Schauspiel, any spectacle or public performance. In late 18th-century German literature the word took on the more specific meaning of a play that has characteristics of both a tragedy and a comedy in that it is a serious play with a happy ending and in which the hero does not die.

dramaturgy, the art or technique of dramatic composition or theatrical representation. In this sense English dramaturgy and French dramaturgie are both borrowed from German Dramaturgie, a word used by the German dramatist and critic Gotthold Lessing in an influential series of essays entitled Hamburgische Dramaturgie (“The Hamburg Dramaturgy”), published from 1767 to 1769. The word is from the Greek dramatourgía, “a dramatic composition” or “action of a play.”