Contraction

Besides making it easier to find words to fit the meter, contractions can serve an expressive purpose: they can convey emphasis or urgency; or, in more general terms, the ripples in the iambic rhythm created by contracted half-syllables can contribute a lively, speech-like quality to the verse, which lends itself particularly well to dramatic verse. You will find a far less liberal employment of contractions in his sonnets and narrative poems. Reading a line out loud, with pace, can often make it easier to identify where a contraction might occur.

Contraction & the schwa

It may surprise you to know that the single most common vowel sound in English is not represented by any letters in our alphabet! There is, however, a name for this vowel sound: it is called a schwa (it also has a phonetic symbol: an upside-down ‘e’).

Schwa, as well as being the most common vowel sound in our language, is also the most neutral: if you completely relax your jaw and tongue, and then make a voiced sound, the ‘uh’ sound you produce will be a schwa (the way we most often pronounce the word ‘the’ is with a schwa). When a word is contracted to fit the meter of a line of verse it is normally by either omitting or quickly gliding over one of two vowel sounds: usually a schwa, but sometimes an unstressed short ‘i’ (as in “being”, in the first example below).

Here is a list of the ways in which words could be contracted:

1) Two adjacent vowels can be glided together.

A common example is when an unstressed short ‘i’ sound is followed by another vowel: in such cases the ‘i’ sound is often contracted to a ‘y’ sound. So, for example, the word ‘envious’ can either be pronounced with the full three syllables of ‘en-vi-ous’, or it can be contracted to sound like ‘en-vyous’. Or ‘Romeo’ can be pronounced with the full three syllables ‘Ro-me-o’ (and if you say it out loud, you will notice that the ‘e’ actually makes an ‘i’ sound), or it can be contracted to sound like ‘Rome-yo’ (both are freely used in Shakespeare’s play – and even in the same line when the nurse cries ‘…O Ro | meo, Ro | me-o!’).

Here are some more examples of two vowels being glided together, with illustrations of how the same two vowels can be either glided together or not to fit the meter; in the first example the vowels are glided together within a word, but in the rest two vowels are glided together in adjacent words. I will colour orange words that have not been contracted, and underline similar examples which have been:

Being red / she loves / him best; / and be / ing  white,

Is all / too hea / vy to / admit / much talk

To admit / no tra / ffic to / our ad / verse towns

And how / the En / glish have / the su / burbs won

How the En / glish, in / the su / burbs close / intrench’d

No ex / cuse cu / rrent but / to hang / thyself

There was / a yiel / ding – this / admits / no excuse

Note how the unstressed “a” of “admit” and “e” of  “excuse” are reduced to a schwa when pronounced swiftly on the back of another vowel. The final example illustrates how some words can be stressed on either syllable (excuse/excuse).

The same principle applies to words with a medial ‘w’ or ‘y’:

My mu / sic playing / far off, / I will betray

That I’ll straight do / and knowing / myself / again

Both the above examples are diphthongs gliding into a short ‘i’. A diphthong is a gliding vowel: a vowel that is actually one vowel gliding straight into another. So, for instance, the “ow” in “knowing” is a schwa gliding straight into an “oo”.

Monosyllabic words can also be glided together, such as: I am, you are, he is. And this can happen even if there is an ‘h’ or ‘w’ between the vowels: I have, thou hast, he had, I would, who would.

“Merry as“ is nearly always glided together as two syllables.

When two vowels within a word glide together this is called syneresis. When it’s two vowels in adjacent words, this is called synaloepha – which is one of my favourite words!

2) A vowel sound between two consonants can be contracted.

This is called syncope (it is also syncope if you remove a consonant from the middle of a word).

Polysyllabic words that are stressed on the antepenult (the 3rd from last syllable) can have the vowel in the penultimate syllable contracted. In some words, that means the penultimate syllable disappears altogether:

But ei / ther it / was di / fferent / in blood

The di / ff(e)rent plague / of each / calam / ity

O mo / menta / ry grace / of mor / tal men

The fit / is mo / ment(a)ry, / upon / a thought

Less commonly (though with greater frequency in his later plays), he contracts a vowel even though it can’t be eliminated altogether. Such vowels are pronounced quickly, so you barely notice them:

His maj / (e)sty sel / dom fears. / I (a)m Cre / ssid’s uncle

‘Tis done / alrea / dy, and / the mess / (e)nger gone

Like to a vag / (a)bond flag / upon / the stream

You can also find contractions within disyllabic words of a vowel (again, a schwa or short ‘i’) that follows a medial ‘v’, ‘l’ or ‘r’:

He brings / great news. / The rav(e)n / himself is hoarse

Is fall(e)n / into / the sere, / the ye / llow leaf,

Resume / that spir(i)t / when you / were wont / to say,

Marry (as an interjection) and sirrah are both frequently counted as one syllable.

And contractions of words with a medial ‘v’ are particularly common – for instance, heaven is frequently contracted to heav’n, and even to ev’n.

Words with a medial ‘s’ or ‘z’ can be similarly contracted, though there are fewer examples:

“When at their Mo / thers moist(e)ned  / eyes, Babes / shall suck

In the original Folio text, the contraction is indicated by the spelling: the first “e” is actually removed.

A word with a medial ‘z’ sound that I have seen contracted, though not in Shakespeare, is risen/ris’n (if you say the word out loud, you will find that the voiced ‘s’ makes a ‘z’ sound). Offhand, I can’t think of any examples from Shakespeare, specifically. However, there is an intriguing example from a famous line from The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster. A character called Ferdinand has had his sister murdered, and has just had her dead body revealed to him (this is the line with no stress marking):-

Cover her face. Mine eyes dazzle, she died young.

And this is how the line is always delivered by actors (a double line || will indicate a major pause):-

Cover her face. || Mine eyes dazzle, || she died young.

This reading does not conform to meter – and that appears to be a problem. This is what the Arden editor of this play had to say about this line: “This line…is one of the most famous in the play but has caused difficulty for actors and is sometimes broken up onstage by action between each of the sentences”.

Originally, I came up with a somewhat complex way to read this line as a broken-backed hexameter – it didn’t occur to me that “dazzle” could be contracted to fit the meter (in the same way as “ris’n”):

Cover her face. / Mine eyes / dazzle, she / died young.

The reason this didn’t occur to me is because, with this scansion, “dazzle” is a non-beat syllable, and actually drops in pitch relative to the beat syllables either side of it. This is…highly unusual. The schwa between the “zz” and “le”, as I’ve already explained, can never be eliminated altogether: it can only be pronounced quickly, to count as a half-vowel, squeezed into the metrical template. But when the word itself lands on a non-beat position, and falls in pitch relative to the two beats either side of it, it’s even harder to disguise the extra vowel. However, what I’ve realised is, the very fact that one has to put in the extra effort to disguise the extra syllable has an expressive effect on the line. Reading out loud, to effectively contract the schwa I find I have to spit the word out: it’s short and sharp. And this, in turn, automatically affects my delivery of the words before and after: I hold slightly after “eyes”, in preparation for the explosive “dazzle”, and then the remaining words end up being similarly emphatic:

Cover her face. Mine eyes…dazzle – she died young!

How very, very different from the way this line is usually delivered: how much more compact and dramatic.

3) Either, neither, whether, whither.

All of the above words can have the final schwa contracted – either by gliding into the following vowel of an adjacent word, or by pronouncing the schwa very lightly and quickly:

Eith(er) death, / or you, / I’ll find / imme / diately

And neith(er) / by trea / son nor / hostil / ity

Whith(er) wilt / thou lead / me? Speak, / I’ll go / no further

And in this line, from Sonnet 59, the same word is contracted twice – but in different ways. The second time round it’s through syncope: the removal of the consonant in the middle of the word:-

Wheth(er) we / are men / ded, or / whe’er be / tter they,

4) A small word can have either a vowel or consonant lopped off.

For instance, ‘t instead of it, and ‘s instead of us. And also, contractions within prepositional phrases that include the, such as i’ th’ instead of in the, or o’ th’ instead of of the. These are the types of contractions used in the quote I gave from Othello in another post:

Is’t lost? / Is’t gone? / _ Speak, / is’t out / o’ th’ way?

The lopping off of either an initial letter or syllable is called aphesis. A similar lopping off at the end of a word is called apocope.

Another example of aphesis is ‘zounds, which is actually short for God’s wounds. People who aren’t aware of this usually mispronounce it to rhyme with bounds!

Anapests

What happens when an extra-metrical syllable isn’t contracted? Then you are left with a 3-syllable foot called an anapest: di-di-dum. Poems can be written in an anapestic meter; however, anapests within an iambic meter are an irregularity that loosen the meter (anapestic and “loose” meters are something I discuss at the end of this post: Why iambic pentameter?). Unambiguous anapests are very rare in Shakespeare’s work (and nonexistent in his sonnets or narrative poems). However, he did occasionally employ an anapest at the opening of a line, providing a jolt of energy. I give one example at the end of the post I just provided a link to. Here are some more:

And so riv / eted with faith / unto your flesh

Let’s be sa / crifi / cers, but not bu / tchers, Caius.

Not a word, / a word, / we stand / upon / our manners.

In the first example, I have removed two of the foot divisions in order to highlight how the opening anapest adds to the swift forcefulness of this golden line. And in the second example, both the opening anapest and the minor ionic contribute to the tone of emphatic urgency (though some might scan it differently to me).

And in this example it’s very striking how the momentum provided by the opening anapest leads into an over-running of the meter in the form of an epic caesura:

Or we’ll burst / them open, / if that / you come / not quickly.

Expansion

Here’s a list of ways in which words could be expanded, some of them very unfamiliar to modern ears

1) The “-ed” suffix

The “-ed” at the end of a word could be pronounced as a separate syllable. This was archaic even in Shakespeare’s day, but was nevertheless an established poetic convention. The vowel sound is a schwa (rather than an open “e”, as in “bed”). Normally, when the “-ed” wasn’t pronounced as a separate syllable, the “e” was replaced  with an apostrophe:

Hence “ban / ished” / is ban / ish’d from / the world,

By their / oppress’d / and fear / surpri / sed eyes

Some modern editors follow this practice (in my opinion, all of them should).

2) The addition of a short “i” before a schwa

This can occur in the last syllable of a word, where the vowel sound is a schwa, and is represented by more than one letter, e.g. “action” can be stretched out to “ak-shi-un”:

By the stern brow / and was / pish ac / ti-on

The bea / chy gir / dle of / the o / ce-an

And in this example, he uses both the long and short form of the same word:

If on / ly to go warm / were gor / ge-ous,

Why, na / ture needs / not what / thou, gor / geous, wear’st

John Donne wrote this clever line in a–valediction–forbidding–mourning:

A breach, / but an / expan / si-on,

A break after the word “breach”, and an expansion of the word “expansion”!

3) Certain vowel sounds followed by an “r” can carry an extra schwa

For instance, in this line, the first “fire” is long, the second short:

As fi / re drives / out fire, / so pi / ty pity

Here’s an example of an elongation of “weird”, from a witches chant in Macbeth:

The we / ird sis / ters, hand / in hand,

The words flour and flower can, similarly, be counted as either one or two syllables – and it’s interesting to note that we tend to think of flour as monosyllabic and flower as disyllabic, simply because of the spelling. They actually sound exactly the same! In the original printed texts, when flower is meant to be counted as one syllable, this is often indicated by a variant spelling: flowre.

In verse written with modern Received Pronunciation in mind, the same principle applies to words carrying a vowel sound followed by an ‘l’. So, for instance, it would be possible to read these short sentences as iambic trimeters: “Let’s sail down the river“, “I feel very hot“. In the following scansions, e will represent a schwa:

Let’s sai / el down / the river

I fee / el ve / ry hot

However, I have found no such examples in Shakespeare. Though there does appear to be an example in the last line of Whoso List to Hunt, a famous sonnet by Thomas Wyatt, published in 1557:

And wi / eld for / to hold, / though I / seem tame

{or perhaps “…though i seem tame.”}

It may be because Shakespeare’s original pronunciation was in a rotic accent (meaning it had a heavy emphasis on R’s) that, by contrast, we can find plenty of examples where words with a vowel followed by an ‘r’ are elongated.

3) A schwa can be inserted between a consonant and an “l” or “r”

Again, I shall use e to represent a schwa:

Is Cade / the son / of Hen / ery / the Fifth,

O me! / you ju / ggeler, / you can / kerblossom

The same can apply to words that contain “dr” or “tr”:

That croaks / the fa / tal en / terance / of Duncan

And finally, a very specific case of expansion

On a number of occasions, the meter requires statue to be stretched out to sta-ti-oo (the diphthong created by the letters –ue is separated into it’s two component vowels), e.g.:

Erect / his sta / ti-oo / and wor / ship it,

But like dumb sta / ti-oos, / or brea / thing stones,

It has been proposed that another line, this one from Anthony’s speech to the plebeians in Julius Caesar, requires this same pronuciation:

Ev(e)n at the base / of Pom / pey’s sta / ti-oo

This is the correct delivery if you contract the initial word, “Even“, to “Ev’n“. If you choose not to contract the opening word, then it’s a headless line (see Part 3 if you don’t know what a “headless” line is):

_ E / ven at / the base / of Pom / pey’s statue

Take your pick!

Differences in stress placement

There is one final thing I should mention: some words were, or could be, pronounced with a different stress placement than the one we’re familiar with today. Take this line from Sonnet 4, for example:

What ac / cepta / ble au / dit canst / thou leave?

I also mention “recession of accent” in Part 2

A book that lists pronunciations is All the Words On Stage by Scheeder and Younts. I believe there’s also a Shakespeare Pronunciation app you can download.

There are two aspects to look at here: the beat pattern, and the number of beats.

Let’s look first at the number of beats: five in a pentameter (“penta” is Greek for “five”, as in “pentagon”).

The five-beat iambic line is uniquely flexible and sinuous. Why? Because if the line is any longer, it tends to break down into component parts; and if it’s any shorter, it has a much more insistent rhythm.

So if we look at the longer lines first, the 6-beat hexameter (alternatively known as “Alexandrines”) has a tendency to break in the middle, producing what sounds like two trimeter (3-beat) lines. The 7-beat heptameter has a tendency to break down into component parts of 4 & 3 beats.

Shakespeare’s dramatic verse is peppered with the occasional hexameter, and he actively makes use of it’s tendency to break in the middle, allowing the second half of the line to build on, or answer, the first.

So, for instance, he sometimes used hexameters for shared lines: lines where one character completes the line started by another. A particularly wonderful example of this is the wooing scene between Richard of Gloucester and Lady Anne in Richard III (which I explore in parts 2 & 3 of this post: Iambic pentameter & the principles of metrical variation: part 3 – double trochees, hexameters, epic caesuras in shared lines, missing syllables, emphasis on a non-beat syllable & the false choriamb).

And here’s a line from Measure for Measure, in which the symmetrical balance provided by the hexameter line seems very appropriate:

To have what we would have, we speak not what we mean

So – what about shorter meters?

As I mentioned earlier, shorter meters have a much more insistent, monotonous rhythm, which is more suited to song than speech – and shorter meters are used in his songs and chants. To illustrate the monotony of the 4-beat tetrameter, let’s compare some lines of beats.

Read this out loud:

di-dum-di-dum-di-dum-di-dum
di-dum-di-dum-di-dum-di-dum
di-dum-di-dum-di-dum-di-dum
di-dum-di-dum-di-dum-di-dum

As I’m sure you can tell, the rhythm is unvarying and monotonous. We automatically tend to hear beats in pairs, so the effect is very similar to simply listening to a long string of beats: di-dum-di-dum-di-dum-di-dum-di-dum-di-dum-di-dum-di-dum…

Now read this out loud:

di-dum-di-dum-di-dum-di-dum-di-dum
di-dum-di-dum-di-dum-di-dum-di-dum
di-dum-di-dum-di-dum-di-dum-di-dum
di-dum-di-dum-di-dum-di-dum-di-dum

Can you hear the difference? There’s a natural pause at the end of each line: the rhythm is no longer unvaried and monotonous. You now have a meter that’s more subtle and interesting to play with, and far more suited to conveying human speech.

The key here is that the pentameter is asymmetrical, because it has an odd number of beats. The 7-beat heptameter is also asymmetrical, but is too long and unwieldy to maintain cohesion, and breaks down into component parts. And the 3-beat trimeter is far too short and abrupt to accommodate all the nuances of human speech. The 5-beat pentameter is, as Goldilocks would say, just right.

I explore variations in line length further in this post: What are some examples of iambic meter?

Now let’s look at the beat pattern.

“Iambic” refers to the basic patterning: the beat landing on every other syllable (when an iambic line is broken up into individual “feet” for the sake of analysis, each “di-dum” is called an “iamb”).

So, what are the alternatives?

The first alternative is to open on the beat: “dum-di-dum-di-dum…”. This meter is called either “trochaic” or “headless” (I prefer “headless”). The impact of opening on the beat is weakened in lines of 5 beats, so nearly all headless poems are written in lines of 4 beats or less.

