Shakespeare Literary Terms

1. the audience or reader knows something important that a character in a play or story does not know
3. character who is used as a contrast to another character; writer sets off/intensifies the qualities of 2 characters this way
5. two consecutive lines of poetry that rhyme; couplets often signal the EXIT of a character or end of a scene
6. a group who says things at the same time
8. a story written to be acted for an audience
10. a character who does not change much in the course of a story.
11. words that are spoken by a character in a play to the audience or to another character but that are not supposed to be overheard by the others onstage
12. a combination of contradictory terms (EX: jumbo shrimp)
15. fourteen-line lyric poem that is usually written in iambic pentameter and that has one of several rhyme schemes (Shakespearean-3 four-line units or quatrains, followed by a concluding two-line unit, or couplet; abab cdcd efef gg)
17. a play, novel, or other narrative that depicts serious and important events in which the main character comes to an unhappy end

1. a character who changes as a result of the story’s events
2. direct, unadorned form of language, written or spoken, in ordinary use
4. a play on the multiple meanings of a word, or on two words that sound alike but have different meanings
5. humor added that lessens the seriousness of a plot
7. event or detail that is inappropriate for the time period
9. a short introduction at the beginning of a play that gives a brief overview of the plot
10. an unusually long speech in which a character who is on stage alone expresses his or her thoughts aloud
13. a speech by one character in a play
14. a writer or speaker says one thing, but really means something completely different
16. poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter (“pent”=5; “meter”=measure); each line of poetry contains 5 iambs, or metrical feet, that consist of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable