Dramatic structure

Dramatic structure (also called Freytag's pyramid) is the structure of a dramatic work such as a play or film. Many scholars have analyzed dramatic structure, beginning with Aristotle in his Poetics (c. 335 BCE). This article focuses primarily on Gustav Freytag's analysis of ancient Greek and Shakespearean drama.

History

In his Poetics, the Greek philosopher Aristotle put forth the idea that "A whole is what has a beginning and middle and end" (1450b27). This three-part view of a plot structure (with a beginning, middle, and end – technically, the protasis, epitasis, and catastrophe) prevailed until the Roman drama critic Horace advocated a 5-act structure in his Ars Poetica: "Neue minor neu sit quinto productior actu fabula" (lines 189-190) ("A play should not be shorter or longer than five acts").

Renaissance dramatists revived the use of the 8-act structure. In 1863, around the time that playwrights like Henrik Ibsen were abandoning the 5-act structure and experimenting with 3 and 4-act plays, the German playwright and novelist Gustav Freytag wrote Die Technik des Dramas, a definitive study of the 5-act dramatic structure, in which he laid out what has come to be known as Freytag's pyramid. Under Freytag's pyramid, the plot of a story consists of five parts: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and dénouement/resolution/revelation/catastrophe.

Rock-paper-scissors

Rock-paper-scissors is a zero-sum hand game usually played between two people, in which each player simultaneously forms one of three shapes with an outstretched hand. These shapes are "rock" (a simple fist), "paper" (a flat hand), and "scissors" (a fist with the index and middle fingers together forming a V). The game has only three possible outcomes other than a tie: a player who decides to play rock will beat another player who has chosen scissors ("rock crushes scissors") but will lose to one who has played paper ("paper covers rock"); a play of paper will lose to a play of scissors ("scissors cut paper"). If both players throw the same shape, the game is tied and is usually immediately replayed to break the tie. Other names for the game in the English-speaking world include roshambo and other orderings of the three items, sometimes with "rock" being called "stone".

The game is often used as a choosing method in a way similar to coin flipping, drawing straws, or throwing dice. Unlike truly random selection methods, however, rock-paper-scissors can be played with a degree of skill by recognizing and exploiting non-random behavior in opponents.