How Does He Write That Stuff?

Scansion and Text Analysis

Scansion

Describing the rhythms of poetry by dividing the lines into feet, marking the locations of stressed and unstressed syllables, and counting the syllables.Thus, when we describe the rhythm of a

poem, we “scan” the poem and mark the stresses (/) and absences of stress (^) and count the number of feet.

Why Scansion? To scan a poem is to make a diagram of the

stresses and absence of stress we find in it. Studying rhythms, “scanning,” is not just a way

of pointing to syllables; it is also a matter of listening to a poem and making sense of it.

To scan a poem is one way to indicate how to read it aloud; in order to see where stresses fall, you have to see the places where the poet wishes to put emphasis.

That is why when scanning a poem you may find yourself suddenly understanding it.

Poetry terms

Rhythm: the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line.

Foot: basic unit of verse composed of 1-4 syllables

Meter: the number of feet in a line.

Iambic Pentameter Shakespeare wrote in both prose and

poetry. When he wrote in poetry, he used one meter almost exclusively- iambic pentameter

What is Iambic Pentameter? Iambic Pentameter has:

Ten syllables in each line Five pairs of alternating unstressed

and stressed syllables

How do we recognize it? The rhythm in each line sounds like: ba-BUM / ba-BUM / ba-BUM / ba-BUM / ba-

BUM Most of Shakespeare’s famous quotations fit

into this rhythm. For example:

If mu- / -sic be / the food / of love, / play on Is this / a dag- / -ger I / see be- / fore me?

Each pair of syllables is called an iambus. You’ll notice that each iambus is made up of one unstressed and one stressed beat (ba-BUM).

In everyday life, nobody speaks or writes in perfect iambic rhythm, except at moments: “a HAM on RYE and HIT the MUStard HARD!”

Poets don’t even write in iambic very long, although when they do, they have chosen iambic because it is the rhythm that most closely resemble everyday speech.

Scan this Iambic Pentameter You know that it would be untrue,

You know that I would be a liar,If I was to say to youGirl, we couldn’t get much higher.Come on, baby, light my fire.Try to set the night on fire.--Jim Morrison, “Light My Fire”

Meters Pentameter is one name for the number of feet

in a line. The commonly used names for line lengths are:

monometer one footdimeter two feettrimeter three feettetrameter four feet pentameter five feethexameter six feetheptameter seven feetoctameter eight feet

Feminine Ending In his plays, Shakespeare didn’t always stick to

ten syllables. He often played around with iambic pentameter to give color and feeling to his character’s speeches. This is the key to understanding Shakespeare's language.

Feminine EndingSometimes Shakespeare added an extra unstressed

beat at the end of a line to emphasize a character’s sense of contemplation. This variation is called a feminine ending and Hamlet’s famous question is the perfect example:To be, / or not / to be: / that is / the ques- / -tion

F.E. examples He does confess he feels himself

distracted he DOES / conFESS / he FEELS /

himSELF / disTRACTed How all occasions do inform against me, how ALL / ocCA / sions DO / inFORM /

aGAINST me The queen carouses to thy fortune, Hamlet. the QUEEN / caROUS / es TO / thy FOR /

tunes HAMlet

Other feet

Iambic(^/) and anapestic (^^/)meters are called rising meters because their movement rises from unstressed syllable to stressed

trochaic(/^) and dactylic(/^^) meters are called falling. In the twentieth century, the bouncing meters--anapestic and dactylic--have been used more often for comic verse than for serious poetry.

Spondee and Pyrrhic Spondee (//) and pyrrhic (^^) are called feet, even

though they contain only one kind of stressed syllable.

They are never used as the sole meter of a poem; if they were, it would be like the steady impact of nails being hammered into a board--no pleasure to hear or dance to.

But inserted now and then, they can lend emphasis and variety to a meter

Yeats- “Who Goes With Fergus?” ^ ^ / / ^ ^ / / (^^//^^//)And the white breast of the dim sea,

More textual terms Inversion Shakespeare also reverses the order of the

stresses in some iambi to help emphasize certain words or ideas.

Occasionally, Shakespeare will completely break the rules and place two stressed syllables ( a trochee) in the same iambus, as the following quote from Richard III demonstrates:Now is / the win- / -ter of / our dis- / content

The fourth iambus emphasizes that it is “our discontent,” and the first iambus emphasizes that we are feeling this “now.”

The content of the line is the same, but something has changed — the weight of it is somehow different. The trochee breaks the rhythm and makes a

particular word (and therefore a particular idea that the word expresses) stand out.

It's important to remember that the point of all of this is to discover Shakespeare's acting notes from beyond the grave When you notice a trochee, you explore the changed

and deepened meaning that comes with shifting the pattern of emphasis.

Contractions Contractions have been around as long as language

has existed. Some of Shakespeare's contractions are familiar to the modern ear, and some aren't.

You can see both the familiar and the unfamiliar in Cloten's observation, "It' almost morning, is't not?" (Cymbeline 2.3.9). Is't is a common contraction for is it.

Many contractions, including the following, are the same as those we use today: "I'll be a brave judge!" (1 Henry IV 1.2.62). "I'm not their father" (Cymbeline 4.2.28).

Contracting vowels To make his verses come out right, with the

correct number of syllables, Shakespeare also contracted some vowels and ran words together.

For example, the other; with three syllables, becomes th 'other; with only two.

A word that has a final syllable of est can also be contracted, as in thou knows, for thou knowest.

Shakespeare used contractions anywhere he needed to adjust the number of syllables, or just to make a line sound better.

Contracting vowels

He often used the following contractions, but they have since fallen into disuse:

't—it 'tis--it is o'er—over e'er—ever ne'er--never

Elision Elision- As in modern English, words often

appear in a reduced or elided form, with the omitted element shown by an apostrophe.

The reason for the elision varies: in some cases it enables a word to fit the metrical character of a line or focuses the emphasis within a sentence more sharply

In others it helps to capture the colloquial character of conversational speech or identifies a character’s idiosyncratic way of talking.

have > ha’○ Will you ha’ the truth on’t?

shall > s’○ thou’s hear our counsel

wilt > ’t, ’lt○ an thou’lt mouth, / I’ll rant as well as

thouwouldst thou > woo’t

○ Woo’t weep?

Antithesis

To be or not to beYou've heard it so many times that you may have forgotten to listen to the significance of these words.

In these six words Shakespeare gives us two complete opposites: existing and not existing. This use of a word (or sentence) being

placed against another to form a balanced contrast is known in rhetoric as ANTITHESIS.