Mini-Episode: Shakespeare's Prose and Verse

In today’s mini-episode, we are exploring Shakespeare’s Language Framework.

In this episode, we will discuss technical elements of how Shakespeare plays  were written,  as well as provide tips and tricks for navigating what can be a major hurdle to reading and performing Shakespeare: the text itself. How do you actually start to understand what is written on the page?

We dive into the clues that can be found by looking at the syllables in each of Shakespeare's lines. 

Kourtney Smith (KS): Welcome to another Shakespeare Anyone mini-episode! In these mini-episodes, we’ll be exploring topics that are related to Shakespeare but aren’t necessarily connected to whatever play we’ve been discussing. 

Elyse Sharp (ES): And they’re mini, because, well, they’re shorter than our other episodes. They’re like quartos if the regular episodes are folio editions.  

KS: In today’s mini-episode, we are exploring Shakespeare’s Language Framework.

ES: We will discuss technical elements of how Shakespeare plays were written,  as well as provide tips and tricks for navigating what can be a major hurdle to reading and performing ShakespearES: the text itself. How do you actually start to understand what is written on the page?

KS: Although Shakespeare’s language can feel very removed from our current Modern English, Shakespeare didn’t write in Old English or even Middle English. Elizabethan and Jacobean era England spoke and wrote in what is known as Early Modern English, a sort of linguistic transition period between Middle English and today’s Modern English.  This is based on linguistic characteristics, such as grammar. One example of this is pronouns. Shakespeare uses a pronoun and verb tense that we don’t use anymore--that quintessentially “Shakespeare” informal second person of thee, thou, and thine;--  the other second person pronoun was the more formal you and yours.  This construct is much like tu and usted in Spanish. Even with this extra pronoun and verb tense, Shakespeare’s English is actually more similar to the language we speak and write today when compared to Middle English literature, such as Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales or the Old English epic poem Beowulf. Despite this similarity, the actual format of Shakespeare can (and does!) trip up the reader. 

ES: Now, if you’ve ever cracked open the cover of a Shakespeare play, you can probably picture how the lines are written on the page. In most cases, they aren’t in paragraphs, like in books, or even written like other theatrical scripts. Instead, they look like poetry and are written in lines of, generally, 10 syllables each which may or may not follow a rhyming scheme. When the lines are structured like this, they are referred to as being “in verse,” like poetry. Shakespeare wrote lines in verse roughly 70% of the time. If you are ever asked to memorize or perform a Shakespeare monologue that is “in verse,” then the teacher or director is expecting a section that is structured like this. When lines look like a regular ‘ol paragraph, they are written “in prose”. Prose is language that is written without a metrical, or rhythmic, structure. Most novels, essays, and articles are written in prose. 

KS: Now let’s go back and dissect “in verse” a little bit more. Verse means that the lines are written in a distinctive pattern of rhythm. Remember, the poetry bit? These patterns are called “meter”, and meters are made up of sets of syllables known as “feet” (and yes, a singular set of syllables is called a “foot”). The specific style of verse that Shakespeare primarily wrote in is called “iambic pentameter”. “Iambic'' means that each of syllables (or each foot) in a verse line follows a pattern known as an iamb: one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable. Pentameter is when there are five sets of feet in one line. So to bring this all together, one iamb is the pairing of one unstressed and one stressed syllable in a foot, and pentameter is when there are five of those feet in a line. Do a little fast math, and you’ll know that five sets of two gives us those ten syllables per line we’ve been talking about. 

ES: All together, there are actually seven different types of poetic feet, and the particular rhythm of each is defined by which syllables are stressed, or accented in the foot. There’s the trocheES: stress syllable followed by unstressed, which would sound like BUM ba. The pyrrhic: two unstressed syllables, ba ba. The amphibrach, which is a set of three, unstressed, stressed, unstressed, or ba BUM ba. The anapest: two unstressed followed by a stressed, ba ba BUM. The dactyl: a stressed followed by two unstressed, BUM ba ba. And the spondeES: two stressed, BUM BUM; or the, you know, intro to Law & Order. (laughs) And, of course, Shakespeare’s favorite, the iamb, unstressed followed by a stress: ba BUM.

KS: But just because the format of iambic pentameter looks similar to the format of poetry, that doesn’t mean iambic pentameter has to rhyme. When the iambic pentameter does not rhyme, it is referred to as “blank verse,” which is how Shakespeare and his contemporaries wrote most of their work. Blank verse iambic pentameter is the most similar to the natural speech patterns of the English language and, fun fact!: it also mimics the sound of a beating heart: ba BUM ba BUM ba BUM ba BUM.

ES: This heartbeat rhythm is incredibly important to making Shakespeare’s words sound right to the audience’s ear. Modern actors use a technique called scansion to scan a piece of verse in order to identify its rhythm and use that rhythm as a cue for how to act the line. How syllables are accented in each verse and line can give the actor a ton of information! While the theatrical concept of subtext, or a character’s internal thoughts that aren’t explicitly written on the page, didn’t take shape until 150 years after Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s rhythms provide a road map for what the character is feeling and how the actor should say the line. 

KS: For example, if a line starts with a trochee instead of an iamb, then the emphasis is on the first syllable instead of the second. This tells the actor to start that line with more urgency and it can help them think about the character’s state of mind--maybe they are interrupting the character who previously spoke, maybe they are getting heated or are in a hurry. Whatever the reason, clearly this character is trying to get attention. If there is an extra syllable on the end of a line, the character may be rambling or not speaking with conviction. This is because the “double-ending”, as it is called, forces the line to end on an unstressed syllable instead of on a stressed one, the proper ending for iambic pentameter. With a stressed ending, the last word is strong--with a double-ending, it’s softer. 

