Blank verse

Blank verse is defined in Cambridge Dictionary as “a type of poetry that does not rhyme, usually with ten syllables in each line.” It is interesting to see that the definition of blank verse in the American section of the Cambridge dictionary differs practically only in the second part: There’s no mention of the number of syllables in each line and I’d say it might be because the UK had Shakespeare and the USA did not.

Let me explain what I mean by that. William Shakespeare, except for being probably the most famous writer of all times, was also a master of blank verse, as Kim Ballard indicates in this article Prose and verse in Shakespeare’s plays.

We can observe these breathtaking writing skills of Shakespeare in a big part of his work, for example in the sonnet 18:

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;

Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:

   So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

   So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Another great demonstration of Shakespeare’s blank verse can be seen in The Merchant of Venice:

The quality of mercy is not strain’d,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
‘Tis mightiest in the mightiest, it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown.
(4.1.184–89)

In case you’re wondering what the difference between blank verse and free verse is, I can highly recommend this two minutes long video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzeuQK4MCKE&ab_channel=EnglishNerd

Works Cited:

Ballard, Kim. “Prose and Verse in Shakespeare’s Plays.” British Library, 15 Mar. 2016, www.bl.uk/shakespeare/articles/prose-and-verse-in-shakespeares-plays.

“Blank Verse.” Cambridge Dictionary, dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/blank-verse.

Shakespeare, W. Shakespeare's Sonnets. Edited by Katherine Duncan-Jones, Repr, Thomson Learning, 2003.

“2-Minute Writer: Blank Verse & Free Verse.” YouTube, YouTube, 24 Jan. 2022, www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzeuQK4MCKE&ab_channel=EnglishNerd.

 author of the page: Alena Sauerová