For a poet, headless meters are a straitjacket. The first beat has to be strong. And without the introductory non-beat syllable to glide you in and establish an iambic beat patterning from the off, you are obliged to commit to an unvaried beat pattern to assert the rhythm: you can no longer shift any of the beats (I explain displaced beats here: Iambic pentameter & the principles of metrical variation: part 2 – radical variations)

In short, headless meters lack the flexibility or fluidity of iambic meters. However, the abrupt, emphatic quality of headless meters can certainly be put to highly effective use:

Round about the cauldron go
In the poisoned entrails throw
Toad that under cold _ stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Sweltered venom sleeping got
Boil thou first i’ th’ charmed pot.
Double, double, toil and trouble
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

It can also have a simple, nursery rhyme quality:

Where the bee sucks, there suck I,
In a cowslips bell I lie;
There I couch when owls do cry.
On the bat’s back I do fly
After summer merrily,

Shakespeare does use the occasional headless line in his pentameter verse for the sake of emphasis – as in this exclamation from Mercutio (“Romeo” is here pronounced as two syllables: Rome-yo):

Where the devil should this Romeo be

(I explore headless meters thoroughly in this post: What-are-the-differences-between–iambic-and-trochaic-meters?. In the second half of the post, I also explore how rising and falling rhythms are created by the words and phrases within the line).

The second alternative is to have two syllables between every beat: “di-di-dum-di-di-dum-di-di-dum…”. This is called “anapestic” meter. Again, you can also open on the beat: “dum-di-di-dum-di-di-dum…”. This is known as either “dactylic” or “headless anapestic” meter. Again the rhythm is very emphatic, with the run up of two light syllables hitting each beat. It is no coincidence that two of the best known examples of this swift, galloping rhythm involve depictions of cavalry charges: the-destruction-of-sennacherib & the-charge–of–the–light–brigade

The last two lines of Ariel’s Song, which I quoted from earlier, follow this rhythm, providing a delightful, lively, skipping quality:

Merrily, merrily shall I live now,
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough

Iambs and anapests can also be intermixed. It is very common, for instance that some of the lines in an anapestic poem open with an iamb (just one light syllable before the beat) as is the case in Byron’s poem: “The lances unlifted the trumpet unblown”. When iambs and anapests are freely intermixed, it produces a loose feel to the meter (here’s a particularly fine example: Mowing by Robert Frost. The anapests echo the “whispering” scythe. And I’ve just noticed that last sentence is itself anapestic: “The anapests echo the whispering scythe”!).

Though Shakespeare frequently glided together words and syllables, especially in his later plays, he very rarely employed unambiguous anapests – which means that when he did, it stood out! A charming example can be found in the very last line of The Comedy of Errors:

We came into the world like brother and brother
And now let’s go hand in hand, not one before the other.

There is a gliding together of words towards the end of the penultimate line (brother’nd brother), and the final line opens with an anapest: “And now let’s go hand in hand…”. The light, tripping effect this produces is really joyous and uplifting!

And that seems the perfect note to end on!

The best complete works of Shakespeare, in my opinion, is the Norton Shakespeare. I say this despite the fact that I don’t feel it contains the best editing decisions (I have, elsewhere in my blog, commented on the modern editor’s over-willingness to ‘correct’ the original texts).

The reason I recommend this edition is because it makes the plays exceptionally readable.

Firstly, it has nice big pages.

Secondly, they limit the amount of notes to what is necessary for comprehension.

Thirdly, when it is a short note that simply translates a word or phrase, the note is included on the same line, saving you from having to constantly break off where you were reading to check the note at the bottom of the page.

The Norton Shakespeare is available in a number of formats: as one volume, two volumes (split into early and late work), or four volumes (split into Tragedies, Histories, Comedies, and Romances & Poems). Or you can purchase a one volume edition of ‘The Essential Plays / The Sonnets’. The complete digital edition comes free with any of these purchases.

For a publication with in-depth notes of individual plays, Arden has the best reputation. However, their notes can be obsessively detailed, which might not suit everyone! An alternative is the Oxford editions.

The Folger editions and, more recently, the Arden Performance editions appear to have a reputation for being very readable (I haven’t yet read an edition of either), and have the text of the play on one page, and the notes on the opposite page.

Then there are the Shakespeare Made Easy and No Sweat Shakespeare editions, which provide modern, plain language translations on the opposite page to the text of the play.

As an accompaniment to the individual plays, I would also highly recommend ‘The Shakespeare Handbook‘ series, published by Palgrave Macmillan. They’re very much focussed on visualising the play on the stage, scene by scene, and examining the different interpretive possibilities on stage. (In a similar vein, I would also highly recommend Secrets of Acting Shakespeare by Patrick Tucker, which I review at the bottom of this page).

If you’re interested in reading a play in the original Folio text (and Norton publish a facsimile of the whole Folio, if you’re prepared to shell out for it!), there are the Applause First Folio Editions, edited by Neil Freeman. These are individual editions of the plays in modern type, but retaining all the original text of the Folio (including the original punctuation, lineation, spelling, capitalisations and parentheses). Freeman provides notes throughout, including commentary on where modern editors may have presented the text differently.

A couple of warnings about these editions:

Firstly, Neil Freeman has a poor technical understanding of meter, which can render his notes on the meter unreliable or misleading.

Secondly, he includes all of the split lines of the Folio (this is when a pentameter line is split into two separate lines), without realising that the vast majority of split lines you will find in the original Folio were necessitated by lack of space. This is why so many split lines occur as the opening line of somebody’s speech: the line is always placed after the name of the character, which means there is less space for it to fit inside the column!

One thing I do like about the layout is Freeman’s decision to give visual prominence to full stops by shifting the next line (or the rest of the line) down a space. One of the most noticeable differences between the original texts and modern edited texts is that Shakespeare used much fewer full stops, which produces a much swifter, smoother forward flow. I find it very helpful that Freeman provides such visual clarity to the units of thought indicated by the full stops.

Edit: My new favourites for studying the folio texts are the The Shakespeare Folios published by Nick Hern Books, edited by Nick de Somogyi.

They show the Folio text on the right hand page and a modern editors text on the left hand page, so you can easily compare the two and make up your own mind about the editor’s decisions!

The selective notes are also very useful and interesting.

For reading groups, there are a new series of books published by the ISC Press. I have not yet looked at a copy, but this link will tell you more: http://ireadshakespeare.org/about-the-readers-editions/

Internet resources

The ireadshakespeare site also provides a useful list of online resources and more: http://ireadshakespeare.org/resources/

This site also provides a series of video presentations (with accompanying transcripts) on a variety of subjects that provide context for Shakespeare’s plays, and aid comprehension: http://ireadshakespeare.org/presentations/. There are only two so far (on ‘The Great Chain of Being’ and ‘Thee & Thy or You & Your?’), but many more to come. I was impressed by the two I’ve watched: they’re easy to follow, yet thorough, and very logically organised. I would say they’re particularly useful for schoolteachers/students.

Finally, for anyone with an interest in taking a look at the work of other Elizabethan dramatists, this is a wonderful website: elizabethandrama.org.

For these plays’ relevance to Shakespeare, I think it’s worth quoting a passage from the website, in the article ‘Why Read Elizabethan Drama’: “Personally, I avoided reading Shakespeare for decades. Let’s face it, Shakespeare is difficult. His language is often cryptic. He frequently uses words to mean things that no other writer ever did before or since. To me, he is more difficult to understand than any other dramatist of that era. Thus, reading the much more easily understandable plays of other writers will train your ear for Elizabethan language; and once you become thoroughly practiced in the language and syntax of the era, you can return to Mr. Shakespeare’s work, and become one of the very few who truly understands his language.”

In addition, these plays are, quite simply, very entertaining!

As well as some very useful articles, covering background, timelines, and ways to approach the plays and understand their conventions, he provides annotated texts for a variety of Elizabethan plays (eight so far: two each for four different playwrights). The annotations are beautifully written, and exist solely to aid comprehension. And all the annotations are on the same line as the passage of text, which makes for a much more pleasant reading experience (as with the ‘Norton Shakespeare’, it saves you from constantly having to break off where you are to read a note at the bottom of the page!).

Further reading on meter

The Ode Less Travelled by Stephen Fry

This is an excellent introductory book, with plenty of very useful exercises (writing in meter is a very effective way to gain a good grasp of meter). His chapter on enjambment is particularly good.

There are a few shortcomings to this book.

1. Stephen Fry does not recognise either the minor ionic or the 2nd epitrite as being legitimate metrical patterns.

2. He also chooses not to mark spondees on the grounds (supposedly) that most spondees have a slightly stronger stress on the second syllable, so are really ‘heavy iambs’. Aside from the fact that this is generally only true of spondees within a 1st epitrite (i.e. the third syllable in “di-dum–dum–dum” often drops slightly in pitch relative to the beat syllables either side of it), or the fact that many pyrrhics could be described as ‘light iambs’, though he marks those, when you choose not to mark spondees you miss a lot of the expressive metrical patterning. For instance, this is Stephen Fry’s scansion of a line from Shakespeare’s first sonnet:-

But THOU, conTRACted to thine OWN bright EYES

And here’s mine:-

BUT THOU, conTRACted to thine OWN BRIGHT EYES

Note the striking metrical pattern at the end, where three light syllables run into three heavy syllables: di-di-di-dum-dum-dum! (the paeon-spondee, as described in Part 1). Stephen Fry misses this because he refuses to mark a spondee (dum-dum) at the end of this line.

3. He marks appended pyrrhics as iambs. If I were to mark the appended pyrrhics in Sonnet 1 as iambs, the effect would be quite different.

All the Fun’s in How You Say a Thing by Timothy Steele

Timothy Steele is a highly regarded poet, and as you would expect, he is a pretty good guide on the expressive techniques involved in writing in meter, and the expressive qualities of different types of meter. He comes across as very learned, and his book is wide ranging, informative and entertaining (though one thing he doesn’t pick up on is the effect of the presence or absence of consonant clusters, which I found a surprising gap given how well he covers other factors, such as phrasing, punctuation and word length).

He doesn’t, unfortunately, recognise that the minor ionic pattern contains a displaced beat, and instead, rather peculiarly, accounts for this pattern as a rising scale of stress, with each syllable stronger than the last by rising degrees (which doesn’t at all reflect what we actually hear: if we were to deliver the words in this way, it would sound very forced and awkward.  The reason this pattern causes so much confusion is because it cannot be accommodated by the traditional approach to scansion, as it cannot be broken down into individual feet!). This also means that Steele does not mark minor ionics in his scansion, as he chooses only to mark beat placement (and he doesn’t recognise that this pattern contains a displaced beat). And where possible, he tends to avoid reading lines as containing this pattern.

His explanation of the 2nd epitrite pattern is no less confusing.

The Strict Metrical Tradition by David Keppel-Jones

It is from this book I borrowed the basic model of identifying and naming those patterns formed by combinations of feet (most definitely the model that has worked best for me), as well as the history of the development of meter that I have touched on. The only major point on which we differ is that he does not recognise an alternative to the ‘false choriamb’ (and partly because of this, I feel he often misreads lines that he regards as irregular in the final section of his book. He also regards ‘abrupt spondees’ as irregular, and is averse to them; I do not share his aversion. And he regards the appended pyrrhic followed by a spondee as an awkward figure; I actually find it an elegant variation).

For those of a technical bent, he goes into plenty of fine technical detail. And for those who aren’t of a technical bent, he provides long lists of examples of all the metrical figures in all their forms. You will gain a good feel for them simply by reading all the examples.

You will also read about trailing and semi-trailing syllables and deferred and semi-deferred closures; these are details I have touched on briefly in these posts, and in this book you will become more familiar with them (I also explain them in the very last entry of my glossary). Incidentally, following on from my description of my own notational system at the end of part 2, I also mark trailing syllables and deferred closures:

• If either a 4th paeon or a minor ionic begins with a trailing syllable, I mark it off with a vertical line: -|–> /  or  -|-> / / . If it’s a semi-trailing syllable, I mark it off with a dot either side of the arrow:  -:–> /  or  -:-> / /
• If an appended pyrrhic is followed by an iamb without a break, I mark it the same way as any other 4th paeon, but mark off the appended pyrrhic with a vertical line, and place two dots over the arrow above each syllable of the appended pyrrhic.
• If a 1st epitrite opens with a trailing syllable, I underline the trailing syllable: U / / /. If it opens with a semi-trailing syllable, I break the underline in two (imagine a small gap in the middle of the underline).
• If a figure has a deferred closure I mark the eventual closure with a square bracket: ]. If it’s a double-deferred closure, I add a vertical line after the bracket: ]|. If it’s a triple-deferred closure, I add yet one more vertical line: ]||. For a semi-deferred closure, I break the bracket in two (imagine a small gap in the middle of the bracket).

Again, my intention has been to develop a notational system that allows for the maximum amount of nuance and variability, whilst still maintaining visual simplicity.

Shakespeare’s Metrical Art by George T. Wright

Mr Wright explores some interesting history in the development of verse written in iambic pentameter, and then proceeds to explore Shakespeare’s work in depth, including those aspects of meter that are particular to dramatic verse. He finishes with a quick look at the work of some of his successors.

His technical understanding of meter is dodgy, and I do not agree with all of his scansion (he also doesn’t recognise that the minor ionic pattern contains a displaced beat; fails to recognise the importance of having a phrasal break before a trochee; and also has a habit I find quite odd of marking all spondees with a semi-stress followed by a stress – to my ear, it is only when the spondee forms the second half of a 1st epitrite that it is common that the first syllable of the spondee drops in pitch, relative to the beat syllables either side of it).

But as an exploration of how Shakespeare employed meter to expressive effect, it is impressive in it’s scope (though his analysis of Sonnet 116 is profoundly flawed). And unlike in these posts, he explores extended passages of verse [UPDATE: I have now included a full analysis of Sonnet 1!].

He does look at the same issues that I looked at in parts 5 and 6 of part 3 (‘Emphasis on a non-beat syllable’ and ‘The false choriamb’). His solution to the ‘false choriamb’ has a flattening effect, and isn’t very satisfactory. His pronunciation of the emphasised non-beat (a sharp, brief rise in pitch – though this then results in a sharp fall in pitch on the following word) does not serve Shakespeare’s verse well.

Rhythm & Meaning in Shakespeare by Peter Groves

I do not agree with everything in this book, but there is plenty of interest in here. I found the section on lines with missing syllables particularly useful, as well as his explanation of the important role of the schwa when identifying how to expand or contract words to fit the meter (the schwa is the most neutral vowel sound in our language: if you simply allow your jaw to hang loose and make a sound, you will produce a neutral ‘uh’ sound. Paradoxically, while it is the most common vowel sound in our language, it is not represented in our alphabet, so it’s importance and prevalence is often overlooked).

Peter Groves also includes plenty of links to recordings he has made of himself or a partner reading out lines of Shakespeare to illustrate a point.

Among those things we disagree over are:

1. He regards a trochee followed by a minor ionic as a legitimate metrical pattern (producing the pattern: DUM-di | di-di-DUM–DUM). I regard this as hopelessly muddled. He gives one example of a line that he claims includes this pattern, but in fact, there is a perfectly satisfactory metrical reading of this line without the need to resort to this pattern.

2. He sometimes marks a trochee followed by a pyrrhic (producing the pattern: DUM-di | di-di-di-DUM). I regard this as unmetrical.

3. He interprets some of Shakespeare’s lines as employing what I have termed a ‘false choriamb’, albeit with a lingering over, or pause after, the word before the noun, so as to keep the meter in check. I think in only one of Groves’ examples did I agree with his reading.

If, after reading this book, anyone wants to question me on my points of difference, or how I interpreted any of these lines differently, feel free to ask!

And finally…

I have to mention this book!

Secrets of Acting Shakespeare by Patrick Tucker

This fascinating book is written by the director of the Original Shakespeare Company: they put on performances based on the Folio texts, in which the actors do not rehearse, but learn only their own lines – with the result that they go on stage not knowing what’s going to happen, and react spontaneously (Patrick Tucker makes a very convincing case that this was the standard theatre practice in Shakespeare’s day). It should probably be considered essential reading for any Shakespearean actor or director. For the reader, also, it adds a dimension to how one interprets the plays (a particularly interesting example is the ending of Measure for Measure).

I have not recommended this book primarily for it’s content on meter, though it’s one short segment devoted to meter does include an excellent illustration of the importance of following the lineation. Other than this, his grasp of meter doesn’t appear to be as solid as it could be: besides the minor error of describing an end-line appended pyrrhic as an anapest (the anapest is a three-syllable foot – di-di-DUM – which is an irregularity when used in iambic verse), he doesn’t appear to recognise epic caesuras, and also doesn’t appear to recognise the principles of elision Shakespeare adopted (shortening words to fit the meter. Shakespeare also elongated words to fit the meter).

