The rich texture of Shakespeare's English reflects the colorful history of the language--along with its Anglo-Saxon roots and Shakespeare's contribution to the emergence of Modern English.
Shakespeare's Prose and Verse
While Shakespeare's poems are composed in verse, his plays employ verse and prose alike. The two are easy to tell apart. Verse lines are printed with line breaks, and the first word of each line is capitalized, as in Macbeth:
Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch
thee.
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? Or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation
Proceeding from the heat-oppressèd brain?
However, in prose, one sentence flows into another, without line breaks:
Here’s a knocking indeed! If a man were
porter of hell gate, he should have old turning the
key. (Knock.) Knock, knock, knock! Who’s there, i’
th’ name of Beelzebub? Here’s a farmer that hanged
himself on th’ expectation of plenty. Come in time!
No play is free of verse, but five of the history plays are free of prose: Henry VI parts I and III, King John, Edward III, and Richard II. From Othello on, verse became more prominent than prose. Some verse lines are composed of rhyming couplets:
By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
More frequently, Shakespeare preferred "blank verse," in which metrical lines do not rhyme. With its comparative lack of rigidity, blank verse conveys more subtle thoughts and feelings which is what Macbeth wrote most of Macbeth in--see the above example of blank verse (the dagger monologue). Shakespeare's verse was usually reserved for noble speakers and his prose for common or comical parts. Some characters, such as Prince Hal (Henry IV), alternate between verse and prose, depending on the context--whether, for instance, at court or in a tavern.
The Meters of Shakespearean Verse
Whether they rhyme or not, verse lines are metrical, meaning simply that they follow regulated patterns of speech. The patterns of Shakespearean verse language are composed of five kinds of building blocks, known as meters, combining syllables and stresses in different variations. Pronounced naturally, the words below illustrate specific meters. Slashes indicate breaks between syllables of one metrical beat each. And falls when the words are uttered. Syllables receiving emphasis are said to be stressed.
METERS
Iamb re/venge mist/take
Trochee mid/night butch/er
Dactyl doc/u/ment mock/er/y
Spondee a/men
Anapest un/der/neath af/ter/noon
Most Shakespearean verse lines contain 10 syllables each, and their meters are determined simply by reading the lines aloud in a natural voice. Each syllable produces one beat, and some syllables produce stressed beats. The most natural-sounding meter in Shakespearean English is the one the Bard most frequently employed: iambic pentameter. This meter is built of five iambs in a row (the 'penta' of pentameter comes from the Greek, meaning 'five'). Often, characters speaking in iambic pentameter produce sensations of comfort and well-being. In Romeo and Juliet, Friar Lawrence speaks in this meter to reassuring effect, adding to the impression that he is able to solve the lovers' dilemmas:
Care keeps his watch in every old man's eye,
And where care lodges, sleep will never lie. (2.3)
The first syllable is unstressed, the second is stressed, the third unstressed, and so on as the meter seesaws back and forth in easy iambs. But while iambic pentameter often conveys natural harmony or lyrical beauty, it may also produce disturbing intensity, as when Macbeth speaks in soliloquy:
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day... (5.5)
An extra syllable has been added to the first line, but this in no way changes the basic meter. Iambis pentameter here amplifies Macbeth's observation by pairing stressed syllables with repeated sounds. Meters lie at the heart of Shakespeare's verse langauge and frequently offer the best means to measure a character's disposition or evolving state of mind. For instance, when witches chant spells in Macbeth, their trochees resound with menace:
Double, double, toil and trouble... (4.1)
But the meters of unhinged human speakers can be even more unsettling. In Richard III, Richard awakens from a nightmare to speak in mixed meters that leave his audience as unbalanced as himself. One way to scan Richard's speech is:
The lights burn blue. It is now dead midnight.
Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh.
What do I fear? Myself? There's none else by.
Richard loves Richard: that is, I am I.
Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am. (5.3)
In Conclusion
Ultimately, Shakespeare altered the course of English. He greatly expanded its vocabulary and cadences, gave voice to a new spectrum of its speakers, and opened paths for it to explore delicate shifts of heart and mind. It may be going too far to say that current English speakers are verbal descendants of Shakespeare characters, but there is little doubt that anyone who speaks English today is related to the Bard by language.
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