Introducton to Shakespeare's Othello

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William Shakespeare-Born April 1564 in Stratford on-Avon.

Wrote 4 lengthy poems and a sonnet cycle.

38 plays-comedies,histories,tragedies and romances.

Shakespeare vocabulary

Verse vs. Verse /Aside

Meter / Foil

Foot/ Tragedy

Verse vs. Prose

Verse: Poetic language that includes meter and sometimes rhyme; lines consistent number of syllables.

Prose: ordinary written language with no meter or rhyme; organized in sentences.

Usage: poetic style -High status, tragic moments

prose- low status ,accusations, comedic moments

Meter: stressed, unstressed ,rhythm

Meter and Foot: syllables metrical pattern.

Sonnet: 14 line peom iambic pentameter.

Organized in three quatrins and couplet

abab cded efef

flexibility/thematic

concluding couplet

Sonnet: Quatrain and Couplet

Quatrain: four-line verse stanza, usually rhymed.

Couplet: a pair of rhyming verse lines.

Foil:personality, attitudes

Allusion: reference to and event, person.

Greek and Roman mythology

Allusion Janus: Roman god of gates and doors, beginning and endings.

Tragic Flaw: Defect of character that leads to heros disastus downfall.