I also don’t share his complete faith in the Folio. Some (but not all) of my reasons for this are:

• Patrick Tucker isn’t aware that when there is a split line in the Folio (a pentameter line that has been split in two over two separate lines) the vast majority of the time this is because the line was too long to fit in the column (this is why so many split lines are a character’s opening line: the line was always placed after the character’s name, which meant there was less space to fit the line in), and instead interprets this as two separate short lines with pauses after each one.
• I don’t feel that the Folio can be completely relied upon to indicate faithfully whether a passage was originally written in verse or prose. Part of my reason for saying this is that, because of the way that books were printed, the printers had to estimate in advance how much text was required to fill each quire: twelve pages formed by three large sheets of paper folded together (they simultaneously printed backwards from pages 6 to 1 of each quire, and forwards from pages 7 to 12). Inevitably, they sometimes mis-estimated, and were either left with too much space, or too little. In this light, it is highly plausible that they would sometimes have resorted to either relineating prose as verse (to fill up more space), or relineating verse as prose (to take up less space).
• Shakespeare wrote in secretary hand. With this form of handwriting, unfortunately, some of the letters can look quite similar; in this light, it is perhaps unlikely that Shakespeare’s written text was never misread. It is also possible that mistakes were made by the printers when setting the printing blocks. An interesting possible example (which could be accounted for by either explanation) which even modern editors haven’t considered, occurs in Egeon’s final lines at the end of the opening scene of The Comedy of Errors, when he is under threat of execution having unlawfully arrived in Ephesus seeking his missing son:

Hopeless and helpless doth Egeon wend,
But to procrastinate his lifeless end.

The phrase ‘lifeless end’ feels like a clumsy tautology to me. The word ‘lifeless’ was originally printed ‘liueleffe’: ‘u’ always stood in for ‘v’ (and so did ‘f’ for ‘s’). What if we turn the ‘u’ upside down? We then get ‘lineleffe’, or in modern type: ‘lineless’ (what is more, in secretary hand – in which ‘u’ also stood in for ‘v’ – ‘u’ and ‘n’ could be almost indistinguishable). This makes an awful lot more sense to me: both Egeon’s sons are lost to him (the son he had raised went missing searching for his long lost twin brother), as is his wife, so the phrase ‘lineless end’ (i.e. his own death without leaving any descendants) feels emotionally resonant; and this resonance would be heightened further by the fact that as soon as Egeon leaves the stage, the son he was pursuing walks on.

We will progress from what is meant by ‘iamb’ and ‘pentameter’, to what defines ‘stress’, to different types of ‘feminine ending’, to simple variant ‘feet’ (a ‘foot’ being the smallest possible metrical component), to the ‘figures’ formed by combinations of feet, to ‘displaced beats’, to the interplay of rising and falling rhythms, to more unusual variations, to looking at how to deliver certain lines that may not appear to be metrical, and then onto exploring meter in more extended passages of verse, starting with Sonnet 1 (which is as far as I’ve got so far!). I also provide a separate glossary, which you can refer back to at any point along the way! (In this, and all future posts, you can click on any word highlighted in blue to be taken to another one of my posts – to the ‘glossary’ if not otherwise indicated. For a concise summary of the technical principles of iambic pentameter, I would refer you to one of my answers on Quora: Shakespeare’s rhythm. You can also find links to all my most useful answers on metered verse at the bottom of my profile.

Much of this knowledge is not readily available, and I feel it’s important that it should be! You can only make an informed decision about whether to follow the meter in Shakespeare’s work if you first understand the meter – and hardly anybody understands meter as well as they think they do (this includes even the best known Shakespearean actors and directors).

What is more, there is a pervasive myth that Shakespeare created expressive effect by alternating between following the meter and breaking the meter, which is a myth I would like to dispel! He certainly created expressive effect by varying the iambic pattern – but he did so within the constraints of meter, according to specific metrical principles, and this is often not appreciated. Many actors, teachers and directors misread lines due to their lack of comprehension of meter (as well as the principles by which words can be expanded, contracted or glided together to fit the meter), and as a result, identify irregularities which actually don’t exist – and then read some expressive significance into these non-existent irregularities. The fact is, when you simply break the rules of meter, you are no longer playing with the constraints of meter, which is what Shakespeare did so artfully (the frequent irregularity in meter among many of his fellow playwrights shows up their comparative lack of skill).

The traditional approach to scansion (‘scansion’ is the process of marking the metrical patterning of a passage of verse) is to simply divide the line up into individual ‘feet’ (a ‘foot’, as I mentioned, is the smallest possible metrical component, and always contains one beat). My approach is a little more sophisticated: my emphasis is on the metrical patterns formed by the various combinations of feet; once you familiarise yourself with these patterns, you can start to read a passage of verse, with all it’s repeated and contrasting metrical patterning, in much the same way that you would read a piece of music (this can also help you to decide which syllables to stress when there is more than one legitimate choice, as it then becomes far more clear how the individual lines fit together to form a rhythmic composition). And if you are not yet at the stage where you can recognise instinctively whether a line scans, without having to laboriously demarcate and count each individual foot, I believe familiarising yourself with these patterns will help you get there more quickly!

Meter provides lift and rhythmic momentum: it is heightened speech. However, simply choosing the right syllables to stress does not, in itself, guarantee that your delivery will sound rhythmic, or have a rhythmic flow. A concrete example is the common mistake of excessive lingering or pausing on the first syllable of a choriamb (this is the ‘DUM-di-di-DUM‘ pattern that you will frequently encounter), which spoils the expressive rhythmic swinging movement Shakespeare intended. And even beyond this, in order for the verse to truly lift, you need to be guided by a feel for the metrical rhythm, rather than merely relying on stress placement. For this purpose, I have experienced a recognition of the metrical patterns formed by combinations of feet to be far more useful than simply cutting up the lines into individual feet.

One more very important clarification: when I talk about being ‘guided’ by the metrical rhythm, this does not mean simply imposing the metrical rhythm onto the line – in fact, mechanically imposing the metrical rhythm is fatal. If you simply impose the iambic rhythm onto the line it actually kills the expressive effect of the verse. In practice, iambic pentameter verse never sounds exactly like ‘di-DUM, di-DUM, di-DUM, di-DUM, di-DUM‘; the speed and rhythm of the line is affected by all kinds of factors, such as: punctuation and phrasal junctures within the line; the presence or absence of consonant clusters; the use of long or short vowels and consonants; the use of mono- or polysyllabic words; the use of words and phrases within the line that have a contrary, falling rhythm, and span the foot divisions; etc. As well as where you happen to feel the impulse to vary the tone, speed and emphasis in performance! (This, incidentally, is the most obvious difference between poetry and rap. With rap, the beat is insistent: the pumping, heavy beat is the driving force behind the line delivery. With metered poetry – and especially with the five beat pentameter, which is much less insistently regular in it’s rhythm than the four beat tetrameter – the rhythm floats on top of the line. It is more subtle and sinuous: the rhythm is there to serve the line rather than command it; it is a guiding force, rather than a driving force. Having said that, here’s a fantastic example of a Shakespeare sonnet being delivered as a rap!: Sonnet 18 rap.  And here’s the full video it was taken from: Hip–Hop & Shakespeare. I am not, by the way, saying that rap is less expressive than poetry: it’s just a different form of expression, and actually a very exciting art form).

In the hands of a skilled poet, the pulse of the metrical rhythm complements and heightens the sound and texture of the words: once you really feel the metrical pulse, the words lift off the page. This is why an effective delivery sounds both rhythmic and textured. Simply imposing the rhythm onto the line kills it, while if you ignore or lose the rhythm, you will lose the heightened expressiveness the words would otherwise impart. The more pleasure you take in the texture of the words, the better – and the easier you will find it to allow the rhythm to provide lift and forward momentum to your delivery. Reading my analysis of Sonnet 1 might give you some idea, but I would also highly recommend learning Arthur Lessac’s ‘linking’ method (a method I will probably outline in a future post – though, by contrast, I also discuss ‘separations’ in Shakespeare’s verse in my first post: Iambic pentameter & the principles of metrical variation: part 1 – feminine endings & simple variations).

Finally, I would like to share an extract from Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Criticism, which I feel is very much in the spirit of what I am trying to achieve with this blog: to explain ‘the rules of the dance’, reveal its techniques, and share its beauty!

I hope you enjoy my posts. Please feel free to give feedback – whether it be praise, criticism or suggestions!

N.B. Future posts will include an exploration of the principles by which words can be expanded or contracted to fit the meter, and a full analysis of Sonnet 116 (one of Shakespeare’s most popular sonnets, frequently recited at weddings – but which has been, in my opinion, very much misinterpreted, partly as a result of not following the meter!).

{P.S. You can navigate this site by either clicking on the small picture of the skull towards the top left hand corner of the page, to see all the posts displayed, or you can choose one of the categories underneath the small skull picture}

But first, what is iambic pentameter?

An iamb is a metrical unit, or foot, that is comprised of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable: di-dum. The second syllable of the iamb is called the beat syllable (the beats provide the pulse of the verse line).

The penta- in pentameter means ‘five’. So iambic pentameter is a meter of five iambs: di-dum, di-dum, di-dum, di-dum, di-dum. Five iambs. Five heartbeats.

When I | do count | the clock | that tells | the time

Some people find it hard to recognise stress, so it may be useful to know that stress is primarily defined by pitch. Higher pitched = stressed. Lower pitched = unstressed. If you read the line above out loud, you will find that you automatically pronounce the syllables I have typed in bold at a higher pitch (or you may even find it easier to hear the pitch difference if you ask someone else to say it out loud).

Secondary factors include duration, volume and vowel quality (vowels in unstressed syllables tend to have a more indeterminate sound).

Another neat way to illustrate stress is to compare pairs of words with identical spelling, but a different meaning depending on where you place the stress! For instance, a rebel rebels, and you present a present. If you recognise the difference between rebel and rebel, and present and present, what you are recognising is the stress placement! Here’s a list of such words: https://www.engvid.com/english-resource/35-words-stress-changes-meaning/.

The Feminine Ending

One well known metrical variation is the feminine ending: an extra unstressed syllable at the end of the line:-

To be | or not | to be, | that is | the ques | tion

Feminine endings impede the onward rush from line to line, and can have various effects, depending on the context. In this context, the downward fall of the feminine ending has a searching tone. The feminine endings continue for the next few lines, while Hamlet expounds on his opening ‘question’:-

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles

Whether ’tis no | bler in | the mind | to su | ffer
The slings | and a | rrows of | outra | geous for | tune
Or to take arms | against | a sea | of trou | bles

Besides a couple of simple variant feet, which I will explain later in this post, I have marked two radical variations in red (we will explore radical variations in Part 2). With “Whether ’tis no…” I have marked a choriamb: the swinging “dum-di-di-dum” pattern I described in the Introduction. And with “Or to take arms” I have marked the more heavily emphatic 2nd epitrite: dum-di-dum–dum (though this is not the only alternative: it could be delivered as a choriamb [“Or to take arms“], or as a minor ionic [“Or to take arms“], which is the other radical variation we will explore in Part 2).

If we return to Hamlet’s opening line…

To be | or not | to be, | that is | the ques | tion

…you might have noticed, as well, that I chose to emphasise ‘is‘ instead of ‘that‘ – mainly for the sake of simplicity, to show a feminine ending in an otherwise unvaried line. It’s not a reading I have heard anyone else adopt (apart from once, in a recording of excerpts from Shakespeare in which the actors delivered the lines in what is believed to be Shakespeare’s original accent, which sounds quite different to modern ‘received pronunciation’!), but metrically it’s a perfectly legitimate reading, and it’s useful to bear in mind and try out different options!

If we instead place the emphasis on ‘that‘, we again have a choriamb:

To be | or not | to be, | that is the ques | tion

Separations

In everyday speech, when one word begins with the same sound with which the previous word ended, we normally allow the two words to share that sound, rather than make the same sound twice. So most people, when pronouncing Hamlet’s line, will not pronounce the ‘t’ twice in ‘not to’:

To be or not to be, that is the question

The ‘t’ I have highlighted in red will not be pronounced by most people. However, there is a theory that Shakespeare intended that in such instances the two words should be separated – that he intended that the actor should have to ‘pick out’ the words for expressive effect:

To be or not / to be, …

An interesting result in this case is that by committing to the separation, which creates a suspension after the word ‘not‘, you will find yourself automatically pronouncing the second ‘be‘ with a full stress. By contrast, pronouncing the line the way it is usually pronounced, with the suspension instead coming after the first ‘be‘,  there is an automatic tendency to allow the stress on the second ‘be’ to drop:

To be / or not to be, …

In short, committing to the separation, in this case, also results in a greater commitment to the metrical rhythm.

Here’s another example of separation that I find highly effective:

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious / summer by this / son of York

Separations could also be considered in his sonnets. Here’s a nice little example from Sonnet 39, where we have a possible separation before the word “separation”!:

That by this / separation I may give
That due to thee which thou deserv’st alone

I believe in pragmatism rather than dogmatism, so my suggestion is that you try out separations on a case by case basis. Where you don’t feel it aids the text, then don’t use it!

 The Epic Caesura                                                                          

Another type of feminine ending that was only ever used in dramatic verse is the mid-line feminine ending, or epic caesura:-

Wake Duncan with thy knocking, i would’st thou could’st

Wake Dun | can with | thy knocking, || i would’st | thou could’st

(The first two feet are simple variants, and I will explain these later)

I have marked the extra unstressed syllable before the comma in pink. An epic caesura only ever comes before a break in the line. But with the extra syllable, there is not only a break in the line, but a disruption of the iambic rhythm – and then a resumption of the iambic rhythm after the break. If we continue where we left off with Hamlet’s speech, we find that the sentence ends on an epic caesura:-

And by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep

And by | oppo | sing, end them. || To die, | to sleep,

Again, we have a break in the rhythm…followed by a resumption: di-dum, di-dum, di-dum-di…di-dum, di-dum.

In both these examples, the break…and resumption created by the epic caesura serves to highlight a contrast between the two halves of the line. In Macbeth’s line, the first half is a command…and the second half is a despairing acknowledgement of the impossibility of what he is asking. In Hamlet’s line, the searching tone instigated by his ‘question’ is replaced by the assertive tone of ‘To die, to sleep’ (by which he means ‘to die is to sleep’).

Try reading these lines out loud a few times to get a feel for the effect. (I have marked two vertical lines after the epic caesuras, and will do so with any further examples).

Epic caesuras occur with some frequency in Shakespeare’s plays, so you will need to familiarise yourself with them!

Feminine Endings & Enjambment

You can also find end-line feminine endings in enjambed lines. Enjambment is when the phrase runs over the end of the line. If we again carry on where we left off with Hamlet’s speech, we run into three consecutive enjambments:-

No more; and by a sleep, to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to. ‘Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep,

No more; | and by | a sleep, | to say | we end
The heart |-ache, and | the thou | sand na | tural shocks
That flesh | is heir | to. ‘Tis | a con | summa | tion
Devou | tly to | be wished. | To die, | to sleep,

The words at the ends of the lines – ‘end‘ (at a line ending!), ‘shocks‘, ‘consummation’ – receive a heightened emphasis which they would not receive if there were no lineation. And they tell a story. If you only say the final word in each line of any passage of Shakespeare, you are likely to find they make a very strong and clear impression. If we list the words at the end of each line in this passage…

end
shocks
consummation
sleep

…doesn’t that just wrap it all up in a nutshell? (Incidentally, the word “consummation” has a double meaning: it means both a completion, climax or fulfillment, and ‘to be consumed’, to vanish into nothingness. ‘Consummation’ and ‘consumation’ were not differentiated by spelling by the Elizabethans).

In the opening to this speech from Macbeth, the enjambments, combined with the punctuation, create a quick stop-and-start effect, conveying the frantic energy with which he has to think on his feet:-

If it were done, when ’tis  done, then ’twere well
It were done quickly. If th’assassination
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch
With his surcease, success; that but this blow
Might be the be-all and the end-all. Here,

If it | were done, | when ’tis |  done, then | ’twere well
It were done quick | ly. If | th’assa | ssina | tion
Could tra | mmel up | the con | sequence, | and catch
With his | surcease, | success; | that but | this blow
Might be | the be |-all and | the end |-all. Here,

(The ‘di-di-dum–dum‘ in ‘It were done quickly’, is a minor ionic: I will be looking at this, and other radical variants, in Part 2. I mark all radical variants in red).

Both of these passages contain one line that combines enjambment with a feminine ending.

To explore this further, let’s examine the following passage from The Winter’s Tale in which we hear Leontes’ reaction to having the ‘statue’ of Hermione revealed to him:-

                         …for she was as tender
As infancy and grace. But yet, Paulina,
Hermione was not so much wrinkled, nothing
So aged as this seems.

                            …for | she was | as ten | der
As in | fancy | and grace. | But yet, | Pauli | na,
Hermio | ne was | not so | much wrin | kled, noth | ing
So a | ged as | this seems.

(‘Hermione’ is pronounced as three syllables, ‘aged’ as two syllables)

Three lines in a row have a feminine ending, the first and third of which are enjambed. The feminine endings in these enjambed lines create a more noticeable juncture in the middle of the phrase than would be created by enjambment alone (the effect is similar to the disruptive effect of an epic caesura: we again have the extra syllable ruffling the iambic rhythm – this time, in the middle of a phrase rather than the middle of a line). Read the passage out loud, then replace the words ‘tender’ and ‘nothing’ with ‘soft’ and ‘not’ and read it out loud again, and see if you notice the difference.

