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 7
... variety , interest , grace , and sometimes expressive character to their lines . Most poets used other means as well -- midline pauses and endline enjambments — but these are the three metrical variations that almost every poet writing ...
... variety , interest , grace , and sometimes expressive character to their lines . Most poets used other means as well -- midline pauses and endline enjambments — but these are the three metrical variations that almost every poet writing ...
Page 9
... variety to the iambic line but to convey a greater complexity , to hint at a wider range of feeling and a more richly patterned world of social eventfulness than a stricter meter would register . If the line had read , for example ...
... variety to the iambic line but to convey a greater complexity , to hint at a wider range of feeling and a more richly patterned world of social eventfulness than a stricter meter would register . If the line had read , for example ...
Page 10
... variety of states of mind , Donne's to suggest the stumbling , precise discourse of a lover or arguer feeling his rhetorical way , Milton's to shadow forth the grand mo- tions of his epic narrative , all exemplify ways of manipulating ...
... variety of states of mind , Donne's to suggest the stumbling , precise discourse of a lover or arguer feeling his rhetorical way , Milton's to shadow forth the grand mo- tions of his epic narrative , all exemplify ways of manipulating ...
Page 13
... variety of ways phrases of different lengths and shapes may be fitted to the line is almost infinite . Pauses may appear after any internal syllable ; the line itself may be cut into several distinct segments , as in Shakespeare's Where ...
... variety of ways phrases of different lengths and shapes may be fitted to the line is almost infinite . Pauses may appear after any internal syllable ; the line itself may be cut into several distinct segments , as in Shakespeare's Where ...
Page 20
... variety . But the changes in decasyllabic style between 1370 and 1610 are in retrospect even more astonishing . The metrical systems of Chaucer , Lydgate , Wyatt , and early Tudor poets can be summarized here only briefly ; they ...
... variety . But the changes in decasyllabic style between 1370 and 1610 are in retrospect even more astonishing . The metrical systems of Chaucer , Lydgate , Wyatt , and early Tudor poets can be summarized here only briefly ; they ...
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