TEN LITERARY DEVICES AND CONCEPTS
IN SHAKESPEARE’S PLAYS (MOSTLY MUCH ADO)
a.) the words do not go all the way across the page;
b.) the first word on each line is capitalized, regardless of the sentence break;
c.) there is usually a regular rhythm of unstressed and stressed syllables;
d.) there are 10 or 11 syllables in each line.
Example: “’Tis certain so. The Prince woos for himself.
Friendship is constant in all other things
Save in the office and affairs of love.” MUCH ADO, Act II, scene 1
You can tell if a passage is written in prose if
a.) the words go all the way across the page;
b.) the first word of each line does not begin with a capital unless it is the first word of a sentence;
c.) the words do not share a consistent rhythmic pattern.
Example: “O, she misused me past the endurance of a block! An oak but with one green leaf on it would have answered her; my very visor began to assume life and scold with her.” MUCH ADO, Act II, scene 1
As a general rule (applicable in about 95% of the cases) you can assume that
a.) upper class characters speak verse; lower class characters speak prose.
Examples: Claudio in verse (some of the time) versus Dogberry in prose
b.) serious material will be in verse; comic material will be in prose;
Examples: Claudio condemning Hero in Act III, scene 1 in verse
Benedick condemning women in Act I, scene 1 in prose
c.) noble characters will speak verse; villains will speak prose;
Examples: Don Pedro planning Claudio’s courtship in Act I, scene 1
Don John plotting against Claudio in Act I, scene 3
d.) romantic passages will be in verse; non-romantic passages in prose.
Examples: Claudio declaring his love to Hero in Act V, scene 4
Benedick and Beatrice speak prose throughout the play.
Watch for places where a character changes from one form to another in the same scene, such as when Claudio in Act I, scene 1 changes from prose when he banters comically with Benedick to verse when he tells Don Pedro of his love for Hero.
Or watch when a character switches from one form which she has consistently used to another, as in Act III, scene 1 when Beatrice, who always speaks prose, declares her love for Benedick in verse.
2. Use of Rhyme: Almost all of Shakespeare’s verse is called blank verse, meaning there are 10 or 11 syllables in each line, in iambic pentameter (five units or feet in an unstressed/stressed pattern) and the lines are unrhymed. Sometimes Shakespeare will use verse which is rhymed with similar sounds at the end of the lines. Such rhymed passages are done to make the contents more formal (Claudio’s and Don Pedro’s speech before Hero’s tomb in Act V, scene 3) or to emphasize the emotional content (Beatrice’s rhymed speech at the end of Act III, scene 1). Rhyme and unusual rhythm can be used to evoke magical charms as in Macbeth and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
3. Unusual Metaphors: One of the dominant qualities of Shakespeare’s language, regardless of the form, is the incidence of unusual comparisons, often expressed in metaphors where the comparison is implied. When Beatrice in Act I, scene 1 refers to Benedick as “Signior Mountanto,” she is using an elaborate Italian term for a kind of sword thrust in fencing, as if Benedick were a phony swordsman who just wanted to sound good. And, when in the same scene, Benedick refers to Beatrice as “Lady Disdain,” he is using one of the most insulting terms that could be used about a woman, sort of the Elizabethan equivalent of “ball-buster.” Sometimes a comparison can be very elaborate with a number of different parallels drawn between the two things being compared. In Act II, scene 1, at lines 72 -- 79 Beatrice compares different stages of love and marriage to different kinds of music and dance. In Shakespeare’s terms such an complex comparison is called a conceit, and they were highly prized by Shakespeare’s audiences.
4. Puns: A pun is a play on words, usually for comic effect. In Act II, scene 3 at line 139 Beatrice’s uncle, Leonato, is describing how his niece wrote a make-believe love letter to Benedick: “O, when she had written it, and was reading it/ over, she found ‘Benedick’ and ‘Beatrice’ between /the sheets.” The sheets of paper in the letter become the sheets on an imaginary bed in which the two people, represented by their names, might lie. Shakespeare’s audience valued such puns more than modern audiences do and found nothing strange in characters using puns in serious situations for serious dramatic purposes.
5. Malaprops: These are words which have been misused for comic effect. Often uneducated characters are shown misusing words, usually if they have two or more syllables, especially when they are trying to impress others. For example, the uneducated constable Dogberry, who likes to act like an important person, tells Leonato in Act iii, scene 5, line 43, “Our watch, sir, have indeed comprehended [for ‘apprehended’] two auspicious [for ‘suspicious’] persons.”
6. Taboo Words: Shakespeare has his characters use obscenities when he wishes to emphasize strong emotions. These obscenities, however, do not refer to sex or bodily waste; they are sacrilegious terms, which treat God’s name in an irreverent fashion, the strongest taboo in Shakespeare’s day. The two most frequent taboos are “Zounds” for “God’s wounds” and “Sblood” for “God’s blood.”
7. Bawdy: “Bawdy” is what Shakespeare called sexual references. Bawdy can be explicit, as when Beatrice in Act III., scene 4 at line 62 says, “I am stuffed,” meaning she has a cold; Margaret answers, “A maid [virgin] and stuffed [meaning pregnant]!” Or the bawdy can be implicit, as when Dogberry in Act III, scene 3, line 26, tells the watchmen, “You are to bid any man stand, in the Prince’s name.” References to “stand” in the comedies almost always carry the connotation of a male erection.
8. Cuckoldry: A man whose wife was unfaithful was called a “cuckold.” This fear of betrayal was an obsession for Shakespeare’s male characters. The cuckold was associated with the cuckoo bird, which supposedly laid its eggs in other birds’ nests, much as a man might get a cuckold’s wife pregnant. Accordingly to folklore a cuckold grew horns out of his forehead, invisible to him but plainly seen by everyone else as a badge of his public humiliation. For example, when Benedick’s friends in Act I, scene 1, line 252, kid him about eventually bearing the yoke of marriage, he responds, “The savage bull may, but if ever the sensible/ Benedick bear it, pluck off the bull’s horns and set/ them in my forehead.”
9. Venereal References: In Shakespeare’s day Europe faced a major public health crisis in the rampant spread of syphilis. Much like the spread of AIDS today, this sexually transmitted disease, often called the “pox,” had no known cure and was usually fatal. Furthermore, people were quick to attribute the disease to other countries, so that the English called it the “French disease,” just as the French blamed the Italians, and the Italians blamed the Spanish. In its final stages the most notable symptom of syphilis is the loss of hair. Shakespeare’s plays contain many references to this condition, almost all of them humorous. For example, in Act I, scene 2 of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, one character describes a phony beard he wants to wear as being “French crown colored,” that is, the golden yellow of a kind of coin called a French crown. His friend responds, “Many French crowns [heads] have no hair at all,” that is, suffer from advanced syphilis.
10. Oxymoron: An oxymoron is a self-contradictory phrase, something that cancels itself. Such common phrases as “jumbo shrimp” or “freezer burn” really don’t belong together. Shakespeare most often used oxymoronic phrases or concepts to talk about love and how it makes us feel “bittersweet” or “sweet sorrow.”