Monday, May 28, 2012

Connecting Thoughts in A Verse Line

I've made the case before elsewhere on this blog that it's important to hold (not break up with pauses or stops) the metered line. I'm not going to defend that idea here, but rather, take a look at how studying what is in each metered line, and where the line breaks appear in the sentence, can teach you about your character.


(This is a work in progress, but I'm posting it anyway. If you have comments, please leave them, and I'll work the answers into the finished post.)

For this I'm going to use Paulina's speech from The Winter's Tale. It has excellent examples of some of the many aspects of a verse line.

Most of the speech is self-explanatory, but the premise is that she is reporting to the king that his wife is dead, as a result of his actions. It may or may not be true, depending on whether you think Paulina can bring the dead to life from statues or not. In either case, Paulina will not bring back the queen for many years, not until he has done much penance for the death. As such, this speech is meant to break him, to get him to very quickly (as the script goes) repent. So she tortures him with words.

[The passage is at the bottom. You can read the points I list and then scroll down to find them in the passage. I'm also embedding comments into the passage itself.]

So here are some of the things that stand out in the passage:

First, in verse the line drives to the end, and the last word is very important. I've put the last words in red so they stand out to you.

Second, she really needs him not to interrupt her. He'll just have her hauled off to prison like everyone else, and her plan (natural or supernatural) will fail. So after her shocking outburst in the first two lines, that have full stops, but also are so shocking as to freak him out into momentary silence, she has only four full stops in the rest of the speech. I've marked them with //. I see two interesting things in this: a) that each of those sections are quite a roll in and of themselves, and b) she only stops when she says something so shocking that she's pretty sure he will be speechless for a second.

My third point is really part of the second: other than the full stops, she ends her sentences within the metered lines. People have different feelings about punctuation, some ignore it entirely in favor of the verse line, some assign meaning to each type of punctuation. I'm taking a simpler approach, in that everything more strenuous than a comma is a caesura, or the end of the thought. I've marked those in green. But notice how they are tucked inside the verse line; this keeps her from being interrupted.

Fourth, invariably when she does end the sentence inside the verse line, it is probably something he might have a somewhat reasonable argument against, but she blows past these points so fast he never gets the chance, and so this doesn't all disintegrate into a pointless debate. (I've noted these in the embedded comments.)


What studied torments, tyrant, hast for me?//
What wheels? racks? fires? what flaying? boiling?//
In leads or oils? what old or newer torture
     the questions are rhetorical, she blows past them 
     torture: he's done a lot of bad things, but hasn't yet been accused of torture, it's a loaded word
Must I receive, whose every word deserves 
     taking the words right out of his mouth, so he can't interject them, she's playing him
To taste of thy most worst? Thy tyranny 
    caesura: "don't answer that, it's rhetorical, I'm moving on..."
    tyranny: you can let this land with a brief pause to set it up against "jealousies"
Together working with thy jealousies,
    same thing, let it land
Fancies too weak for boys, too green and idle 
For girls of nine, O, think what they have done 
     this is very clever, she puts him in mind of his dead "boy" and "girl" while at the same time blowing past it, so that...
And then run mad indeed, stark mad! for all
     ...he must be feeling quite mad at this moment indeed 
Thy by-gone fooleries were but spices of it.//
     shock: she just told the king his actions were "fooleries"
That thou betray'dst Polixenes,'twas nothing;//
     this line is shocking because the very first thing she accuses him of, she dismisses as "nothing", which is pretty surprising, given where she's been headed up until now
That did but show thee, of a fool, inconstant 
And damnable ingrateful: nor was't much,
     she blows past "ingrateful", as he would no doubt argue the point but she doesn't want to debate it
Thou wouldst have poison'd good Camillo's honour,
To have him kill a king: poor trespasses,
    she blows past accusing him of attempted murder
More monstrous standing by: whereof I reckon 
     she maintains a lot of suspense by repeating "this isn't the bad part", and yet blows past these statements so he can't find out what she means
The casting forth to crows thy baby-daughter 
To be or none or little; though a devil 
Would have shed water out of fire ere done't://
     shock: she's just compared the king to the devil
     caesura at "little": again with the suspense trick, but since she does want him to stew on this one for a bit, she follows up with the shock trick so she can hit a full stop 
Nor is't directly laid to thee, the death 
Of the young prince, whose honourable thoughts,
     burying "prince" in the middle has a similar effect as the caesuras-- she cuts off his ability to respond to that
     thoughts: it's Leontes' sick thoughts that got him here, so this is very loaded
Thoughts high for one so tender, cleft the heart 
That could conceive a gross and foolish sire 
Blemish'd his gracious dam: this is not, no,
     blows past this accusation of what he did to ruin his wife so he doesn't have a chance to argue with her about it
Laid to thy answer: but the last,—O lords,
    the suspense trick again, twice for good measure
When I have said, cry 'woe!' the queen, the queen, 
     the effect of these two caesuras is to create a parenthetical phrase that bridges the two verse lines so they flow inexorably to "queen"
The sweet'st, dear'st creature's dead, 
and vengeance for't 
Not dropp'd down yet.//
     these three short lines at the end, with big pauses, indicates that she has achieved her objective, she got to the end and he is speechless and now she has all the time in the world

No comments:

Post a Comment

About Crafting Shakespeare

Welcome to Crafting Shakespeare, a blog where actors, directors, and other theatre professionals can discuss the craft of performing Shakespeare. This blog is just getting under way, so if you would like to post a question about Shakespearean performance, or if you have an idea for a topic, please write me at jill at austinstages dot com and I'll do my best to get it answered promptly. Thanks! (Also, feel free to comment on posts and let's get a discussion going!)