Vocabulary For Othello Shakespeare Flashcards
Anagnorisis
The moment of recognition when the protagonist realizes the significance of their mistake.
Antagonist
A character, often a villain, who stands in opposition to the main character.
Catastrophe
The climatic moment, usually the darkest moment in the play
Catharsis
The emotional release felt by the audience; a sense of cleansing
Dramatic irony
Where the audience possesses more knowledge than the characters about events unfolding on stage.
Elizabethan sense of order
Elizabethans believed the world was ordered in a series of hierarchies, beginning with God at the top of the highest and continuing down through a series of pyramids. In this hierarchy, the monarch was like “god” to nobles and commoners, while a man was a “god” in his own household with wife children, and servants falling in sequentially beneath him as inferior.
Foreshadowing
Clues or suggestions about things that will happen later in the plot.
Iambic pentameter
Pattern of verses with lines of ten syllables in which the rhythm is “iambic”, or an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. Shakespeare often wrote in iambic pentameter.
Harmatia
A mistake made by the protagonist, which leads to his downfall.
Hubris
Excessive pride, which leads characters to ignore warnings and presume that they know best.
Machiavellian
Cunning, scheming and interested in selfish gain; derived from Niccolo Machiavelli’s book The Prince.
Peripeteia
A catastrophe undergone by the protagonist, a reversal of fortune.
Soliloquy
A speech to oneself (talking to yourself happened frequently in shakespeare) in which a character’s innermost feelings and fears are revealed.
Resolution
Final part of the story, in which a problem is resolved.
