When tasked with reading Shakespeare for the first time, it is often like being asked to read another language. His work can feel daunting and sometimes unapproachable unless you are a Shakespeare scholar, which the majority of us are not, and the age of the plays can also make it feel intimidating.
However, after reading this you will (hopefully!) have no need to fear it any more, as we are armed with lots of tips and tricks to help you tackle Shakespeare; whether the play is new to you or even if you’re still struggling in the days leading up to your exams, these failsafe things to look out for are sure to have you feeling confident and secure when faced with the bard!
Is the Text in Verse or Prose?
One of the first, and sometimes most obvious, things that we can look out for when reading Shakespeare, is to identify whether the text is written in verse or prose.
So what do we mean when speaking about verse or prose? Verse is what we most commonly associate with Shakespeare, and Blank Verse is made up of 10 (roughly) syllables to a line, consisting of stressed and un-stressed syllables which follow a rhythmic pattern of de-DUM de-DUM de-DUM de-DUM de-DUM, with the capitalised ‘DUM’ being the stressed syllables, which you may recognise as being called iambic pentameter.
For example, if we take the first few lines of the prologue from Romeo and Juliet: “Two households, both alike in dignity,/In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,/From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,/Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.”, we can see that each line in 10 syllables in length, and follows the de-DUM, de-DUM pattern. Most characters will often be speaking in blank verse, and it is commonly associated with characters of a higher status, and when characters are talking about more elevated topics and emotions. This is something that can help you decipher the type of character that is speaking straight away, as well as giving you an idea about the nature of what it is that they are talking about.
However, Shakespeare also wrote in prose, which is what we would more commonly associate with contemporary writing, and although it still uses Shakespearean languages, it is easy to distinguish from the typical blank verse trademarks. If we take a look at Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking scene, we can see the use of prose in her speech:
“The Thane of Fife had a wife. Where is she now? What, will these hands ne’er be clean? No more o’ that, my lord, no more o’ that. You mar all with this starting.”.
Generally, prose is used by Shakespeare for lower status or comedic characters, or when the topic of their dialogue is less elevated, but from what we know of Lady Macbeth, she is neither comedic nor low status – just look at her name! So why would Shakespeare be using prose for her in this scene? Prose can also do a lot to tell us the state of mind of Shakespeare’s characters, especially when there is a shift in the way that the characters speak from one part of the play to another, which is particularly relevant in this scene of Lady Macbeth’s. She speaks every other scene in blank verse, but in this scene, the prose can point us towards the fact that her state of mind has altered drastically, and that she is no longer in control of the situation as the blank verse pointed towards. Instead, the prose allows us to speculate that she may be losing grip on reality, and that there is a descent in to what many people have called her ‘madness’.
By simply assessing what form the text is in, we can already decipher so much about the character and tone of the scene, especially if there is a change in the way that characters are speaking, such as Lady Macbeth’s shift from blank verse into prose, which will lead us to question why these changes are happening. After that, we’re well on our way to making more sense of the Shakespearean world we’re immersed in.
Can You Read Around the Words You Don’t Understand?
Often, the thing that many people get stumped on when approaching Shakespeare, is a fear of the typically ‘Shakespearean’ words, as these aren’t used nowadays and can feel much more complex than they really are. However, if you are given a piece of Shakespeare that you have to read without being able to use a glossary or ask for help, a great way to decipher a line or phrase that contains these trickier words, is by reading around the bit you don’t know.
If we take an extract from one of Macbeth’s most famous scenes, the dagger scene, we can use this method to help us to overcome the challenge of working around more complex Shakespearean language in order to find the sense:
“Thou marshall'st me the way that I was going; / And such an instrument I was to use. / Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses, / Or else worth all the rest; I see thee still, / And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood, /Which was not so before.”
There are quite a few unfamiliar words in this extract, as well as phrasing which is not used in modern day, so it is understandable that you might feel a little confused or overwhelmed when confronted with this for the first time.
