fall exam

Question 1

What is an Act in drama?

Answer 1

An Act is a main division of a drama. Shakespeare’s plays consist of five acts, each subdivided into scenes.

Question 2

What is an Aside?

Answer 2

An Aside is a brief remark made by a character intended to be heard by the audience but not by other characters.

Question 3

What is Comic Relief?

Answer 3

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.

Question 4

What is Conflict in a story?

Answer 4

Conflict is the struggle between opposing forces in a story. Two types of conflict are internal and external.

Question 5

What are the types of External Conflict?

Answer 5

External conflict includes man vs. nature, man vs. man, man vs. fate, and man vs. society.

Question 6

What is Dramatic Irony?

Answer 6

Dramatic Irony is when the audience or reader has more insight/knowledge about a situation or character than the characters/performers.

Question 7

What is Situational Irony?

Answer 7

Situational Irony involves a situation in which actions have an effect that is opposite from what was intended, resulting in an unexpected outcome.

Question 8

What is Verbal Irony?

Answer 8

Verbal Irony is when a person or character says something but purposefully means the opposite of what was said.

Question 9

What is Dialogue?

Answer 9

Dialogue is the conversation between two or more characters or people.

Question 10

What is Foreshadowing?

Answer 10

Foreshadowing is a hint of what is to come in the story, often used to keep the audience in a state of expectancy.

Question 11

What is a Monologue?

Answer 11

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.

Question 12

What is a scene in a play?

Answer 12

A small unit of a play in which there is no shift of locale or time.

Question 13

What are stage directions?

Answer 13

Instructions written into the script of a play, indicating stage actions, movements of performers, or production requirements.

Question 14

What is a soliloquy?

Answer 14

A speech given by a character alone on the stage to let the audience know what the character is thinking and feeling.

Question 15

What defines a tragedy in drama?

Answer 15

A type of drama of human conflict which ends in defeat and suffering, often involving a main character with a tragic flaw.

Question 16

What is alliteration?

Answer 16

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.”

Question 17

What is an allusion?

Answer 17

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.”

Question 18

What is imagery?

Answer 18

Imagery is the term used to describe words or phrases that appeal to the five senses.

Question 19

What is hyperbole?

Answer 19

Hyperbole is an exaggeration or overstatement for emphasis and effect.

Question 20

What is a metaphor?

Answer 20

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!”

Question 21

What is the difference between motif and theme?

Answer 21

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.

Question 22

What is an oxymoron?

Answer 22

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…”

Question 23

What is onomatopoeia?

Answer 23

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.)

Question 24

What is personification?

Answer 24

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.”

Question 25

What is a pun?

Answer 25

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.”

Question 26

What is a simile?

Answer 26

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.’

Question 27

What is symbolism?

Answer 27

The use of a concrete image to represent something other than its literal meaning.

Question 28

What is blank verse?

Answer 28

Verse without rhyme, but with meter (rhythm), usually iambic pentameter.

Question 29

What is a couplet?

Answer 29

Two lines of poetry that rhyme; it usually ends a character’s speaking.

Question 30

What is iambic pentameter?

Answer 30

A line that has 5 meters of unstressed/stressed pattern, where ‘penta’ means 5 and ‘meter’ means a set of two syllables.

Question 31

What is a sonnet?

Answer 31

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.