English 10A Quiz date:
Mr. LindahlRomeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
Vocabulary List –Drama and Poetry – Definitions (followed by context sentences in parentheses)
a drama/dramatic literature (noun/ noun modified by an adjective) a play; a form of literature that is intended to be performed before an audience. Drama for stage is also called “theatre.” In a drama, the story is presented through the dialogue and actions of the characters. (One of Shakespeare’s most famous tragic plays is Romeo and Juliet, a drama that continues to be performed every year in theaters all over the world.)
an aside (noun) a dramatic device in which the character speaks his or her thoughts aloud, in words meant to be heard by the audience but not by the other characters. (In Act 1, scene 1 of Romeo and Juliet, Sampson asks his friend Gregory in an aside if the law is on their side if he admits to biting his thumb at the Montagues.)
a soliloquy (noun) a speech in a dramatic work in which the character speaks his or her thoughts aloud. Usually the character is on stage alone, not speaking to other characters, and perhaps not even consciously addressing the audience. (If there are other characters on stage, they are ignored temporarily.) The purpose of a soliloquy is to reveal a character’s inner thoughts, feelings, and plans to the audience. A soliloquy is also referred to as a monologue. (Perhaps the most famous soliloquy of all time is Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy from Shakespeare’s tragic play Hamlet.)
a classical allusion (noun modified by an adjective) a brief reference to a character or event found in Greek or Roman mythology. (When Sam said she was caught between Scylla and Charybdis, she was making a classical allusion to the time Odysseus was in great danger because he had to sail his ship between two monsters.)
poetry (noun) Traditional poetry is 1. language arranged in lines, with 2. a regular rhythm and 3.often (but not always) a definite rhyme scheme.
Non-traditional poetry ignores regular rhythm and rhyme, although is usually is set up in lines.
The richness of poetry’s suggestions, the sounds of its words, and the strong feelings evoked by its lines are often said to be what distinguish poetry from prose.
In its broadest sense, poetry is writing that aims to present ideas and evoke an emotional experience in the reader through the use of meter, imagery, connotative and concrete words, and a carefully constructed structure based on rhythmic patterns. Poetry typically relies on words and expressions that have several layers of meaning (symbolism, figurative language). It also makes use of the effects of regular rhythm on the ear and may make a strong appeal to the senses through the use of figures of speech and the sounds of the words themselves.
verse (noun) poetry; Verse is poetry; poetry is verse. (Some of the dialogue in Romeo and Juliet is written in verse and some is written in prose.)
a verse (noun) one line of poetry. (A sonnet is made up of fourteen verses or lines of iambic pentameter with a specific rhyme scheme.)
prose (noun) the ordinary language that people use when they speak or write; writing that does
not have the repeating rhythm or rhyme that is associated with poetry. (The servingman’s lines in Romeo and Juliet are written in prose, while the more important characters’ lines are often written in verse.)
meter (noun) rhythm in poetry; the recurrence of a rhythmic pattern in a poem. (There are many different kinds of meter; iambic pentameter is the one that Shakespeare and many of his contemporary poets wrote in. Many people consider iambic pentameter the meter that most closely matches our natural speaking rhythms.)
iambic pentameter (noun modified by an adjective) a metrical line of five feet or units, each made up of an unstressed then a stressed syllable. Example: “Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.” (The Prologue to Romeo and Juliet is written in iambic pentameter; each line has ten syllables, unstressed followed by stressed.)
blank verse (nounmodified by an adjective) verse consisting of unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter. (The Prologue to Romeo and Juliet is written in rhyming verse, but most of the play is written in blank verse.)
a stanza (noun) one of the divisions of a poem, composed of two or more lines and usually characterized by a common pattern of meter, rhyme, and number of lines. (In Dante’s Inferno, each of the cantos, or ‘chapters,” is made up of three-line stanzas. This arrangement of lines in the epic poem also involves a particular rhyme scheme and is called terza rima.)
a couplet (noun) [also referred to as a heroic couplet or a rhymed couplet] two lines of poetry in a row in iambic pentameter that rhyme with each other.. [The term “heroic” comes from the fact that English poems having heroic themes and elevated style have often been written in rhymed couplets whose meter is iambic pentameter.] In the Prologue to Romeo and Juliet, every other line rhymes until the final two lines; the sonnet concludes with a couplet:
The which, if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss our toil shall strive to mend.
a refrain (noun) a word, phrase, verse, or group of verses repeated at intervals throughout a poem (or a song), usually at the end of each stanza, such as the last line of each stanza in a ballad. [A refreain is similar to the chorus in a song, which is repeated after every stanza when the song is sung.] (The refrain in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” is famous: “Quoth the raven, ‘Nevermore!’ ” [Not to be confused with the verb “to refrain”: to hold oneself back. (Try to refrain from being a jerk while your grandparents are visiting, will you?)]
a sonnet (noun) A sonnet is a kind of poem that has 3 particular characteristics: 1. It has fourteen lines; 2. the lines are written in iambic pentameter; and 3. it has a definite rhyme scheme. (Shakespeare wrote the Prologue to Romeo and Juliet in the form of a sonnet, fourteen lines in iambic pentameter with a rhyme scheme of ababcdcdefefgg.)
rhyme scheme (noun modified by an adjective) in poetry, the pattern in which rhyme sounds occur in a stanza. Rhyme schemes, for the purpose of analysis, are usually presented by the assignment of the same letter of the alphabet to each similar sound at the end of a line in the stanza. A Spenserian stanza is shown as ababbcbcc, a Shakespearean sonnet as ababcdcdefefgg. (The rhyme scheme called terza rima that Dante used when he wrote The Inferno, aba bcb cdc ded efe fgf and so on, is very different from the sonnet’s rhyme scheme of ababcdcdefefgg.)
internal rhyme (noun modified by an adjective) rhyme that occurs within a single line of poetry. For example, in the opening line of Eliot’s ‘Gerontion’, “Here I am, an old man in a dry month,” internal rhyme exists between ‘an’ and ‘man’ and between ‘I’ and ‘dry’. (One more example of internal rhyme is from Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "The Cloud": “I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers”.)
onomatopoeia (noun) the use of a word whose sound suggests its meaning, as in clang, buzz, or twang. (More onomatopoeia examples are splash, knock, roar, bong, hiss, pow, bang, thump, pop, and kerplunk. Pick your favorite.)
Poets sometimes use the repetition of sounds to help create the tone or the mood of a poem. Three terms to describe when this repetition occurs:
alliteration (noun) the repetition of initial consonant sounds in words. i.e. rough and ready. (Some examples of alliteration are common expressions such as “safe and sound,” “do or die,” “now or never,” “house and home,” and “the sweet smell of success. How fast can you say,”Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.”? There are many examples of “Tongue Twisters” that use alliteration. Can you think of any others?)
assonance (noun) the repetition of vowel sounds without the repetition of consonants. i.e. lake and face.
A good example of assonance can be found in Edgar Allan Poe’s "Annabel Lee."
“And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride.”
consonance (noun) the repetition of consonant sounds within and at the ends of words. i.e. lonely afternoon. These two lines of verse illustrate the consonance of “s” sounds ending a number of words: “The sailor sings of ropes and things / In ships upon the seas.”
Consonants and consonant sounds: b,c,d,f,g,h,j,k,l,m,n,p,q,r,s,t,v,w,x,y (when is pronounced as it is in “yes, yet, you, and yellow”) and z.
Vowels and vowel sounds:a,e,i,o,u, and y (when it is pronounced as it is in “why, dry, laundry, and pantry.”