Shakespeare

All the world's a stage — so you'd better brush up on your Shakespeare. Get to know the Bard with this list featuring words related to Elizabethan theater, Shakespeare's sonnets, and more.
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. act
    a single division of a play, opera, or ballet
  2. bard
    a lyric poet
  3. Ben Jonson
    English dramatist and poet who was the first real poet laureate of England (1572-1637)
  4. Black Plague
    the epidemic form of bubonic plague experienced during the Middle Ages when it killed nearly half the people of western Europe
  5. blank verse
    unrhymed poetry, usually in iambic pentameter
  6. Christopher Marlowe
    English poet and playwright who introduced blank verse as a form of dramatic expression; was stabbed to death in a tavern brawl (1564-1593)
  7. comedy
    light and humorous drama with a happy ending
  8. couplet
    a stanza consisting of two successive lines of verse
  9. dialogue
    the lines spoken by characters in drama or fiction
  10. drama
    a work intended for performance by actors on a stage
  11. Elizabeth I
    Queen of England from 1558 to 1603
  12. Elizabethan
    of or relating to Elizabeth I of England or to the age in which she ruled as queen
  13. folio
    a book consisting of large sheets of folded paper
  14. groundling
    a playgoer in the cheap, standing section of the theater
  15. iamb
    a metrical unit with unstressed-stressed syllables
  16. iambic
    of metrical units having an unstressed/stressed pattern
  17. Jacobean
    of or relating to James I or his reign or times
  18. James I
    the first Stuart to be king of England and Ireland from 1603 to 1625 and king of Scotland from 1567 to 1625; he was the son of Mary Queen of Scots and he succeeded Elizabeth I; he alienated the British Parliament by claiming the divine right of kings (1566-1625)
  19. meter
    a pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in verse
  20. monarchy
    autocracy governed by a ruler who usually inherits authority
  21. pentameter
    a verse line having five metrical feet
  22. playwright
    someone who writes plays
  23. prologue
    an introductory section of a novel or other literary work
  24. quarto
    a book made by folding paper twice to form four leaves
  25. quatrain
    a stanza of four lines
  26. scene
    a subdivision of an act of a play
  27. setting
    the context and environment in which something is situated
  28. Shakespearean sonnet
    a sonnet consisting of three quatrains and a concluding couplet in iambic pentameter with the rhyme pattern abab cdcd efef gg
  29. soliloquy
    a dramatic speech giving the illusion of unspoken reflection
  30. sonnet
    a verse form of 14 lines with a fixed rhyme scheme
  31. stage direction
    instruction or description written in the script of a play
  32. Stratford-upon-Avon
    a town in central England on the River Avon
  33. Thomas Dekker
    English dramatist and pamphleteer (1572-1632)
  34. Thomas Kyd
    English dramatist (1558-1594)
  35. tragedy
    drama exciting terror or pity
Created on Tue Jan 10 16:51:35 EST 2017 (updated Wed Mar 29 15:34:31 EDT 2017)

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