1. Frequently used techniques
Shakespearean Drama
Frequently used techniques

2. Play Story acted out live, using dialogue and action
Shakespearean drama’s have a five act structure with a crisis in Act III that determines the course of the play and whether it the events are tragic or comic.

3. Tragedy
Play that presents serious and important actions, ends unhappily for main character

4. Comedy
A play that ends happily, main character gets what he wants

5. Dialogue
Conversation between characters

6. Monologue
Long speech by a character to others onstage

7. Soliloquy
Speech made by a character alone onstage, speaks to himself or audience

8. Aside
A short speech to another character or audience others don’t hear onstage

9. Stage Directions Tell actors where to move and how to speak lines
Implied stage directions occur where no direct statement of action is made, but are implicit in the lines of dialogue.

10. Props
Items that are portable and actors use onstage

11. Foil
Character whose personality or attitude is in sharp contrast to another

12. Blank Verse
A form of poetry that uses unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter
Typically used by high status characters or by low status characters for comic effect.
Low status characters typically speak in prose

13. Iambic Pentameter
Lines of 5 unstressed syllables

14. Allusion
Reference to something outside the work that the reader is expected to know

15. Crisis or Turning Point
Moment when a choice made by main characters determine the direction of the action: upward to a happy ending (comedy) or downward to tragedy

16. Archaic Words
Words that have disappeared from common use
You vs. Thou

17. Prologue
A speech often spoken in verse delivered to an audience at the beginning of a play by an actor to introduce the subject matter

18. Epilogue
A speech often spoken in verse delivered to an audience at the end of a play by an actor

19. Antithesis
Antithesis is the opposition of words against each other. Shakespeare new that drama must be beset with conflict. Just like good opposed evil Shakespeare’s language was often set against itself. This can be seen in Hamlet’s “To be, or not to be” (III. i. 56).

20. Pun
Pun: Shakespeare loved wordplay, especially puns. And he used them to show a characters wit and intellect. Hamlet uses them more than any other character. From “nay I am too much i’ the sun” (I. ii. 67) when mocking the connection he has with his uncle.