Shakespeare
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Created by:
jethomsen13 on March 30, 2011
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45 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 alarm and excursions | a stage direction meaning the sounds and actions of battle: trumpets, drums and skirmishes on stage |
| aside | a brief remark by a character, usually to the audience, unheard by other characters |
| assonance | the repetition of vowel sounds |
| caesura | a pause in a line of verse |
| Chorus | a narrator who introduces or comments on the play: as in Romeo and Juliet |
| dialogue | verbal exchange between two or more characters |
| end-stopped lines | a line of a verse that makes sense on its own, with a clear pause at the end |
| enjambment | verse in which the sense runs on from one line to the next; lines which are not end-stopped |
| epilogue | a speech to the audience at the end of a play, often asking for applause |
| exeunt | a stage direction meaning everyone leaves the stage |
| folio | a large sheet of paper about twice the size of A4. The First Folio is a collection of all Shakespeare's plays published in 1623 |
| line | the basic unit of verse |
| malapropism | inappropriate, muddled or mistaken use of words |
| meter | how the rhythm of verse is measured; the inner rhythmical structure of a line |
| parody | a mocking imitation of a particular style language use |
| prologue | the introduction to a play, by a Chorus |
| prose | all language not in verse; used mainly, but not always, in comedy, madness, low status characters, letters and proclamations |
| pun | word play; when a word has two or more different meanings, the ambiguity can be used for a comic or serious effect |
| quarto | a sheet of paper about half the size of A4, about half of Shakespeare's plays were published during his lifetime in quarto editions |
| rhetoric | the art of persuasion |
| soliloquy | a long solo speech by a character who is alone, or believes him/herself to be alone on the stage, creates dramatic irony |
| sonnet | a poem of fourteen lines written in iambic pentameter |
| verse | strongly patterned language; the typical Shakespearean verse is blank verse; each line has 10 syllables and 5 stresses |
| foot | unit of each pair of unstressed and stressed syllables |
| blank verse | non-rhyming iambic pentameter |
| April 23 | Shakespeare's birthday (1564-1616) |
| Stratford-upon-Avon | Shakespeare's birthplace |
| John Shakespeare | father of Shakespeare, glove maker, owned his own shop |
| Mary Arden Shakespeare | mother of Shakespeare, daughter of a wealthy landowner |
| King's New School | school that Shakespeare probably attended |
| Anne Hathaway | Shakespeare's wife, older than he, caused scandal when they married while she was pregnant |
| Globe Theatre | theatre of the King's Men, was burned down and rebuilt several times, held 2-3,000 people, audience was made up of all walks of life, flag gave signals, only men could perform, costumes were the most valuable asset |
| Early Modern English | language of Shakespeare |
| Greek tragedy | hero is elevated; story occurs within 24 hours; religious in nature; cathartic act; supernatural elements |
| Greek theatre | open air, side of hill, open to all citizens (even women), amphitheatre held about 12,000 |
| Aristotle on tragedy | "Tragedy is a process of imitating an action which has serious implications, is complete and possesses magnitude, by means of language which has been made sensuously attractive." |
| Tragedy | hero faces overwhelming conflict; hero has tragic flaw; order is restored; relies on an enactment, not narrative |
| tragic hero | central protagonist in tragedy; respected, admired, has flaw, leads to downfall and/or demise |
| hamartia | flaw; trait that is abused or misused, element of hope that is disappointed or ambition that is frustrated |
| suffering / pathos | calamity, destructive or painful act that allows us to have feeling; sympathy, empathy, apathy |
| Elizabethan tragedy | comic relief; supernatural elements (Protestant); revenge is often involved |
| Shakespearean tragedy | 5 act play ending in death of most of the major characters |
| foil character | a character who is used as a contrast to another character; the contrast emphasizes the differences between the two characters, bringing out the distinctive qualities in each |
| hubris | excessive pride or arrogance that results in the downfall of the protagonist of a tragedy |
| paradox | a statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth |
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