When combined with the breaks within the lines provided by the punctuation (as well as the separation of ‘this…seems’), the breaking up of the phrases with enjambed feminine endings helps to convey Leontes’ wonder, and his highly engaged effort to express and make sense of his own reactions to what he is seeing.

If we revisit the enjambed feminine endings in the passages from Hamlet and Macbeth…

That flesh is heir to. ‘Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep,

It were done quickly. If th’assassination
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch

…we can see they both happen to be very similar: both lines end on a multi-syllabic word, in which the last accented syllable is a long “a” sound (“consummation” and “assassination”). Both create a suspension (heightened still further by the long “a” vowel) which sets us up for the sharp, crisp delivery of the next line: Hamlet’s next line, with it’s “t” sounds, and it’s run of light syllables before hitting the word “wished“; and Macbeth’s line, with it’s hard “c” sounds, and the tight, compact effect of the words “…trammel up…”.

Many actors ignore the lineation of enjambed lines. If Shakespeare had intended the lineation to be ignored, he would not have bothered with it! The last syllable of an enjambed line should not always be delivered with heavy emphasis: in many cases it can instead be delivered with a light touch – it may, for instance, be just a slight upward lift, or a slight suspension. But the lineation should not be ignored if your intention is to deliver the verse as Shakespeare intended!

And ignoring the lineation in enjambed feminine endings would be an even bigger mistake. Let’s rewrite Leontes’ lines as a prose passage:-

“…for she was as tender as infancy and grace. But yet, Paulina, she was not so much wrinkled, nothing so aged as this seems.”

It’s just not the same, is it?

I shall indicate all further feminine endings in pink type, but without marking them off with a foot division.

 The Simple Variant Feet

In some of my previous quotes, I marked some simple variant feet. A simple variation is created when you modify an iamb by adjusting the stress of a single syllable.

Let’s look again at one of our lines from Macbeth:-

Wake Duncan with thy knocking, i would’st thou could’st

Wake Dun | can with | thy knocking, || i would’st | thou could’st

In the first foot I have stressed the opening non-beat syllable: ‘Wake Dun’, instead of ‘Wake Dun‘. Instead of ‘di-dum‘, we have ‘dum-dum‘. This variant foot is called a spondee.

In the second foot I have destressed the beat syllable: ‘-can with’, instead of ‘-can with‘. Instead of ‘di-dum‘, we have ‘di-di’. This variant foot is called a pyrrhic (though, in practice, there often remains a slight stress on the beat syllable of a pyrrhic).

Pyrrhics create a narrowing and speeding up of the line (just as water flows faster when it enters a narrower pipe); and spondees create a widening and slowing down of the line (just as water flows slower when it enters a wider pipe).

In both cases, the beat (the rhythmic pulse of the line) still lands on the second syllable.

The 4th Paeon, the Golden Line & the Balanced Line

When a variant foot combines with another foot it creates a metrical pattern, or figure. A pyrrhic combines with the iamb in front of it to form the pattern: di-di-di-dum (di-di + di-dum! In practice, there may be just a light stress on the second syllable). This figure is called the 4th paeon (which I will sometimes refer to simply as a paeon, for short). In the line from Macbeth, this 4th paeon has a feminine ending created by the epic caesura:-

‘-can with | thy knocking‘.

             di-di-di-dum (di!)

Here is another example (and not everyone would stress the opening word “My” in this line, but in the context of the passage, I feel it’s an effective reading):-

My bounty is as boundless as the sea

I have not marked the foot divisions in this line. Can you see the 4th paeons?

Here it is again, with foot divisions:-

My boun | ty is | as bound | less as | the sea

                      di-di-di-dum-di-di-di-dum. Two consecutive paeons!

Note how the paeons create a swift forward movement, and how the final syllable of each one rings out after the run of light syllables. Note, too, the elegant symmetry of this line, with a stressed beat either end, connected by a stressed beat right in the middle! (To be clear, though I have marked four stressed syllables in this line, the first stress, ‘My’, is not a beat syllable: the beat lands on every second syllable. Here is the line with the beats underlined:

My boun | ty is | as bound | less as | the sea

You can see that only three of the underlined beat syllables are stressed: the 1st, 3rd & 5th. The 2nd & 4th beats, either side of the middle beat, are destressed. As I said, the beats provide the pulse – the rhythm – of the verse). This very smooth and even metrical pattern is known as the ‘golden line’. Here are two more examples (and this time I will not divide the 4th paeons into separate feet):-

And simpler than the infancy of truth                                            

And sim | pler than the in | fancy of truth

It faded on the crowing of the cock

It fa | ded on the crow | ing of the cock

A similar symmetry is created with a mid-line paeon, spanning the third and fourth feet:-

The Spondee-Paeon & the Paeon-Spondee

Spondees, also, can combine with other feet to form a metrical figure. In fact, one could argue that the opening spondees in my quotes from Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet combined with the paeons to form a 6-syllable metrical figure (!): dum-dum-di-di-di-dum! (‘Wake Duncan with thy knocking…’; ‘My bounty is as boundless…’). This is actually a very common metrical pattern that sets up an appealing contrast between a heavy, emphatic opening followed by a swift release. Here are some more examples:-

So fastened in her arms Adonis lies

So fast | ened in | her arms | Adon | is lies

Doth homage to his new appearing sight

Doth hom | age to | his new | appear | ing sight

And this line combines a spondee-paeon with the patterning of the golden line (just like the line from Romeo and Juliet, as I chose to stress it):-

Rain added to a river that is rank

Rain add | ed to | a riv | er that | is rank

Rain added to a riv | er that is rank

(this time I have only placed a division between the 6-syllable spondee-paeon and the 4-syllable paeon)

Spondees can also be added to the end of a paeon to create the very striking metrical pattern of three light syllables running into three heavy syllables:
di-di-di-dum, followed by dum-dum, to create di-di-di-dum-dum-dum! Again, this is a common pattern, with the light swift movement bringing heightened emphasis to the three heavy syllables. Here is a highly expressive example from Hamlet’s speech:-

That makes calamity of so long life

That makes | calam | ity | of so | long life

Say it out loud and you can really feel the weariness in ‘soooo lonnng life!‘.

Here’s another lovely example from Sonnet 1 …

But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes

But thou, | contrac | ted to | thine own | bright eyes

And another from Shakespeare’s first narrative poem, Venus and Adonis…

Leading him prisoner in a red rose chain,

Leading him pris | oner in | a red | rose chain,

(“prisoner” is pronounced as two syllables: “pris’ner”. The line opens with a choriamb: another radical figure we will explore in Part 2)

Consecutive Spondees

Unlike pyrrhics – which should never be placed next to each other, or else you will start to lose the rhythm – spondees can be placed side by side, like a row of bricks:-

Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind

Rich gifts | wax poor | when giv | ears prove | unkind

Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit, and time agreeing

Thoughts black, | hands apt, | drugs fit, | and time | agreeing

Two spondees laid next to each other, as in the first example, is called a ‘dispondee’ (which, I suppose, makes the second example, with three consecutive spondees, a ‘trispondee’!).

The 1st & 3rd Epitrites

Spondees can also combine with iambs. When a spondee is placed after an iamb it forms the pattern di-dum-dum-dum (di-DUM + DUM-DUM;  though in practice, there is often slightly less stress on the third syllable). This figure is called the 1st epitrite (an epitrite is a figure with three stresses, and this is called the 1st epitrite because the 1st syllable is unstressed). In these examples I will make the figure easier to identify by not splitting it into two separate feet:-

And one sweet kiss shall pay this countless debt

And one sweet kiss | shall pay | this count | less debt

Or what great danger dwells upon my suit?

Or what great dan | ger dwells | upon | my suit?

And here’s one later in the line:-

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date

And summ | er’s lease | hath all too short | a date

And see how in this example the slow emphatic epitrite is released into a swift paeon, hitting the word “beauty’s”:-

And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field

And dig deep tren | ches in thy beau | ty’s field

The following example (which contains an opening 1st epitrite in two successive lines) comes from the ‘log scene’ in The Tempest, when Ferdinand declares his love to Miranda:-

                                                                   …I,
Beyond all limit of what else i’th’ world,
Do love, prize, honour you.

                                                                         …I,
Beyond all lim | it of what else | i’th’ world,
Do love, prize, hon | our you.

Actor’s playing Ferdinand never follow the meter on this last line: they always linger on the first two stressed words, and drop the emphasis on the last (and all important) word, ‘you’:-

“…Do LOVE… PRIZE… HONour you”.
di-dum…dum…dum-di-di.

A metrical delivery is much more compact and muscular:-

“…Do LOVE, PRIZE, HONour YOU!’
di-dum-dum-dum-di-dum!

The key word here is ‘YOU’! YOU are my ALL the WORLD! The usual delivery, by contrast, can easily end up being insipid.

When a spondee is placed before an iamb, it forms the pattern dum-dum-di-dum (dum-dum + di-dum). This is the 3rd epitrite (because the 3rd syllable is unstressed). Again, I have not divided the figure into two separate feet:-

Love give me strength, and strength shall help afford

Love give me strength, | and strength | shall help | afford

In this line from Hamlet’s speech, the 3rd epitrite (placed at the end of the line, this time) contains a split spondee: a spondee with a break in the middle, which I shall underline:-

To sleep, perchance to dream; ay, there’s the rub

To sleep, | perchance | to dream; | ay, there’s the rub

And this example has a 3rd epitrite both at the beginning and end of the line:-

Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend

Unthrifty love | liness, | why dost thou spend

The Appended Pyrrhic

The above example also contains an appended pyrrhic: a pyrrhic at the end of a word. In this case, the word is ‘loveliness‘. In this example, the appended pyrrhic comes before a line break. As a general rule, the only pyrrhics you should find before a line break, or at the end of a line, will be appended pyrrhics. Here’s an example of an end line appended pyrrhic (which also happens to contain two consecutive 3rd epitrites, the first of which contains a split spondee):-

And, tender churl, mak’st waste in niggarding

And, tender churl, | mak’st waste in nigg | arding

[Additional note: the appended pyrrhic is also the only pyrrhic that can be followed by another pyrrhic! However, I only occasionally encounter examples of this.]

The Isolated Spondee

Finally, because of it’s solid, brick-like quality, a spondee doesn’t always combine with another foot: in which case it’s an isolated spondee. These two examples are from his first narrative poem, Venus and Adonis:-

Pure shame and awed resistance made him fret

Pure shame | and awed | resis | tance made | him fret

Is love so light, sweet boy, and may it be

Is love | so light, | sweet boy, | and may | it be

And these examples are from Hamlet (three of which are split spondees):-

“Seems”, madam? Nay, it is: i know not “seems”

“Seems”, mad | am? Nay, | it is: | i know | not “seems”

It wafts me still: go on. I’ll follow thee.

It wafts | me still: | go on. | I’ll fo | llow thee.

Oh, villain, villain, smiling damned villain!

Oh, vi | llain, vi | llain, smi | ling dam | ned villain!

So, uncle, there you are: now to my word;

So, un | cle, there | you are: | now to my word;

The last example ends with a choriamb. The reason I call the choriamb a radical variation is because it contains a displaced beat – which is the subject of my next post: Iambic pentameter & the principles of metrical variation: part 2 – radical variations

(And here is a link to my glossary)

Here is a table of the metrical feet and figures I listed:-

Feet

Iamb:       di-dum

Pyrrhic:   di-di (created by destressing the beat syllable)

Spondee: dum-dum (created by stressing the non-beat syllable)

[incidentally, these are approximations: in practice, many pyrrhics have a slightly stronger stress on the 2nd syllable; and in many spondees within the 1st epitrite pattern the stressed non-beat syllable still has a slightly weaker stress relative to the beat syllables either side of it (i.e. the third syllable in “di-dum–dum–dum” often drops slightly in pitch relative to the beat syllables either side of it). In fact, any degree of relative stress is possible, which is why some people will mark semi-stresses; my own personal notational system (which, unfortunately, I’m not sure how to imitate on a keyboard) allows for five different levels of stress! For more details, see the bottom of this post.]

Figures

4-syllable figures:

4th paeon (pyrrhic-iamb combi):-
di-di-di-dum

1st epitrite (iamb-spondee combi):-
di-dum-dum-dum

3rd epitrite (spondee-iamb combi):-
dum-dum-di-dum

6-syllable figures:

Spondee-paeon:-
dum-dum-di-di-di-dum

Paeon-spondee:-
di-di-di-dum-dum-dum

We also saw that the spondee doesn’t always join with another foot (the isolated spondee); and that spondees can be laid next to each other (‘Rich gifts wax poor…’).

As I said, simple variations are formed by adjusting the stress level of single syllables. Radical variations are formed by swapping the stress level of two adjacent syllables. Such a swap creates a displaced beat. Please don’t worry if this sounds complex and abstract: we will explore this step by step! To help provide visual clarity, I shall indicate radical variations with red type (and as before, both mid-line & end-line feminine endings will be indicated in pink type).

The Trochee

First let’s look at what happens when we swap the syllables of an iamb. Instead of di-dum, we get dum-di:-

di-dum (iamb)

dum-di (inverted iamb)

This inverted iamb is called a trochee (rhymes with throw key). In an iamb the second syllable is the beat syllable; in a trochee the beat is shifted to the first syllable. In the following examples the trochee is placed at the beginning of the line (the most common placement for a trochee):-

Love is a spirit all compact of fire

Love is | a spi | rit all | compact | of fire

Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest
Now is the timethatface should form another

Look in | thy glass | and tell | the face | thou viewest
Now is | the time | thatface | should form | another

And in this line there is both an opening trochee and a trochee after the break:-

Spur them to ruthful work, rein them from ruth

Spur them | to ruth | ful work, | rein them | from ruth

A trochee is nearly always placed either at the opening of the line, or after a break, otherwise the displaced beat is not clearly defined. However medial (or midline) trochees are not always placed after a punctuation mark – it can simply be a phrasal juncture:-

But let the famished flesh slide from the bone

But let | the fam | ished flesh | slide from | the bone

Say the line out loud, and you will probably automatically pause slightly after ‘flesh’.

In contrast to the pyrrhic (which produces a narrowing and speeding up of the forward flow of the line), or the spondee (which creates a widening and slowing down of the forward flow), the movement of the trochee is a drawing in and a release (imagine the waterflow in a pipe being suddenly sucked backwards, creating a contained energy, which is then instantly released!).

The Choriamb

When a trochee combines with an iamb (as in all the above examples) it forms a metrical figure called a choriamb: dum-di-di-dum! (dum-di + di-dum). The choriamb is a swing from one post to the next: the beat is drawn in and released, and swings to it’s final destination at the end of the figure: dum-di-di-dum! Try speaking the above lines out loud, and see if you experience the swinging movement between the two beats.

The mistake that’s most often made by actors when delivering a line that contains a choriamb is a tendency to linger too long on the first syllable: in practice there often is a slight suspension on the first syllable – but if it’s more than slight, it breaks off the rhythmical swing between the two beats. Instead of a cohesive rhythmical figure, we get an irregular monosyllabic foot (dum), followed by an irregular 3-syllable foot (di-di-dum. This is known as an anapest: there are examples of verse written in an anapestic meter, but within iambic verse the anapest is an irregularity; Shakespeare’s very occasional use of this variation in his dramatic verse is something I look at here: Making the words fit the meter). To deliver a line in this way is to ignore the metrical rhythm.

Let’s look again at the last quote I provided, because this is a particularly interesting example:-

But let the famished flesh slide from the bone

Most actors will probably linger on the word ‘sli-i-ide’, using the word to mimic the sliding motion (sli-i-ide from the bone; dummm, di-di-dum). However, the meter demands that the actor instead uses the sliding motion of the choriamb – the swing from one post to the next. By doing so, they not only preserve the forward momentum of the metrical rhythm, but the emphasis on the final word ‘bone’ will ring out just that little more sharply, setting it up for the alliteration in the next line: ‘Ere thou relieve the BEGGar‘. This is one illustration of how losing the rhythm can end up diluting the muscularity of shakespeare’s verse.

A less frequent mistake made with the choriamb is a failure to give the last syllable of the figure a full stress. In this example I will indicate a semi-stress with italics:-

Guilty thou art of murder and of theft

A metrical reading demands a full emphasis on ‘art‘:-

Guilty thou art of murder and of theft

The downward swing of the trochee needs to be met by the full upward swing of the iamb!

There is another metrical pattern I would like to mention: the choriamb followed by a 4th paeon (dum-di-di-dum-di-di-di-dum!), a common combination which lends great lift and energy to the line. For instance:-

Now is the winter of our discontent

Now is | the win | ter of | our dis | content

Or to make the combination of figures clearer:-

Now is the win | ter of our dis | content

– which launches us straight into Richard III!