However, if we put the speech into context, and try to figure out the lines that make more sense both in today’s terms and in Shakespeare’s day, then we will be able to form a near enough complete understanding without having to look at a Shakespeare glossary or translation! The speech begins ‘Is this a dagger which I see before me…?’, and Macbeth proceeds to address the dagger itself as if it were a character, which we can see when he uses the word ‘thou’ or you.
Now, the word ‘marshall’st’ is not one that we use now, so we might want to ignore it for the time being, so what happens if we read around it? The sentence then reads something like ‘You (something) me the way that I was going; And such an instrument I was to use’.
From this, can we infer that the first part of the sentence is to do with being told or directed where to go, as it makes the most logical sense when trying to fill in the blank where the unknown word was. So if we then take the line to read something like ‘You directed me the way that I was going’, we can infer that Macbeth sees the dagger as showing him what he already knows he needed to do, whether taking him to the literal direction of Duncan’s bedchamber, or the direction of committing regicide in order to fulfil the prophecy.
By eliminating one word from the sentence, we have been able to not only infer what the meaning of the word might be, but also given meaning to the sentence, and therefore the way that the speech is going. Why not try it with the other 5 lines shown above and see what you’re able to understand using this method?
How Can Punctuation Help?
Shakespeare very cleverly gave his actors everything they needed to know about the characters through a number of methods, and one that is often overlooked is his use of punctuation. The use of punctuation can often be a great indicator of how Shakespeare’s characters are feeling, and their emotional state, which can be an incredibly useful shortcut when we need to get a sense of how the character is behaving in the scene. Take this extract from Act 1 scene 1 of Romeo and Juliet, where Romeo is talking to Benvolio and Malvolio about how it feels to be in love:
Alas, that love, whose view is muffled still, Should, without eyes, see pathways to his will! Where shall we dine? O me! What fray was here? Yet tell me not, for I have heard it all. Here's much to do with hate, but more with love. Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate! O any thing, of nothing first create! O heavy lightness! serious vanity! Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms! Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health! Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is! This love feel I, that feel no love in this. Dost thou not laugh?
Can you see the amount of punctuation that Shakespeare is using? We know that an exclamation mark is used when someone is declaring something, or used at a point of heightened tension, fear or even elation and joy, and here Romeo seems to go through a variety of emotions. Without having to understand the sense of this speech immediately, we can see that almost every line of Romeo’s ends with an exclamation mark, so we can assume that this is a speech of intense or heightened emotion. He begins by talking about the unfairness of love, and that, although love is meant to be blind ‘view is muffled still’, it holds a power over people that is outside of their control, and is suited to love itself ‘pathways to his will’.
There is an element of frustration in this initial exclamation, which we can infer has a childlike quality because of the exclamation mark at the end, so we can already get a sense of the mood of the speech. The following exclamation marks are at the end of similar outbursts about the unfairness of love, and the chaos and complexity of the extreme emotions of love and hate. What’s also interesting to notice is that, after the initial exclamation, Romeo has a question that breaks up his thought: ‘Where shall we dine? Oh me! What fray was here?’. Immediately after Romeo has been speaking about the huge emotion of love, he seems to snap out of it to ask his friends where they’re going for dinner, before noticing around him the signs of a fight, or ‘fray’.
He then doesn’t give anyone a chance to answer his questions, and is pulled back into his own musings on love and hate. From this, we can see that he is incredibly distracted, almost to the point of being self-absorbed, which shows a youthfulness in the way that he shifts between thoughts, emotion and direction. Isn’t it amazing that we can learn so much about a character just from analysing the punctuation they’re using? Stating the obvious, but Shakespeare really knew what he was doing!
What Can We Learn From the Structure of the Text?