ES: So, lines are also not always 10 syllables long. Occasionally, a line will have an entire extra foot (which, remember, means two whole extra syllables in iambic pentameter). The actor has to try to fit more into the same space as everything else--just as the meter has been overwhelmed, so has the character who is speaking. Shakespeare often wrote lines that were shorter than 10 syllables as well. When an actor finds a line that is shorter than 10 syllables, it is a cue to stay silent for the remainder of the feet in that line--a little acting hint from Will himself.  Those unspoken syllables remain in the overall rhythm of the verse while the actor justifies acting through the silence. 

KS: A pause can also exist in the middle of a line. These are usually brief, take the place of one of the syllables in the line, and are typically noted using punctuation, such as a period. These brief pauses are just enough time to take a breath and then head into the next thought. Pauses like these are referred to as caesura when talking about the rhythm of a line. A caesura tells the actor that the next thought or idea comes quickly on the heels of the previous thought. Additionally, in verse, sentences or thoughts do not necessarily end at the end of a 10 syllable phrase, so actors will also pay close attention to where periods, also referred to as full-stops, occur in a section of text to inform the speed at which they have to say the line. In general, one sentence should be able to be said in one breath, so if there are a lot of words in between two periods, the actor must either speak quickly or take a large breath to get the words out and reach the next thought before they run out of breath.

ES: There are also occasions where the pronunciation of a word (or a few words) in a line are changed in order to make them fit into 10 syllables. To make a word shorter, Shakespeare, or the actor, uses ellison, which is the elimination of vowels or the combining and slurring together of vowels. This is something we still do in modern speech: think “natch-ral” instead of “nat-chu-ral” or “daynj-russ” instead of “dayn-dzhur-russ.” Or the last syllable of one word blurring into the first syllable of another. A common example of this is in Shakespeare is pronouncing “do it” as “doot.” Shakespeare often indicates with an apostrophe the words that definitely should be ellided: think o’er (ore) instead of over or contractions like ‘tis, instead of “it is”. Most often with ellison, the words being shortened are not so important in the overall line. They are shortened to make sure that the important words are clear. 

KS: The opposite of ellison is expansion, and, between the two, it is probably the more famous one. If you’ve ever heard someone pronounce a word that ends in -ed  and accent that suffix when pretending to “speak Shakespearean,” you know what expansion is. Think of Juliet’s monologue after she finds out that Tybalt is dead and Romeo is forbidden to return from Verona. Instead of banished, she repeats the pronunciation “banish-ed.” Or, if you remember Boy Meets World, Eric’s “Fee-hee-hee-hee-ny” call is also an excellent example of expansion. Just like today, when someone chooses to over enunciate and emphasize syllables in a word, it is being done to bring attention to that word. Maybe they are being sassy, or trying to make a point, or in the case of Juliet, the implications of that word are so big, that it bursts out of its normal pronunciation. 

ES: Now, I know that is a lot to think about when cracking open a script, and as an actor and a Shakespeare coach, I see a lot of people who can get hung up on trying to find weird rhythms all over Shakespeare. And figuring out the rhythm can become more important than understanding the content of what a character is saying. So my advice is, to borrow a phrase from the TV show House, when scanning a line of Shakespeare, think horses not zebras. The majority of lines should fit in the normal iambic pentameter rhythm. Then, if you, or I, stumble across a line that seems off, double check it, triple check it, and then, if it really doesn’t fit the rhythm, start looking for ellisions, expansions, caesuras, silent syllables, and other types of feet like trochees. But the final product should have words that are pronounced in a way that is still understandable. 

KS: Understanding verse is useful today and would have been incredibly useful to Shakespeare for a few reasons. OnES: it is a great tool for line memorization for the actor--think of how easily you remember song lyrics without having to sit down and memorize them. Two: paper was expensive. Actors were only provided with their lines and cues, instead of a full script, so verse could be another way to save paper--it all fits pretty easily on a quarter-sheet. 

ES: Lastly, verse heightens the language above regular speech. This is why Shakespeare often uses it to separate the ordinary from the extra-ordinary. Lovers often speak in verse as a consequence of their heightened emotional state; and class also plays a role--lower class characters will speak in prose while lords and ladies will speak exclusively in verse. If a character switches between prose and verse, it is a great indicator for the actor that the character is moving between the ordinary and the extra-ordinary, or code switching depending on who they are talking to. 

KS: That’s all the time we have today. But there is loads more to discuss about Shakespeare’s language--which is why we’ll return to this topic in future mini-episodes! Stay tuned, and let us know if you have any specific questions about Shakespeare’s language you’d like us to answer in a future episode! 

ES: Thank you for listening to this episode.

Quote of the Episode:

KS: From Venus and Adonis, “Thus stands she in a trembling ecstasy, Till, cheering up her senses all dismayed, She tells them 'tis a causeless fantasy, And childish error, that they are afraid; Bids them leave quaking, bids them fear no more.”

Shakespeare Anyone? is created and produced by Kourtney Smith and Elyse Sharp.

Note: When this episode was recorded, Kourtney Smith was "Korey Leigh Smith".

Episode written and researched by Elyse Sharp.

Music is "Neverending Minute" by Sounds Like Sander.

Follow us on Instagram at @shakespeareanyonepod for updates or visit our website at shakespeareanyone.com

Works referenced:

Shakespeare, William, et al. Speak the Speech!: Shakespeare's Monologues Illuminated. Faber and Faber, 2002.