Shakespeare scansion worksheet full#

Shakespeare scansion worksheet full#

They seem to pity the lady it seems her affections have their full bent. Once Don Pedro, Leonato and Claudio have left the stage, Benedick responds to the ruse: But the way they express this transformation is not the same. Both overhear their friends make fun of them, and their surprise and embarrassment seem to prompt a change in their feelings for each other. In parallel scenes, first Benedick and then Beatrice are tricked by their friends into believing that each is in love with the other. In Shakespeare’s time, however, a dramatic character speaking in poetry was much more likely to be speaking from the heart than one speaking in prose.Īnalysing the text in this way helps us to make sense of two key moments in the play. We’re sometimes a bit suspicious of ‘poetic’ self-expression, and we might associate rhymed verse with insincerity. Another way of thinking about the distinction is that prose represents a language of logical thought, while verse is the language of emotion and self-reflection. By contrast, verse is the language of formality and ceremony: it’s not a coincidence that the ceremonial parts of Act 4 Scene 1, during which Hero’s wedding is curtailed, are in iambic pentameter. One way to think about prose is that it is the language of wit and amusing conversation – of which there is plenty in Much Ado. Instead, he used the differences between prose and verse to suggest various things to the audience about the characters in the scene. He did not see one form as ‘better’ than the other. In fact, the explanation for the mix of forms in Much Ado lies in the nature of what is being said, and in the qualities that Shakespeare understood to be carried by verse and prose. But this is a modern definition, and Shakespeare would have thought differently. By contrast, a text that we describe as prosaic is rather boring. Today, we apply the adjective poetic to words that are elegant and beautiful, even if they are not in verse. Perhaps it’s to do with the value, or artistry, attached to the different forms. Sometimes that holds true, but not in Much Ado: almost everyone speaks in prose most of the time, from the high-ranking Don Pedro to the much humbler Dogberry. So, we can expect kings and queens to speak in poetry, but servants and soldiers speak in prose. You might have heard, or been taught, that Shakespeare gave verse to his high-status characters, and prose to his lower-status characters. So why did Shakespeare choose to make the men and women in Much Ado speak mostly in prose? That does not mean the words are not important: characters use prose to discuss love, jealousy, revenge, friendship and loyalty.

Nearly three-quarters of the words spoken in the play are in prose, not poetry. The Friar’s words are unquestionably important, as it is his involvement that saves Hero from being abandoned or even killed by her father.īut the odd thing about Much Ado compared to Shakespeare’s other plays is that very little of it is actually in verse. Giles Block, Shakespeare’s Globe’s resident verse expert, has described iambic pentameter as ‘the sound of someone saying something important’. Shakespeare loved iambic pentameter because it sounds very close to natural, heart-felt speech, but still has the structure of formal poetry. And that underlying rhythm probably sounds quite familiar: it’s like a heartbeat. Actors observe the stressed and un-stressed syllables much more subtly, but you’ll still be able to hear the pattern of the meter. Of course that isn’t exactly how the line is spoken on stage. Your-DAUGH-ter-HERE-the-PRINC-es-LEFT-for-DEAD. Each line contains five stressed syllables and five (or a few more) un-stressed syllables, usually arranged in a neatly alternating pattern: de-DUM, de-DUM, de-DUM, de-DUM, de-DUM. These lines are in a form called iambic pentameter, or blank verse. Your daughter here the princes left for dead. Here’s an example of verse from Act 4 of Much Ado About Nothing, which the Friar speaks to Leonato as he sets out his plan to save Hero’s honour:

Poetry or verse is different: verse has a set rhythm (or meter), and it looks distinctive on the page as the lines are usually shorter than prose. Prose is the term for any sustained wodge of text that doesn’t have a consistent rhythm. What is prose, and how is it different to poetry? The short answer is that prose is the form of writing that I’m using now, and the form we most commonly use in speech with each other.