Shakespeare's Metrical ArtThis is a wide-ranging, poetic analysis of the great English poetic line, iambic pentameter, as used by Chaucer, Sidney, Milton, and particularly by Shakespeare. George T. Wright offers a detailed survey of Shakespeare's brilliantly varied metrical keyboard and shows how it augments the expressiveness of his characters' stage language. |
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Page x
... voice or text to the listening reader . Many who have been moved by these poems or plays will acknowledge that the patterned verse has something to do with their experience , but a more detailed study of the deeper structures and ...
... voice or text to the listening reader . Many who have been moved by these poems or plays will acknowledge that the patterned verse has something to do with their experience , but a more detailed study of the deeper structures and ...
Page xiii
... voices , even in passing , the grace and force of those words that move us so in the theater ; and when I hear gifted actors , blessed with the ability to speak the speech trippingly or , when appropriate , with due gravity , mislay the ...
... voices , even in passing , the grace and force of those words that move us so in the theater ; and when I hear gifted actors , blessed with the ability to speak the speech trippingly or , when appropriate , with due gravity , mislay the ...
Page 7
... voice . On the contrary , when lines are devised that " fit " the meter without notable wrenching of accent , it will be found that some of the strong syllables are stronger than others , some weak ones weaker than others . To take a ...
... voice . On the contrary , when lines are devised that " fit " the meter without notable wrenching of accent , it will be found that some of the strong syllables are stronger than others , some weak ones weaker than others . To take a ...
Page 14
... voice ; it seems , on the contrary , to be powering its way past rhymes to its highly animated and outrageous assertion . Much of the metrical inter- est of the lines ( and of Donne's lines generally ) derives from the tension we feel ...
... voice ; it seems , on the contrary , to be powering its way past rhymes to its highly animated and outrageous assertion . Much of the metrical inter- est of the lines ( and of Donne's lines generally ) derives from the tension we feel ...
Page 21
... voice speeds over the unstressed syllables to light with special strength on the relatively rare stressed ones : Upon an amblere esily she sat , Ywympled wel , and on hir heed an hat As brood as is a bokeler or a targe ( GP , 469-71 ) ...
... voice speeds over the unstressed syllables to light with special strength on the relatively rare stressed ones : Upon an amblere esily she sat , Ywympled wel , and on hir heed an hat As brood as is a bokeler or a targe ( GP , 469-71 ) ...
Contents
1 | |
20 | |
Pattern and Variation | 38 |
4 Flexibility and Ease in Four Older Poets | 57 |
Shakespeares Sonnets | 75 |
6 The Verse of Shakespeares Theater | 91 |
7 Prose and Other Diversions | 108 |
8 Short and Shared Lines | 116 |
14 The Play of Phrase and Line | 207 |
15 Shakespeares Metrical Technique in Dramatic Passages | 229 |
16 What Else Shakespeares Meter Reveals | 249 |
17 Some Metrically Expressive Features in Donne and Milton | 264 |
Verse as Speech Theater Text Tradition Illusion | 281 |
Percentage Distribution of Prose in Shakespeares Plays | 291 |
Main Types of Deviant Lines in Shakespeares Plays | 292 |
Short and Shared Lines | 294 |
9 Long Lines | 143 |
More Than Meets the Ear | 149 |
11 Lines with Extra Syllables | 160 |
12 Lines with Omitted Syllables | 174 |
13 Trochees | 185 |
Notes | 297 |
Main Works Cited or Consulted | 325 |
Index | 339 |
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Common terms and phrases
accentual actors anapests appear beat blank verse broken-backed line caesura Chapter characters Chaucer combinations Coriolanus couplets Cressida Donne Donne's dramatic verse effect elision Elizabethan enjambment epic caesura example expressive extra syllable feeling feet feminine endings foot Gascoigne half-line Hamlet headless hear Henry hexameter iambic line iambic pentameter iambic pentameter line iambs Julius Caesar King Lear language later plays later poets line-types line's Macbeth meter metrical pattern metrical variations metrists midline break minor words monosyllabic normal Othello passage pause phrasal playwrights poems poetic poetry prose punctuation pyrrhic readers regular rhetorical rhyme rhythm rhythmic Richard II scene seems segments sense sentence Shake Shakespeare shared lines short lines Sidney's sonnets sound speak speaker speare's speech speechlike Spenser spoken spondaic spondee stanza stressed position strong structure style syllables syntactical syntax theater thee thou tion trochaic trochee Troilus unstressed syllables usually verb verse lines voice vowels Wyatt