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And I'm not talking about aluminum foil, here.
A foil is a character whose personality or attitudes are in sharp contrast to those of another character in the same work.
Can we think of some examples of foils?
That's what Romeo & Juliet is!
A tragedy is a drama that ends in catastrophe -- most often death -- for the main character and often for several important characters as well.
This is common in many movies and plays today, as well.
In his tragedies, Shakespeare often includes comic relief, a humorous scene, incident, or speech that relieves the overall emotional intensity of the act and scene.
Most of the dialogue in a Shakespearean drama is written in blank verse: a form of poetry that uses unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter: lines that have 5 stressed and 5 unstressed syllables.
However, the pattern is not perfect, and sometimes there are inconsistencies.
But soft! What light through yonder window breaks
A tragic hero in Shakespearean tragedy is the main character, usually someone who is nobly born and who may have great influence in his or her society -- however, this hero usually will have some weakness or flaw in judgment that leads to his or her downfall.
Another element of Shakespearean drama is the use of an allusion: a brief reference within a work to something outside the work that the reader or audience is expected to know.
Authors might allude to historical or current events or to a line from another work of literature.
Shakespeare often makes use of dramatic conventions: devices that theater audiences accept as realistic even though they do not reflect the way real-life people behave.
A soliloquy is a speech that a character gives when he or she is alone on stage. Its purpose is to let the audience know what they are thinking.
An aside is a character's remark, either to the audience or another character, that others on stage are not supposed to hear.