Useful language terms
- Aside: words intended for the audience or selected characters, unheard by others on stage.
- Blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter.
- Couplet: two consecutive rhyming lines, often used to close a speech or scene.
- Prose: speech not arranged in verse lines; its dramatic meaning varies by context.
- Soliloquy: speech that gives the audience unusual access to a character’s thought.
- Thou / thee: singular second-person subject / object forms; intimacy and status depend on context.
- Wherefore: “why,” not “where.”
Best reading habit
Do not stop for every unfamiliar word. First infer the action, then look up only the words that control the sentence or recur as a pattern.