Alliteration: the repetition of consonants, especially at the beginning of words or of stressed syllables: "Let me not to the marriage of true minds/ Admit impediments."
Allusion: a reference to a person, place or event assumed to be well known to the reader, who then calls to mind qualities connected with that figure. For example, saying someone is "a real Don Juan" alludes to the man famous for the number and geographical scope of his seductions. Referring to Cupid calls up a picture of a mischievous boy.
Anapest: a rhythmic unit or "foot" made up of two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable (0 0 / ): "in-ter-RUPT" "lul-la-BY and good NIGHT."
Apostrophe: a sudden shift to direct address, either to an absent person or to an abstract or inanimate entity: "No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change" (sonnet 123).
Aside: when a character in a drama says something aloud so that others on stage cannot hear it, although the audience can. An aside can be someone speaking to himself, to the audience or to another character (although others on stage cannot hear).
Assonance: the repetition of identical or related vowel sounds, especially in stressed syllables: "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan/ A stately pleasure dome decree."
Blank verse: the meter is unrhymed iambic pentameter.
Caesura: a strong pause in the middle of a line, marked by inserting two slashes in the text: "Oh, no! // It is an ever-fixed mark." (The plural of "caesura" is either "caesuras" or the original Latin plural "caesurae.")
Characterization: an analysis of the ways a fictional character is presented (or "characterized") in the literary work.
Commedia dell' Arte: derived from Italian improvised comedy of the 16th century with slapstick and stock characters.
Conceit: a striking or elaborated parallel between two apparently dissimilar things or situations: "on the expressway to your heart, it's much too crowded."
Couplet: two lines next to each other which rhyme. For example, a Shakespearean sonnet usually ends with a couplet:
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong, To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
A heroic couplet is a couplet in iambic pentameter.
Courtly love is the attitude and behaviors of men and women in the aristocratic courts of Europe that developed in the late Middle Ages and which survives even today in some of our customs. A man sought the love of a woman whom he considered morally better than himself ("put her on a pedastal") by doing acts of chivalry and courtesy. A woman withheld her love ("acted disdainfully) until she was sure of the man's merit. Although originally involving adulterous love (since love within marriage was not freely given in aristocratic marriages), by Shakespeare's time, this code of behavior applied to both married and unmarried people--for example, Rosalind's stand-offish behavior to Romeo. Also in the attentive behavior of Cassio to Desdemona (though innocent of sexual involvement) that gives some grounds for Othello's jealousy in Othello.
Dactyl: a rhythmic unit or "foot" made up of a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables ( / 0 0 ): "O-pen-ly" "In-to the val-ley of Death rode the val-iant five...."
Double clock: the effect of two time-schemes operating at once when Shakespeare condenses into one scene a number of events that clearly could not have happened in the time it takes to play the scene. For example, in Richard III, Catesby is given orders to start rumors that Queen Anne is deathly ill in 4.2.49-50, and in the next scene Richard mentions that she is dead.
Dramatic irony: is applied to the words and actions of characters in a play who confidently expect the opposite of what fate holds in store, or the words and actions of characters who say something that anticipates the tragic outcome, but in a sense very different from the one they intended.
Elizabethan: occurring during the reign of Elizabeth the First (1558-1603) or having traits characteristic during that period.
Ellipsis: leaving out a word or phrase that is implied by the context. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Helena says just as Demetrius "errs doting on her eyes/ So I, admiring of his qualities. The word "err" is implied after "I," but is omitted or ellided.
End-stopped line: when the natural pause in reading coincides with the end of the line of poetry.
Exposition: information inserted in the play that familiarizes the audience with events that have occurred before the time in Act 1, scene 1 of the play. For example, information in Hamlet about the funeral of King Hamlet is part of the exposition.
Foil: a character in a situation similar to that of a main character. By comparing and contrasting the behaviors of the characters, the audience gains perspective on the main character. For example, Laertes is a foil to Hamlet, and by his actions in revenge for his father's murder we judge Hamlet's.
Folio: the rather large size of a book formed by folding a sheet of paper only once (to make 2 pages = 4 sides to print on). If the paper is folded twice (and the closed pages are cut), then each of the four resulting pages would form a book called a quarto. If the paper is folded three times (to make 8 pages) it is an octavo (the one most frequently used in modern printing).
Foot: the combination of stressed and unstressed syllables which recur as a rhythmic unit in a line. In English, common feet are iambic, anapestic, trochaic, dactylic and spondaic.
Free verse: verse that is more rhythmic than ordinary prose, but is written without a regular metric pattern and usually without rhyme.
French scene: In French drama, a scene begins or ends when a character leaves or enters.
Genre: a "type" or "kind" of literature that categorizes works of literature defined by form, technique or subject matter. Examples of genre are tragedy, comedy, epic, the novel, the short story. Since the definitions of genres are based on existing examples, the definitions may change as new works expand or change the characteristics associated with a genre.
Great Chain of Being: the belief that all of the universe is classified into a value-laden hierarchy, from God to the angels to humankind to the animals to plants. A person (like Doctor Faustus who tries to find out Nature's innermost secrets) is an over-reacher when he or she seeks to know or do more than it is natural for a human being to do.
