Effects of dramatic play on children's narrative competence were investigated among 36 second-graders. Children were read a familiar folktale and then "played" the story, discussed it, or drew a picture about it. They were then asked to retell the story either to an informed or to a naive listener. It was hypothesized that (1) more "evaluative" elaborative devices would be found in stories retold to a naive listener than in stories told to an informed listener and (2) more such devices would be found in the retellings of children in the play condition than in the other two conditions. Independent variables were sex, listener, and condition. Dependent variables were number of words, number of evaluative clauses, number of evaluative syntactic devices, and ratios of evaluative devices to number of words. Narrative competence was assessed by measuring the number of evaluative devices present in the retellings, and data were analyzed using a three-way multiple analysis of variance. The finding of no significant effects may be seen as support for Piaget's model of play, in which effects of play decrease in school-age children. The lack of significant results also indicates that narrative competence may not be a unitary construct. Subjects exhibited differences in the cohesive features of their language but not in their use of evaluative markers. It was concluded that various instruments may measure markedly different aspects of narrative competence. (RH)