But this poetry is not there for its own sake: it is there to serve the drama. Sometimes, especially in the earlier works, the verse can serve a purely decorative purpose. But more usually, the nature of the verse serves to characterize the speaker, to develop the tempo of the drama, or to illuminate the dramatic situation.

In the earlier works, the verse is very formal; often, it is in rhymed couplets. Take, for instance, the first exchange between Romeo and Juliet - it is a perfect sonnet:

Romeo: If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentler sin is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
Juliet: Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this.
For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.
Romeo: Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?
Juliet: Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.
Romeo: O then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do:
Then pray; grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.
Juliet: Saints do not move, though grant for prayer's' sake.
Romeo: Then move not while my prayers' effect I take.

All completely artificial, of course, but in a passage such as this, Shakespeare delighted in such decorative artifice: psychological realism is hardly the point here.

The form is based upon the iambic pentameter - i.e. da-DUH da-DUH da-DUH da-DUH da-DUH. The first line in the above passage is a perfect example of this - a line of ten syllables, with the stress falling on each even numbered syllable. But of course, if this rhythm isn't varied, monotony would soon set in. So, the order of the stressed syllables change around to provide a bit of variety. However, whatever the variations, we still have the iambic pentameter going on underneath - in the bass, as it were, even though it isn't always explicitly stated.

In Shakespeare's later dramatic verse, the rhythm often becomes very complicated - far more so than Shakespeare allowed in the passage quoted above. But no matter how complex it is, there's always that underlying rhythm of the iambic pentameter. It is like a jazz player who can bring in the most intricate syncopations and cross-rhythms; but irregularities may only be perceived as such if set against something that is regular. But even in these later plays, we often get lines that are purely iambic pentameters, e.g. Othello's line:

Farewell the tranquil mind, farewell content

Sometimes, if the tenth syllable of a line is stressed, it is permissible to add an unstressed syllable afterwards. This is the case with the most famous line in English literature:

To be or not to be, that is the question.

But more often, Shakespeare deviated often quite wildly from the underlying iambic pentameter. These variations aren't there purely to relieve the monotony: Shakespeare found ways of making his verse serve a dramatic purpose.

Consider, for instance, this passage from Hamlet:

A little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she followed my poor father's body,
Like Niobe, all tears, why she, even she -
O God, a beast that wants discourse of reason
Would have mourned longer! - married with mine uncle,
My father's brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules.

This is far removed from the decorous formality of the sonnet in Romeo and Juliet. