Shakespeare Literary Terms

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Across
  1. 2. relief Humor added that lessens the seriousness of a plot.
  2. 3. character Character who does not change much in the course of a story.
  3. 8. A story written to be acted for an audience.
  4. 9. A combination of contradictory terms.
  5. 10. An unusually long speech in which a character who is on stage alone expresses his or her thoughts aloud.
  6. 14. A short introduction at the beginning of a play that gives a brief overview of the plot.
  7. 17. 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).
  8. 18. 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.
  9. 19. character character who changes as a result of the story’s events.
Down
  1. 1. Event or detail that is inappropriate for the time period.
  2. 2. Two consecutive lines of poetry that rhyme; couplets often signal the EXIT of a character or end of a scene
  3. 4. A group who says things at the same time.
  4. 5. a play on the multiple meanings of a word, or on two words that sound alike but have different meanings.
  5. 6. A speech by one character in a play.
  6. 7. A play, novel, or other narrative that depicts serious and important events in which the main character comes to an unhappy end.
  7. 11. irony The audience or reader knows something important that a character in a play or story does not know.
  8. 12. Direct, unadorned form of language, written or spoken, in ordinary use.
  9. 13. (“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.
  10. 15. irony A writer or speaker says one thing, but really means something completely different.
  11. 16. Character who is used as a contrast to another character; writer sets off/intensifies the qualities of 2 characters this way.