Unit 1: Drama


2. Use of Verse Modern plays are usually written in prose, although some songs or verse could occur incidentally in the course of the plot. If you quickly flick through a copy of a Shakespeare play, you will see at a glance that the text looks quite different on the page. It is mainly a type of verse with some occasional use of prose.


Verse is easily recognisable because it appears in narrow blocks. On the leſt-hand side of the page, the lines all begin with capital letters and are aligned; however, the ends of the lines create a jagged, unequal appearance. Tere are two main types of verse – rhymed and blank.


(a) Rhymed verse


Rhymed verse usually takes the form of rhyming couplets, i.e. two successive lines of verse where the final words rhyme. Tese rhymes are very easy to hear when you read the text aloud. If you give a letter to each rhyme, the pattern would be aa bb cc etc.


Look at this example from A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;


And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind. Nor hath Love’s mind of any judgement taste; Wings, and no eyes, figure unheedy haste: And therefore is Love said to be a child, Because in choice he is so oſt beguiled.


a a b b c c


Notice how the capital letters at the start of each line are arranged in a neat column on the leſt-hand side, while the right-hand side is uneven and appears to slope inwards, although this will not always be the case. Te important thing is that each pair of lines (couplets) rhyme.


Rhymed verse can also use other rhyming patterns. For example, in this extract from Much Ado About Nothing alternate lines rhyme.


Good morrow, masters; put your torches out: Te wolves have prey’d; and look, the gentle day, Before the wheels of Phoebus, round about Dapples the drowsy east with spots of grey.


a b a b


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