ABSTRACT
The main aim of this book was to find out how English Renaissance playwrights used versification: why they started to compose plays in iambic pentameter, what did it add to the contents of the plays, how this verse form evolved, who were Shakespeare’s predecessors, contemporaries, and followers. Thus, the center of my attention was Shakespeare. But a poet does not spring out of nothing, like Venus out of the sea foam, and very few poets have invented a new form of versification. To understand an author, to find out his stylistic traits and his place in literature, to approach the chronology of his works and to establish his share in collaborative plays we need to know more about the poet’s background. This is why the title of this book is Shakespeare and the Versification of English Drama, 1561-1642.