Here’s some more examples from his Sonnets (I shall only mark the foot divisions after the choriamb and after the 4th paeon, so you can more readily see the combination of the two figures):-

Lo in the Orient when the gracious light

Lo in the Or | ient when the gra | cious light

(Orient is counted as two syllables)

Look what an unthrift in the world doth spend

Look what an un | thrift in the world | doth spend

Come in the rearward of a conquered woe

Come in the rear | ward of a con | quered woe

And here’s Hamlet expounding on his opening “question”:-

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer

Whether ’tis no | bler in the mind | to suffer

So that’s the choriamb!

The Minor Ionic

The other way that two syllables can be swapped is by pushing a beat syllable forward. Instead of:-

di-dum-di-dum

we have:-

di-di-dum-dum!

This time the beat syllable, instead of being pulled back a space, is pushed forward a space! In the table below I have used (x) to indicate beat syllables, and (–) to indicate non-beat syllables:-

Two iambs       – x – x
Choriamb       x – – x
Minor Ionic   – – x x

You can see how the first beat syllable is pulled back a space in the choriamb, but pushed forward a space in the minor ionic (whereas a choriamb is formed by swapping the stress levels of the 1st and 2nd syllables, the minor ionic is formed by swapping the stress levels of the 2nd and 3rd syllables. The end result is an indivisible 4-syllable unit. This figure is sometimes referred to as a ‘double iamb’, and in fact, it does have the features of an enlarged iamb! Instead of a non-beat followed by a beat, we have two non-beats followed by two beats!).

The minor ionic pattern came into use to accommodate a specific type of grammatical pattern (and, in fact, because the minor ionic is a lopsided figure, it actually needs the support of a grammatical structure if it is not to disrupt the metrical rhythm). Most typically, the final beat syllables will accommodate a monosyllabic adjective followed by a noun:-

Affection, puh. You speak like a green girl

Affec | tion, puh. | You speak | like a green girl

That unmatched form and feature of blown youth

That unmatched form | and fea | ture of blown youth

Nor windy suspiration of forc’d breath

Nor windy sus | pira | tion of forc’d breath

Can you see the ‘di-di-dum-dum’ at the end of each line? And the last three syllables all follow the same grammatical pattern: a small connecting word (a, of, of); a monosyllabic adjective (green, blown, forc’d); and a noun (girl, youth, breath).

Here’s another example which I find particularly expressive in it’s employment of the figure:-

These present-absent with swift motion slide

These present-ab | sent with swift mo | tion slide

In combination with the preceding 3rd epitrite, the displaced beat of the minor ionic effectively conveys the sliding ‘motion’ the words describe.

Not all minor ionics accommodate exactly this same grammatical structure, but they do nearly all accommodate a grammatical structure of some kind. This, for instance, would be a misapplication of the minor ionic:-

With his tinct gilded thee.

The phrasal juncture comes after ‘tinct’:-

With his tinct      gilded thee.

So the grammatical structure does not support a minor ionic, and metrically this sounds clumsy. Remember the effect when we linger too long on the opening syllable of a choriamb?: “instead of a cohesive rhythmical figure, we get an irregular monosyllabic foot (dum), followed by an irregular 3-syllable foot (di-di-dum)”. Here the effect is reversed: we have an irregular 3-syllable foot (di-di-dum), followed by an irregular monosyllabic foot (dum).

The correct reading is to place the emphasis on ‘his‘ (to contrast with ‘thee‘):-

With his tinct gilded thee.

This reading also makes good sense in the context of the passage (it is from Anthony and Cleopatra).

In addition, it is irregular for the 2nd & 3rd syllables of the minor ionic to belong to the same word. So, for instance, in this line from Richard III:

The supreme seat, the throne majestical,

we can be fairly sure that the accent is meant to be placed on the first syllable of ‘supreme’ (‘The supreme seat…’, instead of ‘The supreme seat…’). This is known as ‘recession of accent’.

I will give one more example of a minor ionic (in this case, preceded by a choriamb, creating another very striking combination of figures) to illustrate that they don’t always end on a noun; they can, for instance, end on a second adjective before a noun:-

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

When to the sess | ions of sweet si | lent thought

Some fine detail, for those who are interested!  This is an example of a deferred closure: the last syllable of the figure does not act as a resting point; instead, the momentum carries through to the next beat syllable. Any figure may have a deferred closure, and in fact, we’ve already come across a choriamb with a deferred closure:-

Spur them to ruth|fulwork…

and a 3rd epitrite with a deferred closure:-

Nor windy sus |pira|tion…

(Also, see the last entry in the Glossary, on “Deferred closures & trailing syllables”)

There is another metrical pattern that looks like a minor ionic, but actually isn’t! This is the appended pyrrhic followed by a spondee:-

Uncertainties now crown themselves assured

Uncer | tainties | now crown | themselves | assured

And beauty making beautiful old rhyme

And beau | ty ma | king beau | tiful | old rhyme

Like as, to make our appetites more keen

Like as, | to make | our app | etites | more keen

Ay, do! Persever: counterfeit sad looks

Ay, do! | Perse | ver: coun | terfeit | sad looks

The last syllable of an appended pyrrhic has a stronger connection backwards than it does forwards, because it belongs to the same word as the previous beat syllable (beautiful, uncertainties, appetites, counterfeit). As a result, in these examples, there is no displaced beat: the two light syllables do not run into the two heavy syllables in the way that they do in the minor ionic, so the second syllable of the appended pyrrhic is still heard as a beat syllable, as is the second syllable of the following spondee. Here is the beat placement of a line with a minor ionic (with beats underlined):

Affec | tion, puh. | You speak | like a green girl 

And here is the beat placement of a line with an appended pyrrhic followed by a spondee:

Ay, do! | Perse | ver: coun | terfeit | sad looks

Whereas the minor ionic is an indivisible 4-syllable unit (it cannot be broken down into individual feet), the appended pyrrhic followed by a spondee is just that: one foot followed by another foot. There is, perhaps, a comparison to be made with the dispondee (two spondees laid next to each other: ‘Rich gifts wax poor…’): like the dispondee, this pattern provides the effect of two blocks being laid next to each other; but unlike the dispondee these are contrasting blocks – one light, one heavy. It’s an aesthetically appealing pattern; and though this last example is from a play, it is one which you will find most frequently in Shakespeare’s poetic verse (the sonnets and his two narrative poems).

The last thing I would like to mention about the minor ionic is that a 6-syllable figure is formed if it follows a spondee: dum-dum-di-di-dum–dum. This is not a figure you will encounter with great frequency – which makes it all the more striking when you do encounter it! It is used to highly expressive effect by Gertrude when she expresses her impatience with Polonius’ blatherings:-

More matter with less art.

The 2nd Epitrite

And, finally, there is yet one more radical figure! This is the strangest one of all because it combines the displaced beat of the trochee with the simple variation of the spondee:-

dum-di-dum–dum
(dum-di + dum-dum)

This figure is actually a cross between the choriamb and the minor ionic: like the choriamb, the beat syllables are the first and last syllables, and it can only be placed at the beginning of the line, or after a line break or phrasal juncture; but like the minor ionic, it also needs the support of a grammatical structure, due to it’s lopsided nature. Being the least flexible figure, it is also the least frequently used.

This figure is called the 2nd epitrite (an epitrite because it contains three stresses, a 2nd epitrite because the 2nd syllable is unstressed). The 2nd epitrite came into use to accommodate an even more specific pattern of syntax than the minor ionic. This is typically:-

Verb / small connecting word / monosyllabic adjective/ noun

Claps her pale cheek, till clapping makes it red

Shows his hot courage, and his high desire

Mark the poor wretch to over-shut his troubles

Can you see the dum-di-dum-dum at the beginning of each line, and the same grammatical pattern being repeated? The 2nd epitrite is placed at the opening of the line the vast majority of the time, and usually accommodates this very specific pattern of syntax; once you are familiar with it, you will have a little shock of recognition every time you see it.

Here’s an example of a medial (mid-line) 2nd epitrite:-

From ancient grudge break to new mutiny

From an | cient grudge | break to new mu| tiny

And here’s an example with a slightly different pattern of syntax (though one that supports the figure just as readily):-

Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament

Thou that art now | the world’s fresh orn | ament

And there is also a simpler version of this figure: this is where the first two syllables belong to the same word. In this version you can hear the two feet distinct from one another: a trochee followed by a spondee (occasionally, the same effect is created when there is a break after the 2nd syllable; similarly, a break in the middle of a choriamb creates a trochee followed by an iamb). Here is a very rare example of two consecutive 2nd epitrites (or at least, this is my reading!):-

Clarence still breathes, Edward still lives and reigns

Clarence still breathes, | Edward still lives | and reigns

(I have chosen only to mark the trochaic feet in red for these simple 2nd epitrites, in order to distinguish them from other 2nd epitrites)

Can you see the separations in this line?

Clarence / still breathes, Edward still / lives and reigns

If we do choose to follow the separations, it becomes impossible to stress mark the line any other way (otherwise they could, in principle, be choriambs), and it produces a pattern of repetition with difference [note: I am using underlines to indicate particular emphasis on a short, abrupt word; and bold italics to indicate particular emphasis on a drawn out word]:-

Clarence…still breathes, Edward still…lives and reigns

The same metrical pattern is repeated twice in succession – but the separation in the second 2nd epitrite comes later, and this late separation heightens the forward momentum from the following stress into the final iamb: ‘…and reigns‘. So while the second 2nd epitrite repeats the first, it also extends it: it produces a striking accumulative effect, whereby the second phrase builds on the first.

Summary

So, to recap, here are the radical variants I have covered in this post:-

Variant foot:

Trochee: dum-di

4-syllable figures:

Choriamb (trochee-iamb combi):-            dum-di-di-dum

Minor ionic:-                                                  di-di-dum-dum

2nd epitrite (trochee-spondee combi):-  dum-di-dum-dum

6-syllable figure:

spondee + minor ionic:-  dum-dum–di-di-dum-dum

[There are two more 6-syllable figures which I have not mentioned (one simple, one radical). I describe these separately in the glossary – in the entry on “6-syllable figures“]

So far, I have covered the most common basic patterns you need to familiarise yourself with in order to spot the metrical patterning of most passages of verse (and for a simple and concise summary of the most important technical principles I’ve covered so far, you can read one of my answers on Quora: What-is-a-good-way-to-check-iambic-pentameter).

If you come across a line you are unable to scan (read the meter of), or if you want to try scanning a piece of verse, and then run it by me (by Shakespeare, or any other poet!), please feel free to post a comment, and I will respond when I have time. Often it will be a matter of getting the syllable count right: Shakespeare expanded and contracted words to fit the meter, and you will need to familiarise yourself with the principles he used for doing so (for instance, pronouncing the ‘-ed’ at the end of a word, or contracting words with a medial ‘v’ – ‘heaven‘, for instance, was often contracted to one syllable: ‘heav’n‘). He would even glide two words together to be pronounced as one syllable (e.g. ‘I_had’, ‘she_was’, ‘thou_art’, ‘who_would’), or he would have the last unaccented syllable of a word glide into the next (e.g. ‘merry_as’, ‘carry_it); this sometimes served a dramatic purpose (it could, for instance, give the impression of urgency), and Shakespeare did this much more freely, and much more boldly, in his later works, which is why it is wrongly believed that his meter became more irregular. Contrary to what many people will tell you, Shakespeare hardly ever broke the meter – though he found any number of ways to play with it.

For practising scansion, I would recommend starting with a sonnet: they have none of the variations that might seriously confuse a beginner (e.g. epic caesuras, missing syllables), and they contain much less syllabic ambiguity (it’s easier to count the syllables!).

Update: I love this tumblr page: 

popsonnet.tumblr.com

These are pop songs rewritten as Shakespearean sonnets! They’re written by a man called Erik Didriksen, and having read some of his sonnets, it’s obvious to me he understands meter – so if you find a genuine Shakespeare sonnet too heavy going, feel free to use one of these for scansion practice! (His sonnets have also been compiled in a book, Pop Sonnets). 

One final tip: if you’re having trouble making a line fit the meter, start from the end and work backwards!

Again, any feedback would be very  welcome! I would love to know that everything I’ve covered has been clear and easy to follow – or if not, how these posts might be improved!

Here is a link to my glossary, covering some of the terms used in this post, the previous post and my analysis of Sonnet 1.

In my next post I explore some less frequently used (but very interesting) variations, and also explain how to deliver certain lines that might not appear to be metrical at first sight. I also touch on the interplay between iambic and trochaic rhythms within iambic verse – which is one of the things that is key to understanding the texture of Shakespeare’s verse. Here it is: Iambic pentameter & the principles of metrical variation: part 3 – double trochees, hexameters, epic caesuras in shared lines, missing syllables, emphasis on a non-beat syllable & the false choriamb

Postscript on notation

For those who are interested, I will summarise the standard method of marking stress patterns, and introduce some elements of my own personal notational system (I add even more fine detail in my review of ‘The Strict Metrical Tradition‘ in Resources & further reading).

The standard symbol for a stressed syllable is:        /

The standard symbol for an unstressed syllable is: U

The standard symbol for a semi-stress is:                 \

Some of the differences in my own personal notational system are as follows:

• For the 4th paeon I draw an arrow over the three light syllables: —> / . I find this conveys far more effectively the swift forward movement, and how the run of light syllables provide emphasis to the final stressed syllable.
• If there is a slight stress on the 2nd syllable of a 4th paeon (less than a semi-stress), I will draw a semi-circle on top of the arrow above that syllable (if it’s a semi-stress, I draw a full circle over the arrow above that syllable).
• I use red pencil for marking radical variations.
• For the minor ionic I draw an arrow over the two light syllables: –> / /
• Because the appended pyrrhic is a very distinct type of pyrrhic, I mark it differently. I personally mark it, quite simply, with a dot over each syllable.
• If it’s an appended pyrrhic followed by an iamb without a break, I will still mark it the same way as any other 4th paeon, but will add a vertical line to mark off the appended pyrrhic: –|-> / . I will also place the dots over the arrow above each syllable of the appended pyrrhic.
• If the first syllable of a spondee has a slightly lighter stress than the second syllable (something between a semi-stress and a full stress), I mark a dot either side of the stress mark. So for instance, if I come across a 1st epitrite (U / / /), and the syllable I’ve marked in green is slightly weaker than the beats either side of it, I put a dot either side of that stress mark (so it looks like a tilted division symbol). If it’s a semi-stress, I simply mark the semi-stress: U / \ /
• For the choriamb, I draw a line between the two stresses, to indicate the swing from one post to the next: / — /
• I mark feminine endings and epic caesuras with a closed bracket:-

To be or not to be that is the question)

Wake Dun can with thy knocking,) I would’st thou could’st

Note that, with this notation, you can mark five different gradations of stress, while still maintaining visual simplicity (I have found five gradations to be the optimum number: you don’t need more than five, but anything less isn’t quite adequate).

Here’s a photo of the essentials of my notational system:

I also do not mark individual iambs: I only mark metrical variations. However, initially, when practicing scansion, you may well feel the need to start by segmenting the line into individual feet; with practice, you will no longer need to do so (see the example below).

It can also be very useful to uncover patterns in the placement of phrasal junctures. This is my suggestion of how to do so:-

1. Mark enjambed lines (lines which end in the middle of a phrase) with a downward pointing arrow at the end of the line – blue for a strong enjambment, plain grey lead for a weak enjambment.
2. Mark phrasal junctures within the line with a vertical line in blue pencil. This serves to highlight the interaction between the meter and the phrasal units. Mark weak phrasal junctures with a dotted vertical line.
3. Then number the junctures. For instance, if there is a phrasal juncture after the 4th syllable of a line, I write the number ‘4‘ in the left hand margin, in blue, at the beginning of the line; if there is more than one phrasal juncture in the same line, I write both numbers – so for instance, if there is also a juncture after the 7th syllable, I write ‘4 . 7‘. When numbering a weak phrasal juncture, I use a plain grey lead, e.g. ‘3 . 5‘ would indicate a weak juncture after the 3rd syllable, and a strong juncture after the 5th. Once you are practised at recognising phrasal junctures, you can simply number them, without bothering to mark them off.

Look out for early and late junctures, and look out for masculine or lyric caesuras (masculine caesura = a juncture after an even syllable; lyric caesura = a juncture after an odd syllable. ‘Caesura’ is a fancy word for ‘juncture’!). As a lyric caesura lands in the middle of a foot, it creates a play-off, a distinctive interaction, between the meter and the phrasal units.

The strongest rhythmical cohesion in an iambic pentameter line is created by a juncture after the 2nd beat, to split the line into two groups of 2 & 3 beats respectively; and as it is the masculine caesura (a break after an even syllable) that reinforces an iambic rhythm, the most regular lines contain a juncture after the 4th syllable (which is both masculine and splits the line into groups of 2 & 3 beats).

Early  Elizabethan poets strongly favour breaks after the 4th syllable; later poets, including Shakespeare, experimented much more freely with the placement of phrasal junctures, creating a meter that is much more flexible and sinuous. One knock-on effect was a much freer employment of enjambment: late breaks often lead to enjambment.

