Life:
Works:
William Shakespeare
The Globe:
Shakespeare’s Style
• Prose
– Ordinary, common language
(prosaic = ordinary)
– Paragraphs
– Find examples in Julius Caesar.
Style (cont.)
• Verse
– Meter: the rhythm/beat of a line of poetry
– Foot: the pattern of stressed/unstressed
syllables
Shakespeare’s Style
• Prose
– Ordinary observations
– One-liners
– Auditory relief
– Low class speaker/listener
– Praise beauty of prose
• Verse
– Deep emotion
– Irony
– Wisdom
– Poetry/Lyrics
Style (cont.)
Blank Verse:
unrhymed iambic pentameter
(not always perfect)
Pentameter: _____ rhythmic patterns/line?
Foot: Iamb (iambic) unstressed/stressed
about
Style (cont.)
But, soft, what light from yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
Fie! Fie! Unknit that threat’ning unkind brow,
And dart not scornful glances from those eyes
To wound thy lord, thy king, thy governor.
About
about
about
about
about
Style (cont.)
• Why don’t we read it like that?
• Why don’t we even hear it?
• Iambic pentameter is the normal pattern of
English speech. Your ear is tuned to it because
you hear it so much.
Style (cont.)
Watch for these!
Rhymed couplet
–Important details
–End of acts or scenes
For never was there a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.
Style (cont.)
• Aside
– Characters talk to
audience
Style (cont.)
• Soliloquy
– Characters talk to self
– Hearing their thoughts
To be, or not to be--that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them.
Style (cont.)
• Anachronism
– References that are in the wrong time period
Example
Style (final)
Some think that
Shakespeare’s syntax
(sentence structure)
is difficult to follow.
HA! Further from the
truth nothing is.
Think you of. . .
Then do or do not;
there is no try.