Intro to Shakespeare's Othello

Page 1

Shakespeare:

Born April 1564 in Stratford-on-Avon

Well educated in Latin, Greek, history, math, astronomy, and music

Wrote 38 plays and 4 long plays

Had formal vocabulary and used words like "couplet", "sonnet" and "tragedy"

Verse:

Includes meter and sometimes rhyme

In lines with consistent umber of syllables

Used for high status characters, tragic moments

Prose:

No meter or rhyme

Sentences

Low status characters, comedic moments, accusations

Meter:

Pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables

Creates rhythm of a line

Total number of metrical feet in a line of verse

Foot:

Group of syllables

Form metrical pattern

Iambic pentameter most common in Shakespeare

Blank Verse

unrhymed iambic pentameter

Free Verse:

No regular meter

Sonnet:

14 line poem

organized in 3 quatrians and a couplet

rhyme scheme is abab

concluding couplet

Quatrain:

four line verse stanza, usually rhymed

Couplet:

a pair of rhyiming verse lines