| Term | Definition |
| drama | a story written to be acted for an audience |
| tragedy | a play, novel, or other narrative that depicts serious and important events in which the main character comes to an unhappy end |
| prologue | a short introduction at the beginning of a play that gives a brief overview of the plot. |
| sonnet | fourteen-line lyric poem that is usually written in iambic pentameter and that has one of several rhyme schemes (shakespearean-3 four-line units or quatrains, followed by a concluding two-line unit, or couplet; abab ccd efef gg. |
| prose | direct, unadorned form of language, written or spoken, in ordinary use |
| chorus | a group who says things at the same time |
| anachronism | event or detail that is inappropriate for the time period |
| verbal irony | a writer or speaker says one thing, but really means something completely different. |
| dramatic irony | the audience or reader knows something important that a character in a play or story does not know |
| monologue | a speech by one character in a play |
| soliloquy | an usually long speech in which a character who is on stage alone expresses his or her thoughts aloud |
| foil | character who is used as a contrast to another character; writer sets off/intensifies the qualities of 2 characters this way |
| oxymoron | a combination of contradictory terms (EX: jumbo shrimp) |
| aside | words that are spoken by a character in a play to the audience or to another character but that are not supposed to be overheard by the others onstage |
| pun | a play on the multiple meanings of a word, or on two words that sound alike but have different meanings. |
| comic relief | humor added that lessons the seriousness of a plot |
| static character | character who does not change much in the course of a story |
| dynamic character | character who changes as a result of the story's events |
| blank("unrhymed"-no rhyme at the end of the lines) | verse-poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter ("pent=5; "meter"= measure); each line of poetry contains 5 |
| Couplet | Two consecutive lines of poetry that rhyme; coupleys often signal the exit of a character or End of a scene |