Iamb: a rhythmic unit or foot with an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable ( 0 / ): "reJOICE." "The COURSE of TRUE love NEV-er DID run SMOOTH." The adjective form of the term is "iambic."
Imagery: Two meanings are in common usage.
1) Imagery is wording that describes imaginable things, as opposed to abstractions. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, for example, Oberon describes a river bank
Inversion: Shakespeare often uses inversion--a departure from normal word order in prose or everyday speech--sometimes for stress and sometimes for rhythm.
Machiavel: a person whose behavior suggests a belief in the principles of conduct laid down by Machiavelli in The Prince, advising cunning, duplicity or bad faith. Although Machiavelli recommended such strategies only when justified to unite and make strong the state, the Renaissance condemned such behavior and made the Machiavel into an arch-villain, not only bad, but also smart.
Metaphor: an example of non-literal or "figurative" use of language in which a word which in ordinary usage means one kind of thing is applied to another (usually a vague or abstract concept), without explicit notice that a mixture or comparison is being made (in contrast to a "simile" which compares two things, signalling the comparison by using the words "like" or "as"): "the expressway to your heart" "the marriage of true minds."
Meter: the recurrence in a poetic line of a regular rhythmic unit or "foot." To describe the meter of a verse, give the kind of foot (for example, iambic, trochaic, etc.) and the number of feet in a line: monometer (for one foot), dimeter, trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter (for five feet), hexameter or heptameter.
Octave: see "sonnet"
Octavo: see "folio"
Personification: a figure of speech in which an inanimate object or an abstract concept is described as having human attributes, powers, or feelings: "Death, be not proud" (from Donne's Holy Sonnets).
Plotting: All the actions, incidents, speeches, thoughts, images, observations and their ordering form the plot of a literary work. Plotting is the structure by which these elements are constructed or put together to convey the meaning of the work. Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet has a story almost identical to the comic tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe in A Midsummer Night's Dream, but the plotting of the two works is very different. Other works that deal with the same story but with different plotting are Beowulf and John Gardner's Grendel; Shakespeare's King Lear and Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres; Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre and Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea.
Proscenium stage: The stage is roughly like a rectangle with the audience facing only one long side of the rectangle. The other sides are backstage areas for backdrops and the wings. A curtain opens and closes the action, as though the audience were looking at a room with one glass wall.
Prosody: the study of sounds and rhythms in poetry (677).
Pun: a word (or phrase) makes sense using two different meanings of the word(s) as pronounced. "Farewell, thou art too dear for my possessing." "Dear" can mean "beloved" (as it does today in English and American usage) or (in Shakespeare's time and in modern England) it can mean "expensive."
Quarto: see "folio"
Quatrain: a group of four lines rhyming abab or abcb. That is, the first line might end with "tune," the second with "sight," the third with "moon," and the fourth with "light" for abab. Or the first might end with "tune," the second with "sight," the third with "good," and the fourth with "light" for abcb. The meter or number of feet may vary.
Rhyme: Words rhyme when the last accented vowel and all the speech sounds following that vowel are identical: June/spoon, ending/pending, clattering/chattering. The second and third pairs illustrate "falling" or "dying" rhymes which use words of two or more syllables with the accent not falling on the last syllable. Technically, "ending/pending" is a double or trochaic rhyme, and the last example is a triple or dactylic rhyme.
Run-on line: When the natural pause in reading does not coincide with the end of a line, the speaker continues without pause. When a line "runs on," this is also sometimes called enjambement, to use the French term.
Sestet: see "sonnet"
Simile: a figure of speech creating a comparison by using the words "like" or "as" explicitly: "Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,/ So do our minutes hasten to their end" (sonnet #60).
Soliloquy: when a character alone on stage speaks his or her thoughts aloud
Sonnet: a popular stanza form consisting of 14 lines, unually in iambic pentameter and, in English, usually following one of 2 patterns: The Italian or Petrarchan sonnet is divided into an octave (8 lines) and a sestet (6 lines) by the rhyme scheme: abbaabba cdecde (the rhyme scheme of the sestet may vary). An Elizabethan or Shakespearean sonnet has three quatrains and a final couplet rhyming: abab cdcd efef gg.
Spondee: a rhythmic unit or foot with two stressed syllables in a row ( / / ): "HELP! HELP!"
Stage business: actions or gestures on the part of the actor(s) to convey a meaning. For example, in one production of Taming of the Shrew, an actress playing Kate smiled broadly behind Petruchio's back when she first met him--to show her attraction--but then put on a proud and disdainful expression as she moved to face him.
Stichomythia: dialogue in which characters speak alternating lines of verse, used in sharp arguments.
Symbol: some object that never stops being a thing in itself but which takes on significance. For example, the trees of Birnam Wood in Macbeth never stop being trees when they are used as camouflage against Dunsinane Castle, but they come to represent the equivocation of the Weird Sisters and perhaps even the family tree of Banquo whose offspring will inherit the kingdom.
Tercet or triplet: a 3-line stanza with a single rhyme (aaa, bbb and so on) as in Tennyson's "The Eagle," or rhyming aba, as in Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle."
Thrust stage: a playing space attached to one side of an auditorium with the audience seated around the three other sides of the stage.
Trochee: a rhythmic unit or foot with a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable (/ 0): "RABbit" "PET-er, PET-er, PUMP-kin EAT-er" The adjective form is "trochaic."