fall exam Flashcards
What is an Act in drama?
An Act is a main division of a drama. Shakespeare’s plays consist of five acts, each subdivided into scenes.
What is an Aside?
An Aside is a brief remark made by a character intended to be heard by the audience but not by other characters.
What is Comic Relief?
Comic Relief is a humorous scene or speech in a serious drama meant to provide relief from emotional intensity and heighten the seriousness of the story.
What is Conflict in a story?
Conflict is the struggle between opposing forces in a story. Two types of conflict are internal and external.
What are the types of External Conflict?
External conflict includes man vs. nature, man vs. man, man vs. fate, and man vs. society.
What is Dramatic Irony?
Dramatic Irony is when the audience or reader has more insight/knowledge about a situation or character than the characters/performers.
What is Situational Irony?
Situational Irony involves a situation in which actions have an effect that is opposite from what was intended, resulting in an unexpected outcome.
What is Verbal Irony?
Verbal Irony is when a person or character says something but purposefully means the opposite of what was said.
What is Dialogue?
Dialogue is the conversation between two or more characters or people.
What is Foreshadowing?
Foreshadowing is a hint of what is to come in the story, often used to keep the audience in a state of expectancy.
What is a Monologue?
A Monologue is an extended speech that a character may be saying aloud to the audience or to another character on stage, different from a soliloquy because the character is not alone on stage.
What is a scene in a play?
A small unit of a play in which there is no shift of locale or time.
What are stage directions?
Instructions written into the script of a play, indicating stage actions, movements of performers, or production requirements.
What is a soliloquy?
A speech given by a character alone on the stage to let the audience know what the character is thinking and feeling.
What defines a tragedy in drama?
A type of drama of human conflict which ends in defeat and suffering, often involving a main character with a tragic flaw.
What is alliteration?
The repetition of the same initial consonant sound in two or more consecutive or closely associated words.
Example: “Now old desire doth in his deathbed lie.”
What is an allusion?
A reference to a literary or historical person or event to explain a present situation, often related to mythology or religious texts.
Example: “She’ll not be hit / With Cupid’s arrow. She hath Dian’s wit.”
What is imagery?
Imagery is the term used to describe words or phrases that appeal to the five senses.
What is hyperbole?
Hyperbole is an exaggeration or overstatement for emphasis and effect.
What is a metaphor?
A metaphor is a figure of speech that implies or states a comparison between two unlike things which are similar in some way.
Example: “It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!”
What is the difference between motif and theme?
Motifs are one or two word ‘big idea’ topics that appear repeatedly in a work of literature, while themes are complete thoughts that express a universal idea, lesson, or message.
What is an oxymoron?
An oxymoron is a contrast of two contradictory terms for the sake of emphasis.
Example: “Why then, O brawling love! O loving hate! / …O heavy lightness…”
What is onomatopoeia?
Onomatopoeia is the formation of a word by imitation of a sound.
Example: ‘Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs’ (The word ‘sigh’ in this simile is breathy and indistinct, like the thing it describes.)
What is personification?
Personification is a figure of speech in which human qualities are attributed to inanimate objects, animals, or ideas.
Example: “Arise fair sun and kill the envious moon.”
What is a pun?
A pun is the humorous use of a word or phrase so as to emphasize or suggest a different meaning: a play on words.
Example: “Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man.”
What is a simile?
A figure of speech that states a comparison between two essentially unlike things using ‘like’ or ‘as.’
Example: ‘She hangs upon the cheek of night / Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear.’
What is symbolism?
The use of a concrete image to represent something other than its literal meaning.
What is blank verse?
Verse without rhyme, but with meter (rhythm), usually iambic pentameter.
What is a couplet?
Two lines of poetry that rhyme; it usually ends a character’s speaking.
What is iambic pentameter?
A line that has 5 meters of unstressed/stressed pattern, where ‘penta’ means 5 and ‘meter’ means a set of two syllables.
What is a sonnet?
A poem that means ‘little song,’ consisting of 14 lines with a strict rhyme scheme.
Shakespearean sonnets contain three quatrains (four lines) and a rhyming couplet (two lines), with 10 syllables per line (5 meters) of iambic pentameter and the rhyme scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GG.
