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. |
From inside the book
Page vii
... Pattern and Variation 4 Flexibility and Ease in Four Older Poets ix I 20 38 57 5 An Art of Small Differences : Shakespeare's Sonnets 75 6 The Verse of Shakespeare's Theater 91 7 Prose and Other Diversions 108 8 Short and Shared Lines ...
... Pattern and Variation 4 Flexibility and Ease in Four Older Poets ix I 20 38 57 5 An Art of Small Differences : Shakespeare's Sonnets 75 6 The Verse of Shakespeare's Theater 91 7 Prose and Other Diversions 108 8 Short and Shared Lines ...
Page ix
... patterns , often we must read several lines of a poem before we can hear a pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables that in- heres in all of them , with or without variation . Once we can hear the basic pattern , we can recognize it ...
... patterns , often we must read several lines of a poem before we can hear a pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables that in- heres in all of them , with or without variation . Once we can hear the basic pattern , we can recognize it ...
Page xii
... pattern , and for expression that marks the poets themselves . The study of meter is always to some extent intrusive . Like most intense experiences , verse moves too fast and is too seamless for us to discern its segments as they pass ...
... pattern , and for expression that marks the poets themselves . The study of meter is always to some extent intrusive . Like most intense experiences , verse moves too fast and is too seamless for us to discern its segments as they pass ...
Page 2
... pattern we come to know as we keep listening to iambic meter is one that moves inexorably , through several different modes of passage , to a final confirmation of iambicity . On the other hand , poems that use many feminine endings ...
... pattern we come to know as we keep listening to iambic meter is one that moves inexorably , through several different modes of passage , to a final confirmation of iambicity . On the other hand , poems that use many feminine endings ...
Page 3
... pattern of recurrent stressed syllables against a background of unstressed syllables that accounts for the fact that widely different intervals between stressed syllables appear to the listener to be ' approximately ' equal " ( Faure et ...
... pattern of recurrent stressed syllables against a background of unstressed syllables that accounts for the fact that widely different intervals between stressed syllables appear to the listener to be ' approximately ' equal " ( Faure et ...
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 |
Other editions - View all
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