Essential knowledge for understanding Shakespeare
1.Essential literary terms for
2.Essential literary terms for understanding Renaissance
3. Cultural Backgraound
4.The Periods of English Literature
1.Essential literary terms for
A pair of rhyming verse lines
Tearing of papers,
breaking rings a-twain,
Storming her world with sorrow's wind and rain.
iambic pentameter with couplets
iambic pentameter without rhyming <--- blank verse
A repetition of consonants, especially at the beginning of
related words. It is a characteristic for the poems of Anglo-Saxons.
have I abide,
--Ezra Pound's translation)
(The Seafarer, 8th century Old English)
land with hot assys,
siege castles and towns
|tercet / triplet
||A unit of three verse
lines, usually rhyming with either with each other or with neighbouring
Composed of tercets which are interlinked, in that each is
joined to the one following by a common rhyme: aba, bcb, cdc.
maydes when they did sowe and spynne,
They sang sometymes
a song of the feld mowse,
her lyvelood was but thynne,
Would nedes go seek her townyssh systers howse.
She thought her
self endured to much pain:
The sormy blastes
her cave so sore did sowse.
That wehn the forowse swymmed with the rain
Shye must lye
cold and whete in sorry plight;
And wours then
that, bare meet then did remain
Thomas. Second Satire CVI)
||four-line stanza. The most common
in English versification.
as the Italian name indicates, it has eight lines iambic
stanza rhyming ab ab ab cc. This form was introduced into
English verse by Sir Thomas Wyatt in early in the 16th c.
strong, weak =tum-ti
weak, weak, strong =ti-ti-tum
strong, weak, weak =tum-ti-ti
weak, strong, weak =ti-tum-ti
strong, strong =tum-tum
eg. no more
||monometer: one foot
|dimeter: two feet
|trimeter: three feet
|tetrameter: four feet
|pentameter: five feet
|hexameter: six feet
|heptameter: seven feet
|ballad meter or
Usually a form of the folk ballad and its literary imitations,
consisting of a quatrain in which the first and third lines
have four stresses while the second and fourth have three stresses.
|scansion / to scan
iambic pentameter with a couplet
and Adonis, The
Rape of Lucerece, A
Lover's Complaint are written in rhyme royal.
Geoffrey Chaucer(1343?-1400) employed it in his Torilus
and Criseyde, The Parlement of Foules and several
of The Canterbury Tales.
From off a hill
whose concave womb re-worded
A plaintful story from a sistering vale,
My spirits to attend this double voice accorded,
And down I laid to list the sad-tuned tale;
Ere long espied a fickle maid full pale,
Tearing of papers, breaking rings a-twain,
Storming her world with sorrow's wind and rain.
The term derives from the Italian sonetto a 'little
sound' or 'song'. A lyric poem comprising 14 rhyming lines
|Shakespeare (English) Sonnet
abab cdcd efef gg (3 quatrains, a couplet)
creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty's rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memoriy:
But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed'st thy light'st flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.
Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content
And, tender churl, makest waste in niggarding.
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.
abab bcbc cdcd ee…i3 quatrains, a couplet…j
Happy ye leaves
when as those lily hands,
Which hold my life in their dead doing might,
Shall handle you and hold in loves soft bands,
Lyke captives trembling at the victors sight.
And happy lines, on which with starry light,
Those lamping eyes will deigne sometimes to look
And reade the sorowes of my dying spright,
Written with teares in harts close bleeding book.
And happy rymes bathed in the sacred brooke,
Of Helicon whence she derived is,
When ye behold that Angels blessed looke,
My soules long lacked foode, my heavens blis.
Leaves, lines, and rymes, seeke her to please alone,
Whom if ye please, I care for other none.
Edmund. Amoretti, Sonnet 1)
abbaabba cdecde (octave, sestet)
Also known as the Italian sonnet, the form originated in Italy
in the 13th c. and was perfected by Petrarch (1304-1374).
It was imported to English poetry in the 16th century.
a piece of verse eight lines long with alternating rhymes;
a term usually employed to describe the earlier and larger
section of a sonnet.
the second part of a sonnet, consisting of six lines, as distinct
form the larger first part, the octave.
2. Essential literary terms for understanding
|Verse and Prose
Verse is the principal means of expression in Shakespeare,
while prose is used in particular circumstances. Four plays
are entirely in verse (Richard
II , King
Henry VI and 3
Henry VI ). Most plays contain far moer verse
than prose. Only five plays have more prose then verse. (2
The Merry Wives of Windsor, Much
Ado About Nothing, As
You Like It,and
Twelfth Night ). Please consider the effects and
reasons of the shift from verse to prose in the following
that the earthy and cold hand of death
Lies on my toungue. No, Pecy, thou art dust,
And food for ----
For worms, brave Percy: fare thee well, great heart!