Finally, to illustrate what my notation looks like in practice, here’s my scansion of Sonnet 116:

Those feet I haven’t marked I consider iambs – which, in a couple of places, would surprise many. My reading of the opening line especially: “Let me not to the marriage of true minds” (a reading which, as well as changing the emphasis, also highlights the rhyme and alliteration: the rhyme of to and true elegantly interweaves with the alliteration of me, marriage and minds). And my reading of the end of the second line, “Love is not love“, would not seem an obvious reading to most; though, in fact, the repetition of the word is and words that rhyme with is, all on beat placements if one follows the default iambic rhythm, is a prominent feature of this sonnet.

(This scansion also marks trailing syllables and deferred closures: see the glossary and my review of ‘The Strict Metrical Tradition‘ in Resources & further reading)

In this post I will be exploring some less common, but very intriguing variations. In all these examples, I will not split up figures into separate feet. I will also continue to indicate radical variations (variations that contain displaced beats) with red type, and feminine endings (end-line or mid-line) with pink type.

But first, I would like to talk briefly about iambic and trochaic rhythm (I have also written a Quora answer that is largely related to this subject: What-are-the-differences-between-iambic-and-trochaic-meters).

Firstly, it is very important to distinguish between iambic and trochaic feet, and iambic and trochaic words and phrases. Take a look at this line:-

Which alters when it alteration finds

Which al | ters when | it al | tera | tion finds

Metrically this is an unvaried line of five iambs. However, the rhythm is trochaic! That’s because the line is made up of trochaic words and phrases (alters; when it; alteration) which span the foot divisions. Note how, in this example, the contrariness described in this line, with it’s references to altering and alteration, is mirrored by the contrariness of the trochaic rhythm!

Much of the texture of Shakespeare’s verse derives from the interplay of iambic and trochaic rhythms.

Here’s the opening line of Shakespeare’s first sonnet:-

From fairest creatures we desire increase

From fair | est crea | tures we desire | increase

It starts off with the falling, trochaic sound of ‘fairest creatures’, and then, through the run of light syllables, rises into the iambic ‘desire increase‘ – and, of course, the rising rhythm provides an aural sensation of ‘increase’.

What a wonderful line, and what a perfect way to start the sonnet sequence!

And now for some more variations!

1. The double trochee(exclusive to dramatic verse)

The double trochee is a trochee followed by a choriamb. It is, in effect, a stuttered choriamb: dum-di-dum-di–di-dum!

Villains, answer you so the Lord Protector?

Villains, | answer you so | the Lord | protector?

Brothers, help to convey her hence away

Brothers, | help to convey | her hence | away

And I can’t resist adding this example from Keats’ The Eve of St Agnes:-

The arras, rich with horseman, hawk, and hound
Fluttered in the besieging wind’s uproar

The arr | as, rich | with horse | man, hawk, | and hound
Fluttered | in the besieg | ing wind’s | uproar

The double trochee was not normally used in poetic verse; but here, uniquely, Keats chooses to use the fluttering effect of the double trochee to mimic the fluttering of the arras!

2. Hexameters

A hexameter contains six feet instead of five. You will find that Shakespeare’s plays are peppered with the occasional hexameter, which adds texture and variety to the verse (incidentally, some people will tell you that long lines in Shakespeare’s plays should be delivered faster, on the principle that they should be delivered within the same space of time it would take to deliver a standard pentameter line. This is not true, and you should ignore such advice!).

This example is from Measure for Measure:-

To have what we would have, we speak not what we mean

To have | what we | would have, | we speak | not what | we mean

Count the feet. Six iambs!

This next example is from Richard II. Henry Bolingboke is about to fight a duel to the death, and his father, John of Gaunt, delivers these last rousing words to his son:-

Rouse up thy youthful blood, be valiant and live.

Rouse up | thy youth | ful blood, | be val | iant | and live.

For the sake of clarity, I have marked every foot division; but note that the second half of this line is a 6-syllable figure – the spondee-paeon:-                

dum–dum-di-di-di-dum

Did you notice that both these lines have a break slap bang in the middle of the line? It is this tendency for hexameters to break in the middle (though not all do) that makes the hexameter so particularly well suited to shared lines (and in fact, even in the two examples I’ve just given, the second half of the line in some way answers or builds on the first half). An example par excellence can be found in Richard III. At this point in the play, Richard is wooing Lady Anne, whose husband and father-in-law (Edward, Prince of Wales, and his father, Henry VI) he had murdered. Richard lays his life on the line: he gives her his sword and demands that she either takes him or takes his life; she moves to do so, but can’t go through with it, and says that though she wishes his death, she will not be his executioner. Richard then takes up the sword himself, and tells her he will kill himself if she gives the command! It is at this point that we now join them:

Anne:       I would I knew thy heart.

Richard:  ‘Tis figured in my tongue

Anne:       I fear me both are false.

Richard:  Then never was man true.

Anne:       Well, well, put up your sword.

Richard:  Say then my peace is made.

Anne:       That shalt thou know hereafter.

Richard:   But shall I live in hope?

Anne:       All men, I hope, live so.

Richard:   Vouchsafe to wear this ring.

Anne:       To take is not to give.

Note how the exchange begins with Richard completing Anne’s half lines, but halfway through it reverses into Anne completing Richard’s half lines – Richard ends up taking the lead! This is a blistering scene, which is rarely done justice on the stage.

3. Epic caesuras in shared lines

As I mentioned in my first post, an epic caesura is an extra unstressed syllable in the middle of the line before a break (a mid-line feminine ending). Here’s an interesting example that contains both a mid-line feminine ending and a feminine ending at the end of the line:

His acts being seven ages. At first the infant

His acts | being se | ven ages. || At first | the infant

Here the extra mid-line syllable is the last syllable of the word ‘ages’, and it produces a break in the rhythm: di-DUM di-DUM di-DUM di, di-DUM di-DUM di 

Occasionally you will find an apparent epic caesura in a shared line. Take these two examples from King Lear (again, I mark the epic caesuras with two vertical lines):

Kent: Thy safety being motive.

Lear:  Out of my sight!

Kent: Thy safe | ty be | ing motive.||

Lear:  Out of my sight!

(Lear’s half line is a choriamb)

Albany:

My Lord, i am guiltless as i am ignorant
Of what hath moved you.

Lear:

It may be so, my Lord.

Albany:

My Lord, | i am guilt | less as | i am ig | norant
Of what | hath moved you.||

Lear:

It may | be so, | my Lord.

(In both instances of ‘I am’, the two words are glided together to count as one syllable)

In the first of these quotes, Kent is admonishing his King for turning on his youngest daughter, Cordelia, and dividing the Kingdom between the eldest two. In the second quote, a befuddled Albany is attempting to calm down his father-in-law as Lear vents his incredulous rage at his daughter, Goneril, after she has just given him a dressing down; immediately after cutting Albany short, he proceeds to call on Nature, the Goddess, to bring vengeance down upon his daughter in the most visceral language he can muster.

An alternative to interpreting the extra-metrical syllable in such shared lines as an epic caesura is to interpret it as an acting clue: perhaps the implication is that Lear, in both these examples, talks over the other person (cuts them short) at the end of their line.

{Edit: I originally took this idea from ‘Rhythm & Meaning in Shakespeare’ by Peter Groves (which I review here). Peter Groves has since published an article which explores this idea in much greater depth: “Unheedy haste”: interruptions, overlaps, and Shakespeare’s directing hand. This is a fascinating article that I would highly recommend.}

4. Missing syllables (exclusive to dramatic verse)

Some lines of dramatic verse are simply short, which may, in turn, indicate a pause to fill up the remaining pentameter beats (this can frequently serve a dramatic purpose in Shakespeare’s plays. Modern editors have a horrible habit of relineating the verse to remove all the short lines! Sometimes relineation is justified, but a lot of the time it’s not – in this, and other respects, modern editors adapt the originals far too readily).

However, occasionally you will come across a line that is not short, but has a missing syllable or syllables within the line. In all these examples I shall use an underline _ to indicate the syllable pauses.

a) The broken-backed line has a single missing non-beat syllable at the break.

Your Grace mistakes: _ only to be brief

Your Grace | mistakes: | _ on | ly to be brief

Break open shops, _ nothing can you steal

Break open shops, | _ no | thing can | you steal

Note how in these examples the line opens with an iambic rhythm, and then reverses into a trochaic rhythm after the break.

However, that is not always the case:-

Is’t lost? Is’t gone? _ Speak, is’t out o’ th’ way?

Is’t lost? | Is’t gone? | _ Speak, | is’t out | o’ th’ way?

At this point in the play, Othello’s whole world depends on finding the handkerchief in Desdemona’s possession. Just before Iago started working on him, he said to himself ‘-when I love thee not, / Chaos is come again’; the hope of finding the handkerchief in Desdemona’s possession is the only thing holding back the ‘chaos’ of a complete emotional disintegration. In this line, Othello’s extreme agitation is communicated firstly by the extreme terseness of his questions (this is an example of how elision – the contraction of words – can produce dramatic effects: consider how much less effective this line would have been had it begun ‘Is it lost? Is it gone?’). And secondly, by the short pause and abrupt resumption – ‘Speak, is’t out o’ th’ way?’ – when Desdemona doesn’t immediately answer his question.

b) The headless line is missing the opening non-beat syllable, so it commences with a strong, clear beat syllable!

_ Where the devil should this Romeo be?

_ Where | the dev | il should | this Rom | eo be?

(Romeo can be pronounced with either two or three syllables; in this example it’s two)

_ Stay, the king has thrown his warder down

_ Stay, | the King | has thrown | his war | der down

_ Bootless home and weather beaten back

_ Boot | less home | and weath | er beat | en back

Never, never, never, never, never

_ Ne | ver, ne | ver, ne | ver, ne | ver, never

(this line, with a feminine ending, maintains a trochaic rhythm all the way to the end!)

c) The headless line with an epic caesura! This line pattern is the inverse of the broken-backed line: the most common tendency is that initially the rhythm is trochaic, and that it then reverses into an iambic rhythm after the break (for clarity I will place two lines || after the epic caesura):-

_ Marriage Uncle? Alas, my years are young

_ Ma | rriage Uncle? || Alas | my years | are young

_ O my follies! Then Edgar was abused

_ O | my follies! || Then Ed | gar was | abused

_ Give me, give me, O tell not me of fear

_ Give | me, give me, || O tell not me | of fear

d) Consecutive missing non-beat syllables. This creates a series of emphatic monosyllables, with a syllable pause before each one:-

Blow winds, and crack your cheeks; _ rage, _ blow

Blow winds, | and crack | your cheeks; | _ rage, | _ blow

Nay, send in time. _ Run, _ run, O run!

Nay, send in time, | _ Run, | _ run, | O run!

Is goads, _ thorns, _ nettles, tails of wasps

Is goads, | _ thorns, | _ nett | les, tails | of wasps

You can even have all five non-beat syllables missing:-

Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill him

_ Kill, | _ kill, | _ kill | _ kill | _ kill him

(the last syllable is a feminine ending!)

And this line from Cymbeline is delivered by the villain, Iachimo. At the end of the scene where he has successfully tricked his way into the bedchamber of the heroine, Imogen, he stands and listens to the chiming of the clock:

One, two, three, time, time.

_ One, | _ two, | _ three, | _ time, | _ time.

For the first three feet, the chimes of the clock stand in for the missing syllables!

e) A missing non-beat syllable within a phrase. This creates a drawn out effect (in stark contrast to the sharp jolt provided by syllables missing at the breaks):

…But why commands the King
That his chief followers lodge in towns about him
While he himself keeps in the cold _ field?

…But why | commands | the King
That his chief foll | owers lodge | in towns | about him
While he | himself | keeps in the cold | _ field?

(the second line in this quote contracts ‘followers’ to two syllables)

He falls to such perusal of my face
As he would draw it. Long _ stayed he so.

He falls | to such | peru | sal of my face
As he | would draw | it. Long | _ stayed | he so.

f) Two consecutive missing syllables. This creates a foot-long pause within the line:-

Must give us pause. There’s the respect

Must give us pause. | _ _ | There’s the respect

(from Hamlet‘s most famous speech. Here we have a foot-long pause after the word “pause”; earlier in the speech we also have a line that ends on the word “end”!)

g) A single missing beat syllable. This line type is much rarer than the broken-backed line, and, obviously, contains a more emphatic pause:-

My father, _ methinks i see my father

My fa | ther, _ | methinks | i see | my father

It is possible that a missing beat syllable is an acting cue – for instance, in this example, perhaps Hamlet draws in his breath on the missing beat, and maybe raises a hand in a longing gesture.

This could also apply to cases where the final beat appears to be missing. In this example, from Julius Caesar, Brutus fears that a man making his way towards Caesar through a crowd may be about to betray their plans to assassinate him:-:

Look how he makes | to Cae | sar. Mark | him _ (grabs his co-conspirator’s arm, and points!)

Following on from Hamlet’s line, there is, intriguingly, a matching line from Ophelia later on:-

And with a look so piteous in purport,
As if he had been loosed out of hell
To speak of horrors: _ he comes before me.

And with | a look | so piteous in purport,
As if | he had | been loo | sed out | of hell
To speak | of ho | rrors: _  | he comes | before me.

(The first line ends on a spondee-paeon, in which ‘piteous’ is contracted to two syllables)

At this point Ophelia is relating to her father how Hamlet came bursting into her chamber – however, she uses the present tense “comes”, instead of the past tense “came”. In recalling him so vividly, he evidently appears to be very much present to her – in her “mind’s eye” (just as Hamlet’s father was to the young prince). At the missing beat there may be a similar drawing in of breath, and she might pull herself in as she braces herself. That’s how I picture it: an outward, gesturing, longing motion from Hamlet; a self-protective, fearful, drawing-in motion from Ophelia.

5. Emphasis on a non-beat syllable

Occasionally you will find it necessary to place special emphasis on a non-beat syllable for rhetorical purposes. Here are a few examples (I have italicised the syllables in question):

To make them Kings, the Seeds of Banquo Kings

To make them Kings, | the Seeds | of Ban | quo Kings

If I quench thee, thou flaming Minister,
I can again thy former light restore,
Should i repent me. But once put out thy Light

If I quench thee, | thou flaming Mi | nister,
I can | again | thy for | mer light | restore,
Should i repent me. || But once | put out thy Light

(The opening of the third line is a choriamb with a mid-line feminine ending, or epic caesura).

                                    …Get you to your Lord:
I cannot love him: let him send no more,
Unless (perchance) you come to me again,
To tell me how he takes it: Fare you well:
I thank you for your pains: spend this for mee.

                                   …Get | you to | your Lord:
I cannot love | him: let | him send | no more,
Unless | (perchance) | you come | to me | again,
To tell | me how | he takes | it: Fare | you well:
I thank you for your pains: | spend this for mee.

The question is, how to provide greater emphasis to the non-beat syllable than the beat syllables either side of it while keeping the meter? The answer is very simple. Normally, when you get to the last word of a sentence or phrase (unless it’s a question), if that word ends on a stressed syllable you will automatically pronounce the very end of that syllable with a downward fall in pitch. This same pronunciation is all you need to provide special emphasis to the words I’ve italicised (the more exaggerated the downward fall, the greater the emphasis).

Incidentally, I have copied these three quotes from the Folio texts to illustrate the changes modern editors make which sometimes, perhaps, result in losing some of the nuance and texture of the original texts. There are four differences that are illustrated by these quotes:

1. Some words are Capitalised, even though they are not at the beginning of a line or sentence. If the Folio is an accurate transcript of what Shakespeare actually wrote (and that’s the big ‘if’) then this would seem to indicate that a particular importance or emphasis should be placed on the capitalised words. In the quotes above, one that stands out particularly to me is the capitalisation of the word ‘Seeds’ in the Macbeth quote

2. The Folio uses fewer full stops. Quite a lot fewer, in fact. This produces a much swifter, smoother forward flow. One punctuation mark that is frequently used in the Folio (and frequently turned into full stops by modern editors) is the colon (:). However, the colon appears to have been applied differently in Shakespeare’s day than it is by us today: they used it as a flexible hinge joining phrase to phrase – often in an extended sequence. In the last quote above, from Twelfth Night, all but one of the colons (the second one) are replaced by full stops in a modern edition.

3. You occasionally find parentheses (brackets, like these) in the Folio. They are nearly all omitted in modern editions, but obviously they would not have been included in the Folio for no reason at all; they appear to indicate that the words in parentheses should be treated, in some way, differently. In the last quote above, the word ‘perchance’ is placed in parentheses (which are omitted in a modern edition); to me, personally, this indicates a thoughtful hesitancy – which then makes the emphasis on ‘you‘ all the more effective and expressive.

4. The spellings in the Folio, as well as sometimes being indicative of different pronunciations in Shakespeare’s time, may sometimes indicate a particular emphasis. In the last quote above, the final word, ‘mee’, is spelt with an extra ‘e’! This may indicate an emphasis or lingering on this word. In this instance, this may indicate a more intimate tone: Olivia wants ‘Cesario’ (the disguised Viola) to remember her!

