Verse & Prose
examples
Here is a line of verse unscanned and scanned in iambic pentameter from Much Ado About Nothing (1.1).
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"And I will fit thee with the remedy."
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â—¡ / â—¡ / â—¡ / â—¡ / â—¡ /
And I will fit thee with the remedy.
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In the following passage from Much Ado, Don Pedro speaks in prose (5.1):
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First, I ask thee what they have done; thirdly, I ask thee what‟s their offence; sixth and lastly, why they are committed; and to conclude, what you lay to their charge?
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BLANK VERSE
“Blank” means that the verse does not rhyme, allowing rhyme-less writers such as Elizabethan playwrights to emulate the natural rhythms of English speech within iambic pentameter.
IAMBIC PENTAMETER\
A typical line of verse contains five units of meter or feet. Each foot contains two syllables. When the first syllable is unstressed and the second syllable is stressed (dee DUM), it is an iamb.
PROSE
Prose in Shakespeare‟s work is not in iambic pentameter and relies more heavily on other literary devices for its speed and rhythm.