Ill-weaved ambition, how much art thou shrunk!
When that this body did contain a spirit,
A kingdom for it was too small a bound;
But now two paces of the vilest earth
Is room enough: this earth that bears thee dead
Bears not alive so stout a gentleman.
If thou wert sensible of courtesy,
I should not make so dear a show of zeal:
But let my favours hide thy mangled face;
And, even in thy behalf, I'll thank myself
For doing these fair rites of tenderness.
Adieu, and take thy praise with thee to heaven!
Thy ignominy sleep with thee in the grave,
But not remember'd in thy epitaph!
[He spieth FALSTAFF on the ground]
What, old acquaintance! could not all this flesh
Keep in a little life? Poor Jack, farewell!
I could have better spared a better man:
O, I should have a heavy miss of thee,
If I were much in love with vanity!
Death hath not struck so fat a deer to-day,
Though many dearer, in this bloody fray.
Embowell'd will I see thee by and by:
Till then in blood by noble Percy lie.
[Exit PRINCE HENRY]
FALSTAFF: Embowelled! if thou embowel me to-day, I'll
give you leave to powder me and eat me too to-morrow. 'Sblood,'twas
time to counterfeit, or that hot termagant Scot had paid me
scot and lot too. Counterfeit? I lie, .... (1
Henry VI. 5.4.83-112)
Unrhymed verse, with five iambic feet to a line, a measure
introduced into England by the Earl of Surrey (1517-47), the
poet, which became the basic verse form of Elizabethan drama.
what light through younder window breaks?
and Juliet. 2.1.44-5) (Bold=strong=feet)
The human heatbeat is the same rhythm of iamb.
The line ends with an extra unstressed syllable, giving eleven
syllables instead of ten. the effect of making the thought
itself ironic, the effect of making the line more pliant,
and often give a quality of working through the thought, sometimes
giving it a haunted and unfinished sound as though leaving
the thought in the air: the effects are different.
e.g. motion, notion
cf. masculine ending - end with a stressed syllable
||Fewer than five beats in a line in
an otherwise regular passage. Please look for the reasons. The
line is a short line because, for instance, a movement is needed,
it make make the line rhythmically, it may the time is need
for the character to do something, the thought may overwhelm
the character, the character may be waiting for an answer from
other characters, or it may be just winding up of the scene,
||A six feet line. The speaker might
lose in his own oratory. Please look for the reasons.
A slight pause occurring mid-line. Sometimes a caesura is
used for the listener to be ready to take in the rhyme.
As my sweet
Richard. Yet again, methinks
Some unborn sorrow ripe in fortune's womb.
A line is split between two or more characters. The split
line heightens the sense of people sharing a situation. Sometimes
they may express irony or characters are sharing a situation
and yet their viewpoints are very different.
||What o'clock tomorrow?
||Shall I send to thee?
||By the hour of nine.
|But note me, signor ---
||Mark you this, Bassanio?
|| The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
|final rhyming couplet
They are used quite purposefully to finish off a scene, or
part of a scene or a soliloquy.
I'll so offend
to make offence a skill
Redeeming time when men think least I will.
character types that occur repeatedly in a particular literary
genre so that it is recognizable as part of of the conventions.
||Its applications range all the way
from the "mental pictures" experienced by the reader
of a poem to the totality of the components withch make up a
figure of speech in which inanimate objects or abstract ideas
are endowed with human qualities, e.g., allegorical morality
plays where characters include Good Deeds, Beauty, and Death.
John Ruskin termed sentimentalized, exaggerated personification
the "pathetic fallacy." (From encyclopedia.com
||Shakespeare used two types of irony:verbal
Verbal irony is saying one things but meaning another. In Julius
Caesar, when Mark Antony refers in his funeral oration to Brutus
as "an honorable man" repeatedly, he really means
the opposite. Dramatic irony occurs in a play when the audience
knows facts that the characters in the play are ignorant of.
For instance, Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, in which Oedipus try to
avoid to kis his father and marry to his own mother but he does
without knowing it, while the audience is fully aware of the
two incongruous or classing words brought together to make
a striking expression.
Parting is such
sweet sorrow. (Romeo
and Juliet. 2.1.229)
O brawling love, O loving hate,(Romeo
and Juliet. 1.1.169)
||use of words, usually humorous,
based on (a) the several meanings of one word, (b) a similarity
of meaning between words that are pronounced the same, or (c)
the difference in meanings between two words pronounced the
same and spelled somewhat similarly. (From encyclopedia.com
inappropriate, muddled or mistaken use of words. Hostess
Quickly in 2
Henry IV is a notable example.
sir, I would have some confidence* with you that decerns**
you nearly. (Much
Ado About Nothing. 3.5.2)
confidence* =conference, decerns**=concerns
Bombast is boastfull or ranting language.
wrapped in a woman's hide. (3
Henry VI 1.4.138)
Hyperbole is extravagant and obvious exaggeration.