Following on from the above point about how Shakespeare told us everything we need to know about a character’s state of mind from the punctuation they were using, he also, very cleverly, did the same thing with how he structured his writing. If we continue to look at Romeo’s speech from Act 1 scene 1, there are further clues about Romeo’s emotional state that can be found in how the lines are formed. For example, if we take this portion of the speech:
Where shall we dine? O me! What fray was here? Yet tell me not, for I have heard it all. Here's much to do with hate, but more with love. Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate! O any thing, of nothing first create! O heavy lightness! serious vanity!
We can see that three of the lines are broken up by the use of punctuation in the middle, which disrupts the normal flow of the iambic pentameter, which is definitely no accident! We now know that the question marks can hint towards Romeo’s distraction, and perhaps heightened sense of awareness, but the fact that the question mark and following exclamation mark comes in the middle of the sentence is Shakespeare’s way of demonstrating Romeo’s disjointed thoughts. The same goes for the lines ‘Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate!’, and ‘O heavy lightness! serious vanity!’, as we expect the lines to flow from start to end of the 10 syllable rhythm, but by adding punctuation to the middle of the lines, we can infer that Romeo cannot maintain a steady flow of thought, and that they are broken by his exclamations and intensity of feeling.
Another way that Shakespeare uses structure to tell us about the plot and character, is how he uses, or doesn’t use, iambic pentameter. I mentioned earlier about the fact that blank verse has 10 syllables to a line, which is often true, but there are also times when Shakespeare uses 9, 11 or even 12 syllables to a line, but don’t let this be something to add to any confusion! In fact, when you know what to look out for, it can help to simplify the meaning of a particular section of text by telling us what the emotional state of the character is. Take one of the most famous speeches in Shakespeare, Hamlet’s ‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy:
To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles And by opposing end them.
If we count out the syllables of the first 4 lines, we can see that there are in fact 11 syllables per line, rather than the usual 10, so what does this show us? By creating a structure for his characters to speak within, Shakespeare’s 10 syllable lines represent a normality and a generally accepted way of speaking in his worlds, so when his characters veer outside of that structure, they are telling us something. When characters are using 11 or even 12 syllables in a line, it can be seen as representative of having too much to say, and thoughts that are too big to be constrained by the 10 syllable structure.
This is very true of Hamlet’s speech, as he is grappling with a huge topic of whether to live, or not, and is arguing with himself to try and find an answer to this enormous question. We can infer that his thoughts are moving too quickly for him, and that the enormity of the thoughts are breaking out of the constraints of the structure of both ‘normal’ speech patterns, and of society. On the other hand, when there are 8 or 9 syllables to a line, what ends up becoming the most interesting thing is what happens within that extra beat, and what that moment of pause might show us.
Later on in the same speech, Hamlet says “Must give us pause—there's the respect…”, which is only 8 lines, and interesting that the word ‘pause’ is used within the line. For an actor playing this part, they may choose to add in a pause for two beats in the middle of the line as if in contemplation, or even at the end of the line, before coming to a more definite answer in the following, 10 syllable line. This extra beat could represent a feeling of hesitation, uncertainty, or even feeling a need to regain control before proceeding with a speech, which is an amazing thing to be able to include within the structure of a play without needing to explain that that is what the character should be doing, or how they should be feeling.
What’s amazing about Shakespeare is that there are so many layers within his writing that can be uncovered to reveal more and more about the themes, the emotions and the meaning of his plays, and hopefully this deep-dive in to some of his techniques has opened your eyes up to the potential of what can be discovered, without a glossary in sight!
We hope you enjoyed learning about Shakespeare in this way, and take a look at our other blogs for more English tips and tricks. Looking for an English tutor? Contact us here and we would be happy to help you!
Blog Post Crafted by Cicely
Cicely works on our Admin Team, and also tutors extensively.
In 2020, Cicely discovered her love of teaching, and has been tutoring English Literature and Drama ever since, as well as running a drama school audition help service with her friend and fellow actor to help prospective drama school students with their audition speeches.
Cicely has had her poetry published in anthologies and online, and in her free time is an avid reader. She loves living by the sea, a good podcast, and taking long walks in the countryside.
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