Shakespeare Literary Terms

1. or detail that is inappropriate for the time period.
3. short introduction at the beginning of a play that gives a brief overview of the plot
5. unusually long speech in which a character who is on stage alone expresses his or her thoughts aloud.
6. relief-humor added that lessens the seriousness of a plot.
10. irony-a writer or speaker says one thing, but really means something completely different
13. 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).
15. play, novel, or other narrative that depicts serious and important events in which the main character comes to an unhappy end.
17. story written to be acted for an audience.
18. who is used as a contrast to another character; writer sets off/intensifies the qualities of 2 characters this way.

2. group who says things at the same time
3. unadorned form of language, written or spoken, in ordinary use
4. character-character who changes as a result of the story’s events
7. character-character who does not change much in the course of a story.
8. (“unrhymed”-no rhyme at the end of lines) Verse-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.
9. speech by one character in a play.
11. 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. play on the multiple meanings of a word, or on two words that sound alike but have different meanings
14. irony-the audience or reader knows something important that a character in a play or story does not know
16. combination of contradictory terms (EX: jumbo shrimp).
19. Two consecutive lines of poetry that rhyme; couplets often signal the EXIT of a character or end of a scene