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