drop scene

American  

noun

Theater.

1. a drop curtain, often of painted or dyed canvas, located downstage and used as the backdrop for a scene played while the set upstage is being changed.

2. a scene or act played with less intensity than the preceding one.

3. the last scene of an act or play.

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Etymology

Origin of drop scene

First recorded in 1805–15

Example Sentences

It comes at the beginning of a first series of pictures, or as a kind of drop scene between one series of pictures and another.

From Project Gutenberg

Mrs. Brickley here drew her cloak more closely about her, as though to enshroud herself in her own refinement, and presented to the Bench a silence as elaborate as a drop scene.

From Project Gutenberg

Her eyes fell on the same view, which might have been painted on a drop scene so fixed was it, so identical in colour and light day after day.

From Project Gutenberg

Drop′-Scene, a painted curtain suspended by pulleys, which drops in front of the stage in a theatre; Drop′-stone, a stalactic variety of calcite.—adv.

From Project Gutenberg

It seems to me a queer moral for the urchins thick-packed and gazing at the drop scene.

From Project Gutenberg