The script includes a list of dramatis personae so the audience can familiarize themselves with the characters before the show starts.
Synonyms
286
2.9
A group of actors who perform in a play or film
14
3.4
A group of actors who perform in a play or film
Surface Forms
Morphology
dramatis + personae
The phrase is a Latin borrowing literally meaning 'persons of the drama' (i.e. the characters), so the lexical relation to 'drama' and 'person' is present and could be guessed by learners familiar with those roots. However the Latin inflected forms (dramatis, personae) and unfamiliar case/number morphology make the construction non-obvious to an average B1 learner, so the meaning is only partially predictable.
Etymology
The phrase dramatis personae comes from Latin and literally joins dramatis 'of the drama' and personae 'people', creating the clear image of the people who appear in a play, so today it means 'the list of characters or actors'.