Drama, Poetry, Literary TermsRomeo & Juliet

Before we begin…• How is a play different from a novel?

• Look through the terms on your paper and talk with your table partner about any that you may know/be familiar with

Aside

• A speech by a character that is heard by the audience but not by the other characters

• Examples?

Soliloquy

• A long speech by one character directed to at least one other character

• Examples?

Monologue

• A long speech spoken by a character who (presumably) is along on stage

• Examples?

Prologue

• A speech at the beginning of an act directed at the audience which comments on the events in the play

• Examples?

Dialogue

• Conversation between 2 characters

• Examples?

Foreshadowing

• Hints or clues that the writer gives to indicate events and situations that will occur later

• Examples?

Imagery

• Descriptive words and phrases that re-create sensory experiences for the reader; writing that appeals to one or more of the senses.

• Examples?

Metaphor

• A comparison of two unlike things that does not use like or as; it says that something is something else

• Examples?

Simile

• A comparison of two unlike things using like or as

• Examples?

Personification

• Giving living qualities to inanimate (non-living) objects

• Examples?

Foil

• A character who provides a striking contrast to another character; used to emphasize the traits possessed by both characters

• Examples?

Blank Verse

• Unrhymed poetry with regular rhythm spoken by most of the characters in the play

Prose

• Sentences, not poetry, spoken by servants or common people

•Why wouldn’t the servants get to speak in poetry?

Rhyming Couplet

• Two consecutive lines that rhyme; often it is used by an actor to signal the end of a scene.

Archaic Language

•Words like “thou” and “doth” and “thither” which have disappeared from common use

• Other examples?

Pun• A joke based on several words with several

meanings or on words that sound alike but have different meanings.

• Examples?• My grade in Marine Biology is below sea-

level.• When Mercutio begs Romeo to dance,

Romeo refuses. Unlike Mercutio’s shoes with “nimble soles,” Romeo says that he has a “soul of lead.”

Shakespearean Sonnet #116• Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not loveWhich alters when it alteration finds,Or bends with the remover to remove:O no! it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken;It is the star to every wandering bark,Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come: Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

-Metaphor-Syllables-Personification-Archaic Language-rhyming couplet

Shakespearean Sonnet #130• My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red than her lips' red:

If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,

But no such roses see I in her cheeks;

And in some perfumes is there more delight

Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know

That music hath a far more pleasing sound.

I grant I never saw a goddess go:

My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.

And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare

As any she belied with false compare.

-Simile-Syllables-Personification-Archaic Language-rhyming couplet