ABSTRACT
Passage is an example of blank verse, a verse form popular in Shakespeares time. It uses a rhythmic scheme known as the iambic pentameter. This will take us into the fundamentals of metre, starting with the notion of a syllable. One difference is that in prose you do not usually find stress sequences which are regular, sentence after sentence. Speakers are just not concerned to speak in such a way that their stress patterns are regular; they are much more focused on getting their message across. It is related to the differences between prose and poetry considered. There are a number of factors which control how much prose is used. Many of them revolve around the notion that verse is high, sublime, poetic, while prose is low, mundane and, well, prosaic. A common way of analysing lines of poetry involves a unit of analysis which takes into account stressed/unstressed sequences. Syllables in Shakespeare are more or less as in PDE.
