Aim: How do we analyze Shakespearean Verse?  Do Now: What do you know about reading Shakespeare?

Lecture Topic: Verse and Staging How do we read Shakespeare?

Verse  Free verse Poetry without a regular pattern of meter or rhyme. The verse is "free" in not being bound by earlier poetic conventions requiring poems to adhere to an explicit and identifiable meter and rhyme scheme in a form such as the sonnet or ballad. Modern and contemporary poets of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries often employ free verse. Williams's "This Is Just to Say" is one of many examples.meter  Blank verse A line of poetry or prose in unrhymed iambic pentameter. Shakespeare's sonnets, Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost, and Robert Frost's meditative poems such as "Birches" include many lines of blank verse. Here are the opening blank verse lines of "Birches": When I see birches bend to left and right / Across the lines of straighter darker trees, / I like to think some boy's been swinging them.iambic pentameter

RHYME  The matching of final vowel or consonant sounds in two or more words. The following stanza of "Richard Cory" employs alternate rhyme, with the third line rhyming with the first and the fourth with the second:  Whenever Richard Cory went down town, We people on the pavement looked at him; He was a gentleman from sole to crown Clean favored and imperially slim.

RHYTHM  Rhythm The recurrence of accent or stress in lines of verse. In the following lines from "Same in Blues" by Langston Hughes, the accented words and syllables are underlined:  I said to my baby, Baby take it slow.... Lulu said to Leonard I want a diamond ring

METER, Foot, IAMB  Meter The measured pattern of rhythmic accents in poems.  Foot A metrical unit composed of stressed and unstressed syllables. For example, an iamb or iambic foot is represented by ˘', that is, an unaccented syllable followed by an accented one. Frost's line "Whose woods these are I think I know" contains four iambs, and is thus an iambic foot.metrical  Iamb An unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one, as in to-DAY.

IaMBic PENTAMETER  Unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.  Each pattern is referred to as a foot.  Shakespeare uses five feet to a line.  This is called iambic pentameter  da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM.  Let's try it out on this line:  to CUT the HEAD off AND then HACK the LIMBS .

IAMBIC PENTAMETER IN JULIUS CAESAR  Romans speak in unrhymed iambic pentameter  Commoners speak in prose.  Examples: Romans – Commoners - [...] but withal I am indeed, sir, a surgeon to old shoes; when they are in great danger, I recover them. (1.1.5)

Activity  Iambic Pentameter “You WON’T GO till I NET up a FISH for YOU.” (unmetered verse) “you GO not TILL i NET you UP a FISH.” “Neither a borrower nor a lender be.”  Activity: Create 2 metered lines of iambic pentameter on your own.

HOW TO READ Two basic methods to explore the texts: scansion and close reading. The point is that by starting with the basic text on a line-by-line basis, you can work through Shakespeare's meaning and understand how verse and meaning come together.

SCANSION Scansion is the process of analyzing poetry's rhythm by looking at meter and feet. A foot is a two- or three-syllable division of stresses. Meter is the predominant rhythm of a poem based on the type and number of feet per line.  Syllables are marked either as stressed (/) or unstressed (-) depending upon the pronunciation of a given word within the line. For instance, the word "example" would scan as:

COMMON METRICAL FEET IN ENGLISH  Foot Syllables Stress Pattern Example  Iamb 2 - / pretend  Trochee 2 / - season  Spondee 2 / /  Pyrrhic  Anapest / unabridged  Dactyl 3 / - - dangerous

METER  As stated before, meter is defined by the predominant type of foot and the number of feet within the lines of a poem. For instance, much of English dramatic verse was written in iambic pentameter, or lines of five iambs, because the rhythm most closely approximated natural speech patterns. In fact, unrhymed iambic pentameter was so popular, it had a term of its own: blank verse.  Although these speeches are all written in blank verse, there are other meters as well:

TYPES OF METER  monometer—lines consisting of 1 foot  dimeter—lines consisting of 2 feet  trimeter—lines consisting of 3 feet  tetrameter—lines consisting of 4 feet  pentameter—lines consisting of 5 feet (blank verse)  hexameter—lines consisting of 6 feet (alexandrine)  Lines of more than six feet are rare in English poetry.

OTHER HELPFUL POETRY TERMS assonance—repetition or a pattern of similar sounds, especially vowel sounds caesura—a natural pause or break in a line of poetry, usually near the middle of the line consonance—repetition of similar consonant sounds, especially at the ends of words couplet—a pair of lines of the same length that usually rhyme and form a complete thought enjambment—the running on of the thought from one line, couplet, or stanza to the next without a syntactical break feminine ending—an extra unstressed syllable at the end of a line masculine ending—an extra stressed syllable at the end of a line versification—the system of rhyme and meter in a poem

CLOSE READING Close reading is the foundation for studying literature. In the case of these readings, we're looking at the basic definitions of individual words, their literal and figurative uses, fundamental grammar and syntax, and the context in which words or phrases are used. In addition, these readings are all dramatic works; unlike novelists, playwrights are basically limited to dialogue and stage directions to tell their stories. That means the text is more subject to interpretation. We're looking for clues to meaning within the speeches. First, we make our observations. Then, we make inferences based on patterns that we see.