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A dramatic and spectacular entertainment of which dumb acting as well as burlesque dialogue, music, and dancing by Clown, Harlequin, etc., are features.

ic composition; a comedy or tragedy; a composition in which characters are represented by dialogue and action. A play ought to be a just image of human nature. Dryden.

Design or tendency; meaning; import; tenor. The whole scope and purport of that dialogue. Norris. With a look so piteous in purport As if he had been loosed out of hell. Shak.

shoulders, -- a motion usually expressing dislike, dread, or doubt. The Spaniards talk in dialogues Of heads and shoulders, nods and shrugs. Hudibras.

A dramatic work, partly in dialogue and partly in song, of a kind popular in Germany in the latter part of the 18th century. It was often comic, had modern characters, and patterned its music on folk song with strictly subordinated accompaniment.

A tart dialogue with quick replies. [R.] Pope.

In the Greek tragedy, a song of the chorus, continued without the interruption of dialogue or anapæstics. Liddell & Scott.

t authors on a common topic; -- so called from the appellation given to the philosophical dialogue by the Greeks.

A theatrical piece, usually a comedy, the dialogue of which is intermingled with light or satirical songs, set to familiar airs. The early vaudeville, which is the forerunner of the opera bouffe, was light, graceful, and piquant. Johnson's Cyc.