This course acquaints students with critical approaches to play analysis. To this end, we will examine aspects that can (usually) be identified in every dramatic text. Central notions will be presented, discussed and exemplified in concrete dramatic manifestations – first and foremost poetic aspects, i.e. as the components of which a dramatic text is composed, and by which a fictional world is described. Furthermore, we will consider their rhetoric value, i.e. their capacity to modulate meaning and their potential effect upon the spectators. At the same time, the attitude is performative and applied by examining the text's purpose and potential to be fulfilled on stage. The course's conceptual and practical approach is neither historical nor chronological, yet it emphasizes the texts' affinity to historical, cultural, and artistic contexts.