Drama and Shakespeare

Plays are written to be performed, so a script looks different from a story: it has speakers' names, dialogue and stage directions. Playwrights use special conventions to show what characters think. Shakespeare's plays (all public domain) use some older English that you can learn to read.

Key facts

  • A play is divided into acts and scenes. A script gives each speaker's name, then their words, with no speech marks. Stage directions, in brackets or italics, tell actors how to move and speak: ⟦(whispering)⟧.
  • A soliloquy is a speech by a character alone on stage, sharing their thoughts with the audience, like Hamlet's ⟦To be, or not to be: that is the question.⟧
  • An aside is a short comment to the audience that the other characters on stage do not hear. A prologue introduces the play before the action begins.
  • Dramatic irony is when the audience knows something a character does not, which creates tension: we know the drink is poisoned; the hero does not.
  • Shakespeare's English: ⟦thou⟧ = you, ⟦thy⟧ = your, ⟦art⟧ = are, ⟦hath⟧ = has, ⟦doth⟧ = does, ⟦wherefore⟧ = why, ⟦'tis⟧ = it is. His main characters usually speak in blank verse (unrhymed lines of ten syllables, iambic pentameter).

Worked examples

Example 1

Which convention is this? A character turns to the audience and says a line that the others on stage do not hear.

  1. Only the audience hears the line.
  2. A short comment just for the audience is an aside.

Answer: an aside

Example 2

What does Juliet mean? ⟦O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?⟧

  1. ⟦wherefore⟧ means why, ⟦art⟧ means are and ⟦thou⟧ means you.
  2. She is not asking where he is: she wishes he were not a Montague, her family's enemy.

Answer: ⟦Why are you Romeo?⟧

Example 3

The audience knows the letter is fake, but the king believes every word. What is this?

  1. The audience knows more than the character.
  2. That gap creates tension: it is dramatic irony.

Answer: dramatic irony