The exposure indicates, in general, the stating, at the beginning of a literary work, subject which the author proposes to cover and of the day under which it will present it. All the kinds comprise an exposure; in some, it is important, or even necessary.

In Rhetoric, the exposure, called Proposal, constitutes one of the essential parts of the speech.

With the Theater, the exposure is, with the opening of the curtain, the first moment of the part intended to make share with the public of all that it has need to know to include/understand the action and to follow walk of it.

The exposure is one of the points of the dramatic art which require the most art, because the author must, proceeding by episode S and tables, as of the first scenes, to learn with the public, by means of actors who should not seem to speak for to announce him, him the subject, the time and the place of the action, to present the characters to him, of to explain the springs, the interests and passions involved, to make of them foresee the Dénouement, with the means which bring back and the obstacles which are opposed to it.

The Old ones had, to escape the difficulties at the beginning, invented the prolog. In this exposure of the childhood of art, the Poet or a character called the actor-prolog came, with the opening of the spectacle, to bring some like the Sommaire and to give, apart from the action, these necessary informations which the exposure provides by at the same time natural and erudite combinations of the first Scène S.

Sometimes the exposure is all in words, sometimes it is in action. First was generally employed, especially at time when the confidants had a so great place on the scene; those provided a convenient means to the characters to say who they were and what they wanted to make.

Racine, which very often used the artifice of the exposure, there excelled. One quotes the exposure of Iphigénie besides, where it had as a model that of Euripide, which, in Celt circumstance, had given up his convenient practice of the prolog. But its masterpiece is the exposure of Bajazet , with which only one, following Voltaire, can be compared, that of Othon , one of the tragedies of the old age of Corneille.

The exposure in action, sharp and bold, throws first blow the Spectateur in the middle of the Sujet, without taking the trouble to explain it to him, and makes drive in front of him the characters in the variety and the contrast of their characters, their Situation S and their interests in full fight. The model in this kind is the exposure of Tartuffe : nothing more animated, of more alive than this indoor scene where seven of the characters are highlighted reciprocally and where the main thing, that which will fill all the part, dominates already, though absent, all the situation.

In the exposure in action of Guillaume Tell of Schiller, one feels, as of the beginning, all the Alpine poetry and the national feeling which will penetrate whole work.

The theater, thereafter, was freed from the requirements of the dramatic art to take action, without preamble and being concerned with make known in advance with the spectator the characters with the bond which attaches them to the action. The absence of regular exposure allows even the means of effect of the surprise.

Source

• Gustave Vapereau, universal Dictionary of the literatures , Paris, Hatchet, 1876, p. 755-6