Drama and Literary Terms

Star-Crossed Lovers

  • Lovers whose relationship is doomed to fail.
  • Astrology: stars control human destiny.
  • Relationship is frustrated or disrupted by fate.
  • Thwarted by uncontrollable outside forces.
  • Destiny is ill-fated; love is ultimately doomed.
  • Example: Romeo and Juliet.

Play

  • Literary form of writing for theater.
  • Narrates a story with conflicts, tensions, and actions through character dialogues.
  • Divided into acts and scenes for dramatic significance.
  • Writers present feelings, emotions, and ideas through characters.

Monologue

  • Spoken verse within plays that gives insight into the speaker's innermost thoughts and feelings.
  • Speech is given while other characters are on stage.
  • Often comes during a climactic moment.
  • Reveals hidden truths about a character, their history, and their relationships.

Soliloquy

  • In drama, a moment when a character is alone on stage and speaks their thoughts aloud.
  • Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights used soliloquies extensively, especially for villains.
  • Example: Hamlet's "To be, or not to be" soliloquy, where he questions the worth of living and reasons for not ending his life.

Satire

  • Literary tone used to ridicule or make fun of human vice or weakness.
  • Intent of correcting or changing the subject of the satiric attack.
  • Aim is not to amuse but to arouse contempt.

Stock Characters

  • A stock character is a stereotype.
  • Relies on cultural types or names for personality, manner of speech, and other characteristics.
  • Examples: The Professor, The Nurse, The Damsel in Distress.

Foil

  • A character that makes another seem better by contrast.
  • Dramatic foil Example: Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.

Chorus

  • A single person or group of people who serve mainly as commentator(s) on the characters and events in the play.
  • Adds to the audience’s understanding of the play by expressing traditional moral, religious, and social attitudes.
  • Used to interpret and recall past events, to comment on the actions of the characters in the play, or to foretell the future.

Stage Directions

  • Instructions written into the script of a play.
  • Indicate stage actions, movements of performers, or production requirements.
  • Not spoken by the actors.

Fourth Wall

  • Imaginary wall that separates the events on stage from the audience.
  • The stage is constructed with a cutaway view of the house.
  • The audience can look through this invisible "fourth wall" and look directly into the events inside.

Comedy

  • A literary work which is amusing and ends happily.
  • Modern comedies tend to be funny, while Shakespearean comedies simply end well.
  • Shakespearean comedy also contains items such as misunderstandings, puns, and mistaken identity to allow for comic relief.

Tragedy

  • A serious play in which the chief character passes through a series of misfortunes leading to a final, devastating catastrophe.
  • Traditionally divided into five acts:
    • Act 1: Introduces characters in a state of happiness or at height of power, influence, or fame.
    • Act 2: Introduces a problem or dilemma.
    • Act 3: Crisis point.
    • Act 4: Main characters fail to avert the crisis, and disaster occurs.
    • Act 5: Reveals the grim consequences of that failure.
  • Romeo and Juliet is considered a drama and a tragedy.

Shakespearean Sonnet

  • Sonnet form used by Shakespeare.
  • Composed of three quatrains and a couplet in iambic pentameter.
  • Rhyme pattern: abab cdcd efef gg.

Stressed/Unstressed Syllables

  • Stressed syllable: Part of a word said with greater emphasis.
  • Unstressed syllable: Part of a word said with less emphasis.

Iambic Pentameter

  • A line of verse with five metrical feet, each consisting of one short (or unstressed) syllable followed by one long (or stressed) syllable (10 syllables per line).
  • Example: Two households, both alike in dignity.

Couplet/Triplet/Quatrain

  • Couplet = 2 line stanzas
  • Triplet = 3 line stanzas
  • Quatrain = 4 line stanzas

Figurative Language

  • Includes metaphors, similes, alliteration, paradox, oxymoron, hyperbole, foreshadowing, allusion, etc.

Pun

  • A play on words in which a word is used to convey two meanings at the same time.
  • Example: Mercutio's "grave man" pun in Romeo and Juliet.

Conceit

  • Comparison or extended metaphor between two very unlike things, whose dissimilarity is very obvious.
  • Example: “A broken heart is a damaged clock.”

Verbal Irony

  • Words literally state the opposite of the writer's (or speaker's) true meaning (sarcasm).
  • Example: A parent sarcastically offering to pick up after their child.

Situational Irony

  • Events turn out the opposite of what was expected.
  • What the characters and audience think should happen isn't what eventually happens.
  • Example: Missing a date to go to a ballgame, then running into the date with someone else.

Dramatic Irony

  • The audience perceives something that a character in the story does not know.
  • Example: Horror movie characters walking in the woods late at night and in Titanic viewers know the ending.

Antithesis

  • Literally means “opposite” – it is usually the opposite of a statement, concept, or idea.
  • Example: “That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."

Aside

  • A character's dialogue is spoken but not heard by the other actors on the stage.
  • Used for giving the audience special information.
  • Example: When a movie character is speaking directly to the camera.

Apostrophe

  • Refers to a speech or address to a person who is not actually present.
  • Example: Juliet's line “O, Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?”