Macbeth: Terms and Conventions

Question 1

Actor voices thoughts while alone on stage

Answer 1

Soliloquy

Question 2

Actor directly addresses audience

Answer 2

Aside

Question 3

Any verse comprised of unrhymed lines all in the same meter

Answer 3

Blank Verse

Question 4

A plot device in which events turn out contrary to expectation (plot twist)

Answer 4

Situational Irony

Question 5

Sarcasm

Answer 5

Verbal Irony

Question 6

The audience knows something the characters don’t

Answer 6

Dramatic Irony

Question 7

A play that recounts the events in the life of a significant person, and these events work together to reach an unhappy catastrophe, the whole treated with great dignity and seriousness

Answer 7

Shakespearean Tragedy

Question 8

What, according to Aristotle, is the purpose of a tragedy?

Answer 8

To arouse pity and fear in the audience and to produce in them a catharsis of the emotions

Question 9

An emotional cleansing or purifying of said emotions

Answer 9

Catharsis

Question 10

The protagonist in a tragedy

Answer 10

Tragic Hero

Question 11

3 characteristics of a tragic hero

Answer 11

a. Person of high character who faces destiny with courage
b. Possesses a tragic flaw
c. Better than ordinary, and brought from happiness to misery

Question 12

The error caused by a tragic hero’s tragic flaw

Answer 12

Hamartia

Question 13

Act I of a Shakespearean tragedy

Answer 13

Background and exposition: introduces characters and conflict

Question 14

Act II of a Shakespearean tragedy

Answer 14

Conflict is heightened

Question 15

Act III of a Shakespearean tragedy

Answer 15

Turning Point

Question 16

Act IV of a Shakespearean tragedy

Answer 16

Hero’s fortunes turn for the worst

Question 17

Act V of a Shakespearean tragedy

Answer 17

Catharsis and death