Shakespeare Vocab Test Mrs. Lacy
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mitchellabbott on April 11, 2012
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24 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 aside | When a character speaks his or her thoughts aloud but is not heard by the other characters on stage. |
| blank verse | Unrhymed iambic pentameter |
| comedy | A dramatic work, usually light and humorous in tone and subject matter, often involving the triumph of characters over adverse circumstances. |
| convention | A familiar practice made common by frequent usage. |
| epilogue | In dramatic works, a speech, usually offered in verse, in which an actor addresses the audience at the end of the play. |
| figurative language | language that makes use of figures of speech especially metaphors. |
| First Folio | The first anthology of Shakespeare's works, put together and published by his in friends in 1623, seven years after the playwright died. |
| the fourth wall | This refers to the boundary between the world of the play and the world of the audience. The phrase depicts the world of the play as a self-contained box or a room. When a character speaks directly to the audience, this is called "breaking the fourth wall". |
| heightened language | Writing that is rich in imagery and poetic forms and is often metrical. Much of Shakespeare's work is considered to be heightened. |
| iamb | A disyllabic metrical unit in which the first syllable is unstressed and the second stressed. |
| iambic pentameter | A metrical line of ten syllables comprising five metrical feet of iambs. Iambic pentameter is the most common meter in English poetry and drama and much of Shakespeare's plays are written in it. |
| in medias res | Literally "in the middle of things". |
| meter | The regular rhythm that is created when syllables are stressed and unstressed in a systematic pattern. |
| metaphor | A figure of speech, in which for the purposes of description, two unalike things are compared or equated. |
| pastoral | Scenes or settings that take place in the countryside, which often is idealized, and is in general peopled by shepherds and country folk |
| prologue | A speech at the beginning of the play that usually introduces the subject matter of the drama |
| protagonist | The character who is leading importance in a drama or narrative |
| prose | Language that is not written in meter and which is much more irregular in its rhythms than verse. |
| simile | A figure of speech in which unalike things are compared and connected by "like" or "as" |
| soliloquy | A dramatic monologue that often seems to express the internal, even secret workings of a character's mind. |
| stock character | a familiar type of character who reflects very closely certain conventions, such as the "pantalone" of Italian comedy, the foolish old man who usually loves young girls. |
| syncope | The contraction of a single word ("over" becomes "o'er"), |
| tragedy | A serious dramatic work in which a protagonist is troubled by some terrible conflict that results in dire events, |
| verse | Used to describe lines written in metrical form, sometimes used simply to denote a piece of poetry, |
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