Let Rome in
Tiber melt and the wide arch
of the ranged empire fall!(Antony
and Cleopatra. 1.1.35-6)
|You and thou
You - you- your- your
formal and distant form of address suggesting respect for
a superior or courtesy to a social equal.
Thou - thee - thy - thine
informal and close form and can imply either closeness or
||expected, usual, polite, superior
||unexpected, unusual, affection,
thou hast thy father much offended.
Hamlet: Mother, you have my father much offended.
Gertrude: Come, come, you answer with an idle
Hamlet: Go, go, you question with a wicked
Gertrude: Why, how now, Hamlet!
Hamlet: What's the matter now?
Gertrude: Have you forgot me?
Hamlet: No, by the rood, not so:
You are the queen, your husband's brother's
And--would it were not so!--you are my mother.
Gertrude: Nay, then, I'll set those to you
that can speak.
Hamlet: Come, come, and sit you down; you
shall not budge;
You go not till I set you up a glass
Where you may see the inmost part of you.
Gertrude: What wilt thou do? thou wilt
not murder me? Help, help, ho!
Hamlet always addresses Gertrude as "you," which
shows his formal attitude and a mental/social distance.
On the other hand, Queen Gertrude uses both "thou"
and "you" which implys her emotional turbulence.
"Ye/you" or "thou/thee" sometimes show
social classes, too.
thou hear, hostess?
Hostess: Pray ye, pacify yourself, Sir John.
Henry IV. 2.4.77-8)
Here, Falstaff is disreputable but he is still a knight
so the hostess used "ye" in order to show his
SIR TOBY BELCH:
O knight thou lackest a cup of canary: when did I
see thee so put down?
SIR ANDREW: Never in your life, I think; unless you
see canary put me down. Methinks sometimes I have no more
wit than a Christian or an ordinary man has: but I am a
great eater of beef and I believe that does harm to my wit.
SIR TOBY BELCH: No question. (Twelfth
It can be insulting if it was used by an inferior to address
a superior social rank.
|"-th" and "-s"
The third person singular present indicative "-s"
which we are familiar with was originally a dialect of Northern
England or North Midland. By the 15th century, the usage of
"-s" ending spread to south and by 16th century,
it became popular as colloquial and informal way and on the
other hand -eth ending remained as a formal and old-fashioned
usage. In short, "-th" and "-s" were alternatives
in Shakespearean text. Look at the next quotation. He changed
"-eth" and "-s" even in the same line.
of mercy is not strained,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest,
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
Merchant of Venice 4.1.181-4)
cf. Hath (has), doth (does)
||Nor I know not where
I did lodge last night. (King
||Nor that I am more better
||This was the most unkindest
cut of all.
3. Cultural Backgraound
||meaning 'rebirth'. a term used to describe theflowering
of art, scholarship, and litereture that took place during the
fifteenth and sixteenthe century in Eurpoe. The movement began
in Italy in the fourteenth century. Since the Renaissance began
in Italy, many of the leading Renaissance figures were Italian.
eg. Dante Alighieri(1265-1321), Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374)
or Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
||The movement that began when King
Henry VIII split from the Pope and the Catholic Church of Rome
and founded the Protestant Church of England.
|By about 1400 the breakup of the Mongol
empire and the growth of the Ottoman Empire had blocked Europe's
overland trade routes to the East. The search for new trade
routes, the rise of merchant capitalism, and the desire to exploit
the potential of a global economy initiated the European 2age
of discovery.O´ Henry the Navigator promoted voyages along the
coast of Africa that helped dispel the superstition and misinformation
that had impeded previous attempts to sail through the torrid
zone. The extent of the globe was revealed by Bartholomew Diaz's
rounding of the Cape of Good Hope (1486-87), Vasco da Gama's
voyage to India (1497-98), Christopher Columbus's first voyage
to America (1492), and the circumnavigation of the globe by
the expedition of Ferdinand Magellan (1519-22). In the 16th
cent. Spanish explorers, notably Vasco de Balboa, Hern|n Cort»s,
Francisco Pizarro, Cabeza de Vaca, Hern|n De Soto, and Francisco
de Coronado, explored large areas of the Americas. Much of the
interior of North America was revealed in the 17th cent. by
Samuel de Champlain, Sieur de La Salle, Louis Jolliet, Jacques
Marquette, and other French explorers. (From encyclopedia.com
4. the Periods of English Literature
||Old English (Anglo-Saxon) Period
||Middle English Period
|| The Renaissance
||Commonwealth Period(Puritan Interregnum)
||The Neoclassical Period
||The Augustan Age (Age of Pope)
||The Age of Sensibility (Age of Johnson)
||The Romantic Period
||The Victorian Period
||Aestheticism and Decadence
||The Edwardian Period
||The Georgian Period
||The Modern Period