Shakespeare's Metrical ArtUniversity of California Press, 2. aug 1988 - 363 pages This 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. |
From inside the book
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Page 2
... stressed syllables , they reflect the fact that when we speak we speak a succession of syllables with greater and lesser degrees of stress . If verse is iambic , that means that it assumes as a fundamental feature of our speech the ...
... stressed syllables , they reflect the fact that when we speak we speak a succession of syllables with greater and lesser degrees of stress . If verse is iambic , that means that it assumes as a fundamental feature of our speech the ...
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... stress that makes immediately clear to which of these two levels it belongs . Stressed syllables may vary in strength , and unstressed syllables may vary in weak- ness , and a third group may strike us as uncertain , as falling into a ...
... stress that makes immediately clear to which of these two levels it belongs . Stressed syllables may vary in strength , and unstressed syllables may vary in weak- ness , and a third group may strike us as uncertain , as falling into a ...
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... stress among stressed or among unstressed syllables do not alter the iambic character of the line : every even syllable still receives at least a shade more stress than the syllable it follows . But they suggest that the art of iambic ...
... stress among stressed or among unstressed syllables do not alter the iambic character of the line : every even syllable still receives at least a shade more stress than the syllable it follows . But they suggest that the art of iambic ...
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... stress . 5 If there is , in fact , a characteristic pulse for iambic poetry , which we recognize crudely by such ... stress in every second syllable ( or in most of them ) over the one it follows ; it does not denote an equality of ...
... stress . 5 If there is , in fact , a characteristic pulse for iambic poetry , which we recognize crudely by such ... stress in every second syllable ( or in most of them ) over the one it follows ; it does not denote an equality of ...
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... stressed , and that “ men's eyes ” seem al- most equal , though both are quite strongly stressed . Since absolute equal- ity of syllable stress rarely occurs , however , it seems likely that in both cases the second syllable is somewhat ...
... stressed , and that “ men's eyes ” seem al- most equal , though both are quite strongly stressed . Since absolute equal- ity of syllable stress rarely occurs , however , it seems likely that in both cases the second syllable is somewhat ...
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