Litté 1/

V e rs e a n d p ro s e in K in g L e a r

Source: Première leçon sur: The Tragedy of King Lear, Henri Suhamy, Ellipses.

! 27% of prose on the whole. Fairly impt percentage for a tragedy. ! Also exceptional amount of lyrical verse (songs, riddles) represented by the Fool & Edgar. Definitions and technical elements: ! Blank verse = unrhymed verse. Does not mean free verse. ! Lyrical verse: songs, riddles, mock-prophecies, fables, nursery rhymes. ! Doggerel: burlesque verse which has other elemnt of formal regularity than the rhyme at the end. ! A ribald (= referring to sexual matters) couplet in doggerel is addressed by the Fool to the audience at the end of Act I. ! Lines in iambic decasyllables, more often called iambic pentameter. ! Iambic rhythm: each line must be stressed on the even syllables, whereas the odd syllables must be unstressed. Of there is an 11th an unstressed syllable, it is not an irregularity, it is called a feminine ending: the whole line is then called feminine. ! A masculine line, 10 syllables, stressed syll according to the iambic pattern are the 2nd, 4th, 6th, 8th and 10th: My train are men of choice and rarest parts That all particulars of duty know (1.4.255) ! Feminine line, 11 syll, 10th stressed and 11th unstressed: O, reason not the need ! Our basest beggars (2.2.453) ! The iambic pattern is not applied so strictly by Shak as a rule. ! Iamb = unstressed/stressed ! Trochee = stressed/unstressed ! Pyrrhic = unstressed unstressed

! Spondee = stressed stressed ! Sometimes the same words must be pronounced differently according to the conventional necessities of the verse ! Diaeresis: a certain kind of pronunciation, in which a syllable containing 2 vowels in succession, is divided and lengthened into 2 distinct syll: Then shall the realm of Albion Come to great confusion (3.2.91) ! Pronunciation of Albion and confusion in respectively 3 and 4 syll is made compulsory by the needs of metre, rhythm, and rhyme. By stressing the on syllables, the rhyme is made possible. ! Not many diaeresis in Kl. ! Enjambements/run-on lines: quite a lot in KL, but we can‘t be sure that Shak intended to create an overflow. Punctuation pb in quarto and folio. They add extra tension to the prosody, impose an effort at the end of the line, corresponding to some pathetic or dramatic emotion. ! P and b alliterations are frequent in the play, often associated with the expression of violence and anger, contempt. ! Lear’s wanderings are expressed in prose. ! Edgar when he is mad speaks in prose, but his prose is highly poetic, rhytmical, alliterative. ! The Fool speaks in prose.