Shakespeare Terms

3. two consecutive lines of poetry that rhyme; couplets often signal the EXIT of a character or end of a scene.
5. a story written to be acted for an audience.
7. direct, unadorned form of language, written or spoken, in ordinary use.
8. humor added that lessens the seriousness of a plot.
12. a combination of contradictory terms (EX: jumbo shrimp).
13. event or detail that is inappropriate for the time period.
14. a play, novel, or other narrative that depicts serious and important events in which the main character comes to an unhappy end.
16. 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.
17. character who does not change much in the course of a story.
18. character who is used as a contrast to another character; writer sets off/intensifies the qualities of 2 characters this way.
19. a short introduction at the beginning of a play that gives a brief overview of the plot.
20. 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).

1. a play on the multiple meanings of a word, or on two words that sound alike but have different meanings.
2. a writer or speaker says one thing, but really means something completely different.
4. (“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.
6. an unusually long speech in which a character who is on stage alone expresses his or her thoughts aloud.
9. character who changes as a result of the story’s events.
10. a group who says things at the same time.
11. a speech by one character in a play.
15. the audience or reader knows something important that a character in a play or story does not know.