dramatis

• “‡ In general, the “dramatis personae” are the participants in an event: “Winston Churchill, Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin were the dramatis personae at the Yalta Conference.”

  dramatis personae

• “This usage survives today in the phrase "dramatis personae.”

  News

• “[Footnote: Molière, Racine, and Corneille always call the dramatis personae _acteurs_, and not _personnages_.]”

  The Blunderer

• “And yet the main characters have not been mentioned here, nor those whom one hesitates to call dramatis personae-the Devil and his retinue, witches, corpses, water nymphs, demons of all aspects and of every stripe, and finally an enormous talking car with a cavalry mustache.”

  languagehat.com

• “Among the dramatis personae, the happier individuals are the ones who've acknowledged their checkered histories and waved a cheerful goodbye to them.”

  The Huffington Post: David Finkle: First Nighter: "Follies" 2011 a Smash Hit

• “But in a little over a month, the dramatis personae in the vigil around the survivor's bed will change.”

  The Guardian: Gabrielle Giffords's astronaut husband prepares for space mission

• “They start off instead with excessive scene-setting, metaphysical speculation, introducing nonessential dramatis personae, throat-clearing, etc.”

  The Wall Street Journal: The Fine Art of Where to Start

• “Pivoting off this revealing comparison, Mr. Brill introduces the dramatis personae of his broader story, including grass-roots educators that readers will meet for the first time and several well-known people, like Michelle Rhee the former head of schools in Washington, D.C.”

  The Wall Street Journal: Learning the Hard Way

• “Of course, there are exceptions — epilogues that do conclude the action of the story — but most of the epilogues I read these days are nothing more than a biography of the dramatis personae.”

  Happily Ever After « Write Anything

• “The dramatis personae are friends, relations, and neighbors, evidently engaging in a friendly tug-of-war between two teams of women and children apparently of roughly equal strength — the kind of happy social exercise in which by all accounts my grandfather specialized.”

  Archive 2009-02-01

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