Shakespeare’s Elements of Language

Aside

a short comment, often seen as a fourth wall break, delivered while other characters are onstage

Blank Verse

poetry written with regular metrical but unrhymed lines

Comedy

a genre in which the goal is to make audiences laugh

Comic Relief

comedy takes place in a story that's dramatic, tragic, or serious overall, not comedies

Couplet

a literary device consisting of a pair of consecutive lines of poetry, describing a complete thought or idea

Drama

the portrayal of fictional or non-fictional events through the performance of written dialog (either prose or poetry)

Farce

a literary work that contains ridiculous plots, exaggerated characters, and over-the-top situations for comedic effect

Foil

a literary element that serves as a contrast to the main character, or the protagonist

Iambic Pentameter

a rhythmic pattern that consists of ten syllables per line, with alternating stressed and unstressed syllables

Imagery

a literary device used in poetry, novels, and other writing that uses vivid description that appeals to a readers' senses

Malapropism

verbal blunder in which one word is replaced by another similar in sound but different in meaning

Melodrama

a literary or dramatic genre in which standard tropes and elements are exaggerated to elicit emotional responses from audiences or readers

Meter

a noun describing the pattern of accented and unaccented syllables in a line of poetry

Monologue

a lengthy speech given by one character in theatrical work, movie, or literary work

Oxymoron

a figure of speech that combines contradictory words with opposing meanings

Pun

a figure of speech that plays with words that have multiple meanings, or that plays with words that sound similar but mean different things

Quatrain

a four-line stanza of poetry

Soliloquy

when a character in a dramatic work speaks directly to the audience, expressing their inner thoughts

Sonnet

a fourteen-line poem written in iambic pentameter, employing one of several rhyme schemes, and adhering to a tightly structured thematic organization

Tragedy

a genre of drama based on human suffering and, mainly, the terrible or sorrowful events that befall a main character