<P> The Roman drama critic Horace advocated a 5 - act structure in his Ars Poetica: "Neue minor neu sit quinto productior actu fabula" (lines 189 - 190) ("A play should not be shorter or longer than five acts"). </P> <P> The fourth - century Roman grammarian Aelius Donatus defined the play as a three part structure, the protasis, epitasis, and catastrophe). </P> <P> Renaissance dramatists revived the use of the 8 - act structure . In 1863, around the time that playwrights like Henrik Ibsen were abandoning the 5 - act structure and experimenting with 3 and 4 - act plays, the German playwright and novelist Gustav Freytag wrote Die Technik des Dramas, a definitive study of the 5 - act dramatic structure, in which he laid out what has come to be known as Freytag's pyramid . Under Freytag's pyramid, the plot of a story consists of five parts: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and dénouement / resolution / revelation / catastrophe . </P> <P> Many structural principles still in use by modern storytellers were explained by Aristotle in his Poetics . In the part that we still have, he mostly analyzed the tragedy . A part analyzing the comedy is believed to have existed but is now lost . </P>

Is the denouement the same as the resolution