Did Shakespearean verse have a speech melodic or fixed rhythmic pattern?

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Did Shakespearean verse have a speech melodic or fixed rhythmic pattern?

Postby HelpMeListen » Fri Dec 24, 2021 4:55 pm

I was once taught that Shakespearean verse was the height of English language poetic development, because he was a master of rhyme and iambic pentameter.

To me at least it has no real beauty. It has a degree of rhythm - like rap, but you can use alternate stresses and rhythms to give it alternate meanings. It's overly wordy, and the words are overly complex, a celebration of being more erudite than the masses. Very unmusical.

(And seriously - the most famous example is a contemplation of suicide, a terrible thing to teach to kids.)

Then I read ee cumming's "what if a much of a which of a wind". It uses words as a musical notation used to create a clear definite melodic and rhythmic line. It breathes - you know exactly where the reader - I should say singer - pauses for breath. It is music. It's beautiful in the same way a song can be beautiful. The emotion sings out to you, rather than being described in an unending litany.

Then I started to wonder. Is it because I am an uncouth American? Would Shakespeare have any of the same aspects as ee cummings in a London accent, or would it have in Shakespeare's era?

Is ee cummings less beautiful outside the Americas? What aspects are lost?
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Re: Did Shakespearean verse have a speech melodic or fixed rhythmic pattern?

Postby einzelne » Fri Dec 24, 2021 6:20 pm

Pronunciation have changed, quite dramatically, that's why sometimes certain lines don't rime anymore.

I'm don't know if it helps to answer your question but check videos with Ben Crystal. He attempts to reconstruct the original pronunciation.
Also the videos of A.Z. Foreman are also worth exploring.

PS. I'm not native English speaker, but if I remember correctly, Shakespeare's English is way closer to 'uncouth' American English than to posh BBC English (which appeared at the end of the 19th century). Again, check A.Z. Foreman - he has a fantastic video on English pronunciation over the centuries.
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Re: Did Shakespearean verse have a speech melodic or fixed rhythmic pattern?

Postby HelpMeListen » Sun Dec 26, 2021 4:24 am

Interesting. Neither of those two people "sing" when speaking Shakespeare in what they call Original Pronunciation (OP). There is no real melody, and the rhythm still isn't really imposed by the words.

But Shakespeare does sound better in Original Pronunciation. And it becomes more interesting to hear, even if I don't know what some of those words are supposed to be.

I suppose it is a bit unfair to judge Shakespeare by modern standards of prosodic poetry - though English song certainly existed long before Shakepeare's day. I suppose Cummings was trying to do something different than Shakespeare. Regardless, it is still true for me, that Cummings has a beautiful song-like sound, and Shakespeare does not.

Incidentally, to connect this to my other thread, alll these people (Shakespearean actors and modern lecturers) are trained speakers, working hard to be understood. All their consonants and vowels are clearly spoken and distinct. I have little trouble knowing what sounds they mean to say, even when I don't happen to know the meaning of some of the words. For that matter, automatic caption generators are usually getting it right. In contrast, in modern TV and Film, they usually use more normal common ways of speaking. THAT is when I have trouble making out some of the words. Especially when they add in background music and special effects.
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Re: Did Shakespearean verse have a speech melodic or fixed rhythmic pattern?

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Sun Dec 26, 2021 4:25 pm

HelpMeListen wrote:Interesting. Neither of those two people "sing" when speaking Shakespeare in what they call Original Pronunciation (OP). There is no real melody, and the rhythm still isn't really imposed by the words.


Can you give us a link to a melodic recording of the ee cummings text? (I mean, just so we know what you're talking about. If it is melody, or prosody or something else.)
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Re: Did Shakespearean verse have a speech melodic or fixed rhythmic pattern?

Postby David1917 » Sun Dec 26, 2021 8:43 pm

HelpMeListen wrote:It's overly wordy, and the words are overly complex, a celebration of being more erudite than the masses.


It might seem this way 400 years later, but it is false. Shakespearean theatre was designed for a widely illiterate population, and in the absence of props and stage decor he had to convey everything just through words. The words are not "overly complex" they are just archaic to us as they existed in this transitory period between Middle English & Modern English. IIRC some contemporary critics thought he was punching above his own intellectual abilities, and that part of his success was writing in the vulgar rural style rather than the posh London style of his day.
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Re: Did Shakespearean verse have a speech melodic or fixed rhythmic pattern?

Postby Deinonysus » Fri Dec 31, 2021 4:59 pm

HelpMeListen wrote:Then I read ee cumming's "what if a much of a which of a wind". It uses words as a musical notation used to create a clear definite melodic and rhythmic line. It breathes - you know exactly where the reader - I should say singer - pauses for breath. It is music. It's beautiful in the same way a song can be beautiful. The emotion sings out to you, rather than being described in an unending litany.


I'm going to start here because this is the part that puzzled me the most. The way you described the E. E. Cummings poem (contrary to popular belief, he did capitalize his own name) is exactly how I would describe Shakespeare. I think there may be some subtleties of iambic pentameter that you're missing. In particular, look for syllables where you get a trochee instead of an iamb, and look for where a sentence keeps going past the end of the line; these are important factors that control the ebb and flow, and they can help to indicate breathing. You also do occasionally get a skipped beat, indicating a longer pause and room to breath a bit, like after the word "pause" in this passage:

Code: Select all

“For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.”

The Cummings poem you mentioned has a trisyllabic meter with a lot of dactyls, which gives it a bouncy, 6/8 feel. Maybe this made it more approachable for you than a disyllabic iambic meter, which has a more mellow 4/4 feel.

I was once taught that Shakespearean verse was the height of English language poetic development, because he was a master of rhyme and iambic pentameter.

To me at least it has no real beauty. It has a degree of rhythm - like rap, but you can use alternate stresses and rhythms to give it alternate meanings. It's overly wordy, and the words are overly complex, a celebration of being more erudite than the masses. Very unmusical.

(And seriously - the most famous example is a contemplation of suicide, a terrible thing to teach to kids.)

I feel like you're comparing Shakespeare to rap to damn it with faint praise, which is ironic because rap can be one of the most rhythmically intricate musical genres out there with complex internal rhyme schemes.

A couple of things about the wordiness: one, as far as I know, terse writing did not become popular in Western Literature until the 20th century. Two, wordplay and puns were something Shakespeare's audience enjoyed and expected. Like the Wu-Tang Clan (which used a wider set of vocabulary than Shakespeare), the goal was not to alienate the audience by going over their heads but to dazzle and entertain them.

Also, Shakespeare was never supposed to be children's entertainment. It was HBO, not PBS. His plays had sex, murder, suicide, prejudice, and dick and fart jokes aplenty. Hamlet's "to be or not to be" soliloquy is not meant to model ideal behavior for children, it's showing a man in one of his darkest moments when he's placed in a very difficult situation. The genre of tragedy goes back to the Ancient Greeks, who considered it a religious experience to live out the difficulties of famous figures and experience catharsis at the end.

Then I started to wonder. Is it because I am an uncouth American? Would Shakespeare have any of the same aspects as ee cummings in a London accent, or would it have in Shakespeare's era?

Is ee cummings less beautiful outside the Americas? What aspects are lost?

You're probably missing out on some wordplay. So would a speaker of a posh English accent, which is non-rhotic (Shakespeare spoke a rhotic dialect). But the meter, which seems to be your main complaint, should be mostly unchanged. But scanning the meter is a skill that takes some cultivation. So just because you're not into it at first glance, it doesn't mean you won't ever be able to appreciate it.
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