Poetry details (blank verse) 11.1.04
blank verse is iambic pentameter that doesn't rhyme. Basically, any line that has 10 syllables is PROBABLY in blank verse. (On occasion a line might not have the distinctive da DUH da DUH da DUH da DUH da DUH of iambs.) When you look at a page of Shakespeare, some of the phrases run to more than one line (like a usual paragraph would be), but most are written as if poetry. The ones that look like poetry are (probably) blank verse. So, looking at p. 108 in Hamlet (Act II, Scene ii, ll. 181 and ff.), the way I read it, Hamlet's lines, "Excellent well. You are a fishmonger" and his "Then I would you were so honest a man" are blank verse (10 syllables), but then he goes into straight prose.
As a side note, this is why the actual Shakespeare text formatting sometimes has lines that start off to the right. For example, on p. 24 (I.i.60-61), Marcellus says of the Ghost, "It is offended." Barnardo responds, "See, it stalks away," but Barnardo's line is not justified left like the others. That is because this is a split line, and both of them combined equals one line of blank verse (or, ten syllables).
A good movie wouldn't show the blank verse, even as a good reader of poetry won't stop at every line but will follow the punctuation. I think in the Branaugh version especially, the actors go VERY quickly over the panic lines at the beginning (with the Ghost). I think of the blank verse/prose combos as one of the hidden treasures for us "in the know"--it doesn't diminish Shakespeare NOT to know this, but it increases the WOW factor for those who DO.
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Customer's question:
I am doing British Lit. and have a very specific quesiton about the Blank verse. I still don't get it. We read the lines in Hamlet in sing-song and it doesn't explain it. Our conclusion was that Hamlet goes in and out of Blank verse when he is acting "sane" and "insane". We just can't figure out which is which. Help!
Would the movie show the use of Blank verse? The Kenneth Branaugh one...not Mel Gibson's.