I do not have complete faith in the Folio (or the older Quartos), but I do feel that modern editors miss a lot of the nuances.

6.The false choriamb

Occasionally you will come across a line in Shakespeare which appears to contain a choriamb without any break in the line beforehand. I believe that there is an alternative, and far more satisfying way to pronounce these lines.

But first, a short (and slightly simplified) history lesson!

The first person ever to write in iambic pentameter was Chaucer. However, it was much easier for Chaucer to make the words fit the meter than it was for later poets, because he had the option of pronouncing silent e’s. Here’s an example:-

And smale foweles maken melodye

And smal | e fowel | es mak | en mel | odye

This pronunciation was archaic even in Chaucer’s day, and once it became obsolete, it left later poets with a particular problem: how to accommodate the grammatical pattern:-

Small connecting word / monosyllabic adjective / noun

This creates the stress pattern: di-dum-dum. How were they to accommodate this stress pattern within an iambic meter?

They eventually adopted two new metrical figures to accommodate this pattern: the minor ionic and the 2nd epitrite (figures which Chaucer never had need of). But how did they accommodate this pattern before then?

There were two tricks they used. One trick was to place a stressed word immediately after the noun to create what I shall call an abrupt spondee: one where the 2nd syllable of the spondee is also the first syllable of the next phrase.

So, for example, if I were to rewrite Chaucer’s line in modern English, using an abrupt spondee, I might write this:-

And small birds singing in the sunlit fields

And small birds sing | ing in the sun | lit fields

(I have underlined the abrupt spondee)

You can also find abrupt spondees in Shakespeare:-

Seem to besiege, and make his bold waves tremble

Seem to besiege, | and make | his bold waves tremble

What foul play had we, that we came from thence?

What foul play had | we, that | we came | from thence?

What harmony is this? My good friends, hark!

What harmony is this? | My good friends, hark!

(Opens with a spondee-paeon: DUM–DUM-di-di-di-DUM)

As with other 1st epitrites, the 3rd syllable in the figure (in these cases, the monosyllabic nouns) will tend to drop slightly in pitch relative to the stressed syllables either side of it.

The other trick they had to resort to – and this is the metrically troubling one – was the false choriamb: the noun became the first syllable of a choriamb, without the break that a choriamb requires. Here’s my version of a false choriamb, rewriting Chaucer’s line:-

And small birds of the air make lovely music

And small | birds of the air | make love | ly music

And here’s a 15th C. version!

For greit sorrow his hart to brist was boun

For greit | sorrow his hart| to brist | was boun

Can you hear how the two words I’ve underlined in each example are indistinguishable from a spondee? The awkward effect is one of a displaced spondee followed by an anapest (di-di-dum; ‘of the air‘; ‘-rrow his hart’). And that’s why it proved necessary to adopt two new metrical figures: the minor ionic and the 2nd epitrite.

And back to Shakespeare! Once in a while you will come across a line in Shakespeare that appears to contain a false choriamb. However, in all the Shakespearean examples I’ve come across, I have found a much more satisfying way of delivering the line. Here’s an example from Prospero‘s famous speech from The Tempest (without any stresses marked):-

And ‘twixt the green sea and the azur’d vault

And ‘twixt | the green | sea and | the az | ur’d vault

If you were to deliver this line with a false choriamb (which nearly all actors do), it would scan like this:-

And ‘twixt the green sea and the azur’d vault

And ‘twixt| the green | sea and the az | ur’d vault

My solution is much easier to communicate in person than on the page, though it’s actually very simple:-

1. Allow the pitch of the noun to drop.
2. Do not allow the pitch of the following word to drop.

Allowing the pitch of the noun to drop is not an artificial or forced thing to do: we do it all the time in ordinary conversation. For instance, the other day in a Costa, when I asked my daughter what size hot chocolate she wanted, her reply was iambic: “i want a large one”!

And dropping the pitch doesn’t mean the noun receives no emphasis: it still receives emphasis through duration. There are four different aspects to stress, in the following descending order of importance:-

1. Pitch
2. Duration
3. Volume
4. Vowel quality (vowels in unstressed syllables tend to be more indeterminate)

In this instance, it is only the pitch that is dropped; the emphasis provided by duration remains (and on a sidenote, fully dropping the pitch on the noun can also be an option with apparent ‘abrupt spondees’).

And then, by refusing to allow the following word to drop (in this case the word ‘and’), you will end up pronouncing it at just a slightly higher pitch than the noun, as if in anticipation of the rest of the line.

Try delivering Prospero‘s line in these three different ways, and see what result you get:-

1. Give the noun (“sea”) a full stress.
2. Allow the noun to drop, and also allow the following word (“and”) to drop.
3. Allow the noun to drop, but do not allow the following word to drop: keep it buoyant in anticipation of the rest of the line.

You will likely find that it is only with the last delivery that you find yourself delivering the final word ‘vault‘ with a full upward lift – which also nicely contrasts with the drop in pitch on ‘sea‘! You might also notice that it is this delivery that most strongly highlights the contrast between the green seas and the azur’d vaults! Altogether, a far more satisfying and expressive interpretation of the line. And one achieved by committing to the metrical rhythm!

[An extra note on my own system of notation: I find it useful to underline nouns in non-beat positions, such as the nouns in the examples I’ve just given].

Iamb = A metrical unit, or foot, comprised of an unstressed non-beat syllable followed by a stressed beat syllable: di-dum

Pentameter = Verse written in lines comprised of five feet (‘penta-‘ means five); so iambic pentameter is written in lines of five iambs:-

di-dum, di-dum, di-dum, di-dum, di-dum

Feminine ending = An extra-metrical syllable running over the very end of the line:-

di-dum, di-dum, di-dum, di-dum, di-dum-di

Epic caesura = A mid-line feminine ending, which can only be placed before a line break:-

di-dum, di-dum, di-dum-di, | di-dum, di-dum

Only ever used in dramatic verse.

Balanced Line = A line where the middle beat is unstressed:-

di-dum, di-dum, di-di-di-dum, di-dum

Golden Line = A line where the 2nd and 4th beats (either side of the middle beat) are unstressed:-

di-dum, di-di-di-dum, di-di-di-dum

Iambic & trochaic rhythm (aka ‘rising’ and ‘falling’ rhythm) = Iambic rhythm goes ‘di-dum, di-dum, di-dum…’. Trochaic rhythm goes ‘dum-di, dum-di, dum-di…’ (iambic = a rising rhythm; trochaic =  a falling rhythm). So ‘desire’ is an iambic word, and ‘fairest’ is a trochaic word. Within iambic verse, trochaic words and phrases often span the foot divisions. Read the beginning of Part 3 for more detail.

Spondee = A spondee is a modified iamb: the 2nd syllable is still the beat syllable, but the 1st syllable is also given a full stress, so instead of ‘di-dum’, we get ‘dum–dum’.

Pyrrhic = A pyrrhic is also a modified iamb! Again, the 2nd syllable is still the beat syllable, but this time the beat syllable is destressed, so instead of ‘di-dum’, we get ‘di-di’. The first “y” in “pyrrhic” is pronounced as a short “i”, as in “tip”.

Appended pyrrhic = A pyrrhic at the end of a word, such as ‘ornament’ (dum-di-di). The last two syllables, if they are contained within a foot, form an appended pyrrhic.

4-syllable figure = Any metrical pattern formed when two ‘feet’ combine (with the sole exception of the ‘minor ionic’, which cannot be broken down into individual feet). There are a total of six 4-syllable figures.

6-syllable figure = Any metrical pattern formed when a ‘spondee’ combines with a 4-syllable figure! Because of it’s brick-like, self-sufficient quality, the spondee is the only foot that can attach itself to a 4-syllable figure to create an even larger figure. There are a total of five 6-syllable figures, though I only mention three of them in my posts: the ‘paeon-spondee’ & ‘spondee-paeon’ because of the frequency of their occurrence, and the ‘spondee + minor ionic’ because of it’s particularly striking quality. The two remaining 6-syllable figures are:-

Spondee + 1st epitrite:- dum–dum-di-dum–dum–dum (dum–dum + di-dum–dum–dum) to form a pattern containing five stresses within six syllables!

Yet doth it steal sweet hours from love’s delight

Yet doth it steal sweet hours | from love’s | delight

Choriamb-spondee:- dum-di-di-dum–dum–dum (dum-di-di-dum + dum–dum)

Good night, good night. Parting is such sweet sorrow

Good night, | good night. | Parting is such sweet sorrow
(In this example the figure has a feminine ending)

This figure has the effect of containing an overlap between a choriamb and a 1st epitrite! ‘Parting is such…’ forms a choriamb, but ‘…is such sweet so(rrow)’ forms a 1st epitrite! (For explanations of the choriamb and 1st epitite, see the definitions listed below).

Isolated spondee = A spondee that does not combine with an adjacent foot to form a metrical figure. Again because of it’s brick-like, self-sufficient quality, the spondee is the only variant foot which doesn’t automatically combine with other feet to form a larger figure (it is due to these same qualities that the spondee is the only foot that can attach to a 4-syllable figure to form a larger 6-syllable figure!).

4th paeon (or ‘paeon’ for short) = A metrical figure comprised of a pyrrhic followed by an iamb: di-di-di-dum (di-di + di-dum). There is often a slight stress on the 2nd syllable. {A ‘paeon’ is any 4-syllable figure containing only one stress, and this is the 4th paeon because the 4th syllable is stressed. Other paeons are used in Greek and Latin verse, but not in English verse! This is why I frequently refer to this figure simply as a ‘paeon’.}

Paeon-spondee = a 6-syllable metrical figure comprised of a paeon followed by a spondee, to form the striking metrical pattern of three light syllables running into three heavy syllables: di-di-di-dum–dum–dum (di-di-di-dum + dum–dum).

Spondee-paeon = a 6-syllable metrical figure comprised of a spondee followed by a paeon! This sets up an appealing contrast between a heavy, emphatic opening, followed by a swift release: dum–dum-di-di-di-dum (dum–dum + di-di-di-dum).

Trochee = An inverted iamb: instead of (di-dum), we have (dum-di). Unlike the spondee or the pyrrhic, which are created by adjusting the stress level of one syllable of the iamb, the trochee is created by swapping the stress level of both syllables. This creates a displaced beat: the beat has been pulled backwards, and now lands on the first syllable (I mark all feet and figures that contain a displaced beat in red).

Choriamb = A trochee (see above) followed by an iamb: dum-di-di-dum (dum-di + di-dum) – this is a swing from one post to the next! It is important not to linger excessively on the first syllable of the choriamb, otherwise you will break off that rhythmical swinging movement.

Choriamb-paeon = A combination of figures that lends great lift and energy to the line:-

dum-di-di-dum-di-di-di-dum

Think of the opening to Richard III: ‘Now is the win | ter of our dis | content…’

Minor ionic =  A 4-syllable figure in which the first beat has been pushed forward one syllable: di-di-dum–dum. If you compare two consecutive iambs (di-dum-di-dum), you can see that the first beat has been pushed forward a space by swapping the stress level of the 2nd and 3rd syllables. This figure cannot be broken down into individual feet.

Spondee + minor ionic = A 6-syllable metrical figure comprised of a spondee followed by a minor ionic, to form a very striking and robust pattern: dum–dum–di-di-dum–dum (dum–dum + di-di-dum–dum)

Epitrite = A 4-syllable figure which contains three stressed syllables.

2nd epitrite = A trochee followed by a spondee: dum-di-dum–dum (dum-di + dum–dum). The beat syllables are the first and last syllables.

1st epitrite = An iamb followed by a spondee: di-dum–dum–dum (di-dum + dum–dum). There is often slightly less stress on the 3rd syllable.

3rd epitrite = A spondee followed by an iamb: dum–dum-di-dum (dum–dum + di-dum)

Separations = A separation can occur in Shakespeare’s work when one word begins with the same sound with which the previous word ended. In everyday speech, we normally allow the two words to share that sound, rather than make the same sound twice.  However, there is a theory that Shakespeare intended that in such instances the two words should be separated – that he intended that the actor should have to ‘pick out’ the words for expressive effect. In the example below, I have marked possible separations with a forward slash:-

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious / summer by this / son of York

Assonance = The repetition of vowel sounds, e.g. the repetition of the ‘igh/eye’ sound in ‘bright eyes’.

Consonance = The repetition of consonant sounds.

Alliteration = The most striking form of consonance: the repetition of consonants at the beginning of words, e.g. ‘self substantial’ (which also contains the consonance of the second ‘s’ of ‘substantial’).

Consonant cluster = Any occurrence of two or more consecutive consonants within a phrase. This can either be consecutive consonants within a word, such as ‘end‘, or it can be consecutive consonants in adjacent words, e.g. ‘run down the hill’ (compare the lack of any consonant cluster in ‘run over the hill’).

Phrasal junctures = I define any phrasal break within the line as a ‘phrasal juncture’ – ranging from the full break provided by a full stop, to the lighter break provided by a comma, to the lightest breaks in phrasing which are not indicated by any punctuation. Here are some examples from my posts of light breaks which are not punctuated:-

With his tinct        gilded thee

From ancient grudge        break to new mutiny

Within thine own bud        buriest thy content

From fairest creatures        we desire increase

And only herald        to the gaudy spring

Masculine & Lyric caesuras = A ‘masculine caesura’ is a break after an even syllable; a ‘lyric caesura’ is a break after an odd syllable.

Monosyllablc words = Any word containing only one syllable. Here are a couple of examples from my posts of lines consisting entirely of monosyllabic words:-

When I do count the clock that tells the time

To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee

Note the lyric caesura in the second example, breaking up the iambic rhythm.

In both these examples, the monosyllables create a slower, more emphatic pace.

Polysyllabic words = Any word containing more than one syllable (though words of two or three syllables may be referred to as disyllabic and trisyllabic respectively). This line contains one monosyllabic word, followed by two polysyllabic words (one of five syllables, and one of four):-

This supernatural soliciting

And here’s the line segmented into individual feet:-

This su | perna | tural | soli | citing

Not hard to see the difference between this and the monosyllabic lines in the previous entry! This line effectively conveys the frantic energy with which Macbeth has to think on his feet after his first encounter with the witches. (Incidentally, I’ve chosen to stress the first word, “This”, on the basis that there may be a separation: “This / supernatural…”. A separation that could be very effective in this case: it may indicate that it’s an effort for Macbeth to even find words to describe what’s happened to him).

Deferred closures & trailing syllables = A ‘deferred closure’ is when the last syllable of a figure does not act as a resting point: instead, the momentum carries through to the next beat syllable. Any figure may have a deferred closure.

A ‘trailing syllable’ is when the first syllable of a figure is also the last syllable of the preceding phrase. Any figure that opens with a light syllable (4th paeon, minor ionic, 1st epitrite) may have a trailing syllable.

This example contains both a ‘deferred closure’ and a ‘trailing syllable’ (‘perfumed’ is pronounced as three syllables: the ‘ed’ is pronounced as a separate syllable):-

As the perfumed tincture of the roses

As the perfum | ed tinc | ture of the roses

The last syllable of the opening choriamb finishes on an adjective preceding a noun (‘perfumed’ is the adjective describing the ‘tincture’), so this last beat syllable does not act as resting point: instead the momentum carries through to the following noun:-

As the perfumed tincture…

This is an example of a ‘deferred closure’.

However, the last syllable of this phrase is also the first syllable of the 4th paeon which closes the line:-

…ture of the roses

The first syllable of this 4th paeon (‘…ture’) is a trailing syllable. In practice, most 4th paeons have a trailing syllable: it is usually a connecting figure. Probably around half of all minor ionics contain a trailing syllable. Trailing syllables within the 1st epitrite pattern are much rarer.

]]> https://versemeter.wordpress.com/2016/04/19/glossary/feed/ 3 1388 keirfabian https://versemeter.wordpress.com/2016/04/17/scanning-shakespeares-sonnets-sonnet-1/ https://versemeter.wordpress.com/2016/04/17/scanning-shakespeares-sonnets-sonnet-1/#comments Sun, 17 Apr 2016 23:52:05 +0000 http://versemeter.wordpress.com/?p=366 Continue reading Scanning Shakespeare’s Sonnets: Sonnet 1]]> In this post I aim to provide a careful metrical analysis of Shakespeare’s opening sonnet, and hope to illustrate how an understanding of meter can enhance our appreciation of his work.

Some feet combine with each other to form metrical figures, and I have not divided the figures into individual feet. Those figures in red contain displaced beats. For more detail on feet, figures and displaced beats, see my three posts on ‘Iambic Pentameter & the Principles of Metrical Variation’. And here’s a link to a glossary, which you may find it useful to skim through before reading further (every word I highlight in blue will take you to the glossary if you click on it. Words highlighted in pink will take you to another relevant post).

Here’s my scansion of Shakespeare’s opening Sonnet – first without, then with, foot divisions:-

From fairest creatures we desire increase
That thereby beauty’s Rose might never die
But as the riper should by time decease
His tender heir might bear his memory.

But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed’st thy light’s flame with self substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.

Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament,
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content
And, tender churl, mak’st waste in niggarding:

Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.

