| Act 1 | Exposition, Exciting Force |
| Exposition | The background information |
| Exciting Force | One event that puts the play into motion (Ghost asks Hamlet to get revenge) |
| Act 2 | Rising Action |
| Rising Action | Things look up for the tragic hero (Hamlet has great plan i.e. the play inside a play) |
| Act 3 | Climax |
| Climax | The tragic hero does something that cannot be undone (Hamlet kills polonius) |
| Act 4 | Falling Action |
| Falling Action | Things start to look down for the tragic hero (Hamlet goes to England, Claudius/Laertes plot to kill Hamlet) |
| Act 5 | Denouement, Catastrophe |
| Denouement | The un-knotting |
| Catastrophe | Tragic hero dies |
| Malapropism | The misuse of a word |
| Pun | A play on words based on the similarity of sound between 2 words with different meanings |
| Double Entendre | A figure of speech similar to the pun, in which a spoken phrase can be understood in either of two ways. 1. literal meaning is an innocent one. 2. risqué and requires the hearer to have some additional knowledge |
| Soliloquy | A character on stage by him or herself, speaking his/her innermost thoughts |
| Soliloquy (Elizabethan) | According to Elizabethan convention, a character speaking in a soliloquy always speaks the truth |
| Aside | An Actor directly addresses the audience or another character, but is not supposed to be heard by the other actors on stage |
| Allusion | A figure of speech that makes brief reference to a historical or literary figure, event, or object |
| Prose | A form of writing that does not have regular meter or rhyme. |
| Poetry | A form of writing which contains rhythm and/or rhyme |
| Couplet | A pair of end-rhymed lines of verse that are self-contained in grammatical structure and meaning |
| Meter | A rhythmic pattern in poetry wherein stresses (accented syllables) recur at fixed intervals |
| Iambic Meter | An iamb is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable |
| Iambic Pentameter | Five iambs (usually 10 syllables) |
| Blank Verse | Unrhymed Iambic Pentameter |
| Heroic Couplet | A couplet written in iambic pentameter |
| Motifs of Hamlet | Disease/Decay, time being “out of joint”, spying |
| Foil | Character meant to reflect a main character (Laertes to Hamlet, Fortinbras to Hamlet) |
| Tragic Flaw | Procrastination |
| Revenge Play | Six elements! |
| Hamlet Problem | Unanswered questions about Hamlet |
| Skull | Yoriek |
| The mousetrap or Murder of Gonzalda | play within the play |
| Elsenor | Castle |
Hamlet Objective Test
August 19, 2019