How to Read Shakespeare (and hopefully—understand it!)

Stress or Accent The greatest stress of a line is almost always at the end in Shakespeare. Example: “Wherefore art thou Romeo?” If you place the stress at the beginning, on “where,” it fosters the wrong meaning. If you place the stress at the end of the line, on “Romeo,” you get the correct meaning.

Punctuation Pay close attention to… punctuation If a line ends with a period—STOP. If a line ends with a comma, PAUSE. If a line does not end with punctuation, keep reading until you see the punctuation. Do not randomly stop at the end of a line.

Word Endings When you see a word that ends in –ed , or –d with an accent mark over it, pronounce the ending as a separate syllable. This won’t change the meaning of the word, but it will keep the rhythm. For example: “star-cross’d lovers; or midadventur’d

Blank Verse Shakespeare wrote in “blank verse”—a type of poetry that does not always rhyme, and has a set rhythm. The rhythm of Blank Verse is called, “iambic pentameter.” An iamb is a “foot” of poetry that has an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed. Iambic Pentameter has ? iambs.

Example of Iambic Pentameter “But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?” (Act 2, sc. 2)

Shared Lines But in this kind, wanting your father’s voice, This is when 2 characters share one line of blank verse. THESEUS: Demetrius is a worthy gentleman. HERMIA: So is Lysander. THESEUS: In himself he is. But in this kind, wanting your father’s voice, The other must be held the worthier.

Prose and Poetry Prose is the ordinary form of spoken or written language. (No rhythm) Prose is spoken by the common people Most other characters speak in poetry, known as blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter.)