From fair | est crea | tures we desire | increase
That there | by beau | ty’s Rose | might ne | ver die
But as | the ri | per should | by time | decease
His ten | der heir | might bear | his me | mory:

But thou, | contrac | ted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed’st thy light’s flame | with self | substan | tial fuel,
Making a fa | mine where abun | dance lies,
Thyself | thy foe, | to thy sweet self | too cruel:

Thou that art now | the world’s fresh or | nament,
And on | ly he | rald to the gau | dy spring,
Within | thine own | bud bu | riest thy | content
And, tender churl, | mak’st waste in ni | ggarding:

Pity the world, | or else | this glu |tton be,
To eat | the world’s | due, by | the grave | and thee.

Some points of interest, line by line (and it would be a good idea to have a copy of the sonnet open in front of you while you read this!):-

First quatrain

Line 1.

From fairest creatures we desire increase

From fair | est crea | tures we desire | increase

The opening line is a balanced line (see also my first post on Simple variations).

This particular balanced line is given heightened balance through the interplay of iambic and trochaic rhythm: it starts off with the falling, trochaic sound of ‘fairest creatures’, and then, through the run of light syllables, rises into the iambic ‘desire increase‘ – and, of course, the rising rhythm provides an aural sensation of ‘increase’!

And the sense of balance is heightened still further by the consonance and assonance of ‘creatures’ and ‘increase‘.

What a wonderful line, and what a perfect way to start the sonnet sequence!

Line 2.

That thereby beauty’s Rose might never die

That there | by beau | ty’s Rose | might ne | ver die

The second line initially imitates the trochaic rhythm that opens the first: in place of ‘…fairest creatures’, we have ‘…thereby beauty’s’. This time, the forward falling rhythm breaks against the monosyllabic ‘Rose‘, serving to provide that word with heightened emphasis (the first word, ‘thereby’, is naturally more drawn out, followed by the swift release of ‘beauty’s Rose‘).

It is then followed by the quick, compact ‘…might never die‘ – and this time, the short, quick vowel sounds in ‘…might never..’ provide a sharp, crisp emphasis to the final word ‘…die‘. Note, too, the assonance of ‘might’ and ‘die’, and the crisp clarity provided by the ‘t’ and ‘d’ sounds.

Line 3.

But as the riper should by time decease

But as | the ri | per should | by time | decease

Note how the word ‘increase‘ at the end of line 1, is here met, not by it’s antonym, ‘decrease‘, but by the bleaker, more permanent ‘decease‘. In anticipation of this, this line more thoughtfully slows down the pace.

For a start, the rhythm becomes predominantly iambic (which automatically slows down the pace, because the trochaic rhythm is swifter): there is only the one trochaic word – ‘riper’ – which is met by the simple, decisive ‘should‘.

Then we get to the word ‘time‘. In contrast to the word ‘desire‘ in line 1, which immediately glides into ‘increase‘ because of the lack of any consonant cluster (the ‘r’ at the end of ‘desire‘ meets the ‘i’ at the beginning of ‘increase‘), the word ‘time‘ ends on a nasal consonant which has the opportunity to linger, being jammed up against the ‘d’ of  ‘decease‘.

Note also, the careful assonance of ‘riper’ and ‘by time‘ (assonance is the repetition of a vowel sound).

All in all, this line carefully sets us up for the denouement of the first quatrain.

Line 4. And here’s the pay-off!

His tender heir might bear his memory

His ten | der heir | might bear | his me | mory:

The all-important word, ‘heir‘ (the word which really gets to the crux of the purpose of this sonnet: to persuade the listener to produce an ‘heir’ before his own ‘decease’) is delivered to us swiftly and dramatically: the falling, trochaic ‘tender’ glides straight into the word ‘heir‘ – a word which catches our attention all the more because it immediately repeats the open ‘eh‘ sound in ‘tender’.

And to further highlight the central importance of this word, it is immediately rhymed by the word ‘bear‘ (a word which also has connotations of ‘bringing into the world’. There is a possible pun here, related to the word ‘heir’ – see ‘Shakespeare’s Sonnets’, edited by Katherine Duncan-Jones).

And note as well, the similarity between ‘heir might bear‘ and ‘thereby beauty’s’ from two lines earlier: ‘heir‘ rhymes with ‘there…’, ‘might‘ assonates with ‘by‘, and ‘bear‘ alliterates with ‘beauty‘.

And to top it all, the open ‘eh’ sound is repeated once again in the final word ‘memory’. This is, fittingly, the last accented syllable of the line, after which we elegantly glide into the final flourish of the appended pyrrhic…

Second quatrain

Line 5. …only to be pulled up short by the blunt, accusatory opening spondee, ‘But thou…‘!

But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,

But thou, | contrac | ted to thine own bright eyes,

The following word, ‘contracted’, phonetically recalls ‘creatures’ in the opening line of the first quatrain, with it’s shared ‘k’, ‘ch’ and ‘r’ sounds; and then glides straight into a paeon-spondee (di-di-di-dum–dum–dum), dramatically reinforcing the emphatic tone established by the opening spondee, and shifting attention from ‘thou‘ to ‘thine own bright eyes‘. As with the word ‘time‘ in line 3, we have a nasal consonant at the end of the word ‘own‘ pressing up against another consonant; and then the swift, dramatic spondee, ‘bright eyes‘ – the impact of which is heightened both by the assonance, and by the repetition of the opening ‘b‘ sound of the first spondee.

Like the first line of the opening quatrain, the middle beat is unstressed: it is a balanced line – but this time modified by a spondee at either end!

Note too, the clever wordplay with the use of the word ‘contracted’: it means both ‘diminished‘ and ‘pledged‘, as in a ‘contract of marriage’ (he is pledged to himself, rather than a woman with whom he could procreate). This is a nice illustration of why Shakespeare was so fond of puns: they create a compact, rich multiplicity of allusions.

Line 6.

Feed’st thy light’s flame with self substantial fuel,

Feed’st thy light’s flame | with self | substan | tial fuel,

Opens with a 2nd epitrite: in place of the opening spondee of the previous line, the spondee is now thrust forward by an opening trochee – and for good measure, we have the striking alliteration of ‘Feed’st‘ and ‘flame‘, picking up the alliteration from the opening of the sonnet (‘From fairest…’); the ‘f’ an ‘l’ sounds of ‘flame‘ are then repeated in ‘self‘ and ‘fuel‘.

And the remaining stressed syllable of the 2nd epitrite, ‘light’s’, repeats the assonance of the end-line spondee at the end of the previous line (in fact, it even rhymes with ‘bright‘), and it’s the intial ‘l‘ of this word that begins the string of L’s that run through the rest of the line.

And recalling the S‘s of ‘increase‘ and ‘decease‘ in the opening quatrain, a fresh pattern of S‘s are begun with ‘self substantial‘.

Another distinguishing feature of this line is the way it’s clogged up with consonant clusters (a consonant cluster is any grouping together of consonants, either within a word or in adjacent words: for instance, “…light’s flame” contains the consonant cluster ‘t, s, f, l‘, where the two words join). The congested effect of the consonant clusters seems to me very much an “echo to the sense” (as Alexander Pope put it!) of self-glutting and non-procreation.

(Note too, the change in metaphor from the procreative organic in the 1st quatrain to the non-procreative inorganic in the 2nd. As Helen Vendler put it in The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, ‘The juxtaposing of two incompatible categories is one of Shakespeare’s most reliable techniques for provoking thought in the reader’).

Line 7.

Making a famine where abundance lies,

Making a fa | mine where abun | dance lies,

And, halfway through the 2nd quatrain, we launch into the choriamb-paeon:-

dum-di-di-dum-di-di-di-dum!

(Like line 5, this is a modified balanced line – this time modified by the opening trochee).

The last syllable of the choriamb (‘Making a famine…’) continues the alliteration of F’s; and the final stressed syllable of the following paeon (‘abun…’) recalls the ‘b‘ of ‘beauty’s Rose‘, ‘bear‘, ‘But thou…’, and ‘bright eyes‘. Again, with this syllable we have a nasal ‘n‘ pressed up against another consonant – so after the run-up provided by the choriamb and the run of light syllables of the paeon, we can really relish the emphasis on ‘abundance’.

And the final stress, ‘lies‘, stretches out the string of L’s from the last line.

Note, too, the string of trisyllabic words over the last three lines, all with the same ‘di-dum-di’ stress pattern: we have ‘contracted’ in the 2nd foot of Line 5; then we have the word ‘substantial’, which we find pushed forward to the 4th foot of Line 6, after being introduced by the word ‘self‘; and then ‘abundance’ in the exact same 4th foot position of this line. A sense of forward movement is created, which is brought to a conclusion by the prolonged emphasis on the ‘n‘ in ‘abundance’ at the end of the choriamb-paeon. And the accumulative effect is heightened still further by the fact that we have an ‘n‘ in the exact same position on the line, at the end of the 4th foot, as in the previous two lines! The accumulative effect is one of contained energy being released!

Line 8.

Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel:

Thyself | thy foe, | to thy sweet self | too cruel:

And after the swift, energetic release of the previous line, we now hit the most steadily emphatic line so far!

We start off with two simple emphatic iambs: ‘Thyself | thy foe’ (and again, the F’s! – ‘foe‘ even arrives at the same 4th syllable placement as the previous line’s ‘famine’).

Which are then succeeded by a slow, emphatic 1st epitrite (and again, the S‘s, and the reference to ‘self‘, tying this line to line 6).

Which is then followed by a final spondee! A spondee which is heightened further by the near assonance of ‘too cruel‘ – which, in turn, echoes the spondaic, assonating ‘bright eyes‘ at the end of Line 5. However, as well as echoing ‘bright eyes‘, it also contrasts with it: the short vowels of ‘bright eyes‘ lend it a quick, vibrant delivery; whereas the long vowels of ‘too cruel‘ lend it a drawn out, weary delivery.

This has been a quatrain of alternating contrasts!

Third quatrain

Line 9.

Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament,

Thou that art now | the world’s fresh or | nament,

Our last 2nd epitrite made it’s mark launching the 2nd line of the second quatrain, building on the opening spondee of the 1st line. It now occupies pride of place at the very beginning of this final quatrain.

Both these 2nd epitrites possess a heightened sense of cohesion as a result of similarities between the beat syllables at either end of the figure : the first through alliteration (Feed’st & flame); the second through rhyme (Thou & now).

It is followed by a 1st epitrite – in exactly the same position as the 1st epitrite in line 8. At the same time, it contrasts with the previous 1st epitrite in it’s content: whereas the 1st epitrite at the end of the second quatrain contained a narrow focus (‘to thy sweet self‘), this 1st epitrite at the beginning of the final quatrain, has an expansive focus (‘the world’s fresh ornament’).

The word ‘fresh‘ contains both the alliterative ‘f‘ of ‘flame‘, ‘famine’ and ‘foe‘, and the open ‘eh’ sound of ‘tender heir‘ and ‘self‘.

The appended pyrrhic at the end provides a smooth flow into the next line…

Line 10.

And only herald to the gaudy spring,

And on | ly he | rald to the gau | dy spring,

And we have another balanced line, echoing the balanced line that opened this sonnet. However, this time the trochaic rhythm is carried through all the way to the end until breaking against the final word ‘spring‘ – the final alliterative ‘s‘ in this sonnet, thereby linking this line to lines 6 & 8.

There are also assonances linking this line to the previous line: the vowel sounds in the stressed syllables of ‘ fresh ornament’ are echoed in the stressed syllables of ‘herald’ & ‘gaudy’ (even though there is some distance between these two syllables, they are consecutive stresses – separated by a run of three light syllables).

Line 11.

Within thine own bud buriest thy content

Within | thine own | bud bu | riest thy | content

 A phrasal juncture after the 5th syllable in a metrically unvaried line can produce interesting phrasal patterns (incidentally, a break after an odd syllable, such as this one, is called a lyric caesura; a break after an even syllable is called a masculine caesura).

If we split this line up into phrasal units, we get:-

Within

thine own bud

buriest

thy content

So the phrasal patterns are:-

di-dum              (iambic)

di-dum-di        (this pattern is called an amphibrach)

dum-di              (a trochaic pattern, and the inverse of an iamb)

dum-di-dum  (this pattern is called a cretic, which is an inverted amphibrach!)

So we have an inverted symmetry with two alternating pairs of opposites. The line is split right in the middle, and the inverted symmetry creates an effect where the second half of the line answers the first in a very distinct way.

And again the B’s of ‘bud buriest’, recalling  ‘beauty’s Rose‘, ‘bear‘,  ‘But thou…’, ‘bright eyes‘ and ‘abundance’.

We also have another pun with the word content, which means both ‘happiness’ and ‘contents’, i.e. the innermost wealth of his beauty. And ‘content‘continues the assonance of ‘fresh‘ and ‘herald’.

Line 12.

And, tender churl, mak’st waste in niggarding:

And, tender churl, | mak’st waste in ni | ggarding:

As with the first line of this quatrain, we have two consecutive epitrites, ending with the flourish of an appended pyrrhic.

This time round it’s two consecutive 3rd epitrites – which stand out all the more because they are the only 3rd epitrites in this sonnet.

‘And, tender churl‘ at the beginning of the last line of the last quatrain, echoes ‘His tender heir‘ at the beginning of the last line of the first quatrain. ‘Churl‘ also shares it’s ‘url‘ sound with ‘world’s‘ from the first line of the quatrain (‘world‘ and ‘world’s‘ then appear in the same 4th syllable position as ‘churl‘ in the final couplet). And ‘tender’ completes the sequence of assonance on the open ‘eh’: ‘fresh‘, ‘herald’, ‘content‘, ‘tender’.

‘Mak’st waste in niggarding’ contains both the near rhyme of ‘mak’st waste‘ and the assonance of ‘in niggarding’.

As with the two 2nd epitrites, Shakespeare has used certain tricks to lend these figures a heightened sense of cohesion (albeit in contrasting ways on this occasion: the first by creating connections with the previous lines of the quatrain; the second by creating internal connections within the two pairs of syllables).

And we also have repetition with difference (I gave another example of repetition with difference with two consecutive 2nd epitrites in Part 2). The first 3rd epitrite opens with a split spondee (a spondee with a break in the middle), and the split is followed by the trochaic, falling sound of ‘tender’; and the second 3rd epitrite has a separation after the 3rd syllable (just like the example I gave in Part 2). So the overall rhythm is more varied and expressive than a stolid: dum–dum-di-dum | dum–dum-di-dum-di-di; instead, we have dum, dum-di dum | dum–dum-di / dum-di-di. A break after the first syllable of the first figure contrasts with a separation before the last syllable of the second figure.

As well as each individual line of this final quatrain possessing a certain symmetry, there is also a certain symmetry to the quatrain as a whole: as I have already mentioned, the first and last lines of the quatrain both consist of two consecutive epitrites tailed off with an appended pyrrhic; and on top of this, the phrasal junctures of these two lines both come after the 4th syllable, and the phrasal junctures of the two middle lines both come after the 5th syllable.

Incidentally, it is a juncture after the 2nd beat (i.e. after the 4th or 5th syllable) that creates the strongest rhythmical cohesion in an iambic pentameter line.

The couplet

Line 13.

Pity the world, or else this glutton be,

Pity the world, | or else | this glu |tton be,

After the appeal to common wisdom in the 1st quatrain, and the reproach of the 2nd, the 3rd quatrain repeated the reproach of the 2nd. The positive exhortation one might have expected to see in the 3rd quatrain, to urge the addressee (a young man, as it turns out) to change his course of action, has now been squeezed into the opening choriamb of the closing couplet: ‘Pity the world‘. And we move straight on to the prophetic warning: ‘or else…’. With which we have the final open ‘e‘ of this sonnet.

And we have the most prominent B of the sonnet, with the end-line ‘be‘.

Line 14.

To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.

To eat | the world’s | due, by | the grave | and thee.

And we have the final B, opening the final phrase of the sonnet: “by the grave and thee“.

And that word “by” also contains the final “igh” sound, which has trickled its way through the whole sonnet: starting with the yearning “desire“, carrying through to “might…die“, “riper”, “time“; to the tight “bright eyes“, carrying through to “light’s“, “lies” and the repeated use of “thine” and “thy”; until we reach this final line, in which – in contrast to the yearning, hopeful “igh” of the opening line – we have the mournful “igh” of despair and loss.

Finally, as with the penultimate line of the 3rd quatrain, we have a metrically unvaried line with a break right in the middle. The patterning here is a little different. Here are the phrasal units:-

To eat

the world’s due,

by the grave

and thee.

And here are the phrasal patterns:-

di-dum              (iamb)

di-dum-di        (amphibrachic pattern)

dum-di-dum (cretic pattern)

di-dum              (iamb)

So in the middle we have the inverted symmetry of the amphibrach/cretic. The cretic ‘answers’ the amphibrach; and the final iamb, ‘and thee’, echoes the opening iamb, ‘To eat‘ – both by pattern and assonance.

This closing line of the sonnet contains a heightened sense of balance between the two halves of the line, elegantly answering the symmetry of the opening line.