| A | B |
|---|
| drama | actors play roles and speak lines |
| dialogue | verbal exchange between characters |
| stage directions | playwright's written instructions aboput actor's movements and/or behavior |
| plot | sequence of events that makes up a story |
| subplot | secondary action of a story |
| convention | characteristic of a literary genre understood by the audience as a familiar technique |
| climax | moment of greatest emotional tension |
| farce | form of humor based on exaggerated incongruities |
| conflict | struggle between opposing forces |
| personification | giving human characteristics to that which is not human |
| blank verse | unrhymed iambic pentameter |
| iamb | unaccented syllable followed by accented syllable |
| denouement | "unknotting" of the problem |
| pun | play on words that relies on words having more than one meaning |
| aside | speech directed to the audience supposedly out of earshot of other characters |
| dramatic irony | situations that reveal a reality different from what appears to be true |
| heroic couplet | pair of rhymed lines in iambic pentameter |
| classical allusion | reference to person, place, thing, or idea--in this case, mythology, Greek or Roman literature |
| tragedy | displays individual's downfall |
| comedy | amusing play with happy ending |
| monologue | extended speech by one character with other characters present |
| soliloquy | extended speech by one characters alone on stage |
| foil | characters who contrast to highlight each other |
| rising action | complication that creates conflict for the protagonist |
| falling action | diminishing tension, resolution of conflict |
| turning point | where rising action reverses to falling action |
| exposition | background information about characters/circumstances |
| resolution | conclusion of conflicts and complications |
