Drama TermsRomeo and JulietBy: William Shakespeare

Elizabethan Terms:

0The Elizabethan Era was named after Queen Elizabeth I of England (who reigned from 1558-1604).

0Renaissance: A period of rebirth, originating in Italy in the 1300’s. This was a time during which great accomplishments were made in science, art and literature (lots of change)

0Elizabethan Drama: Playwrights turned away from writing about religious subjects and began writing more sophisticated plays, drawing on ancient Greek and Roman models.

Drama Terms0Soliloquy: A speech by a person who is talking to

him/herself; used to reveal their inner thoughts and feelings to the audience

0Monologue: A talk/speech by a single speaker who is speaking alone but others can hear them (kind of like a solo in a musical)

0Aside: Words spoken so as not to be heard by the other characters, but are intended for the audience only (think Ferris Bueller’s Day Off).

Drama Terms Continued:0Tragedy: Plays where disaster falls upon the

hero/heroine (unlike comedies where everyone gets married in the end, in tragedies, the characters usually die in the end)

0Tragic Hero: A character who makes an error in Judgment or has a fatal flaw, which leads to their own demise or the demise of others (example: Batman/Bruce Wayne from Dark Knight Rises)

0Apparition: A supernatural appearance of a person/thing, especially a ghost or phantom (like in A Christmas Carol when Scrooge is visited by 3 ghosts)

0Foil: A character who contrast well with another character; they are perfect opposites (example: Edward and Jacob in Twilight)

Literary terms:0Allusion: A reference, in literature, to something

either directly or by implication0Dramatic Irony: When the audience knows what is

going on, but the characters do not!0Tone (*): The way something is said, the way is

sounds and the emotion conveyed(example: If you sass your mom, she might say, “Don’t take that tone of voice with me young lady”)

0Motif: Recurring idea (pattern) in literature0Anachronism: Object out of place/time (like a

computer in the wild west)0Pun: the humorous use of a word/phrase to suggest

two or more meanings at the same time

Form and Structure Terms:0Meter: Poetic measure; the arrangement of words in a

regularly measured, patterned, or rhythmic lines/verses

0Blank Verse: Verse where the lines do not rhyme, but they share the same meter (usually iambi pentameter)

0 Iamb: An unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable

0 Iambic Pentameter: five verse feet with each foot in an iamb (ten syllable line with the pattern going stressed, unstressed, stress, unstressed)

Poetry Terms:0Couplet: two consecutive lines of

poetry that rhyme0Quatrain: a poem or stanza within a

poem, always consisting of 4 lines.0Sonnet: 14 line poem written in

iambic pentameter0English (Shakespearean) Sonnet: Has

3 quatrains, and ends with a couplet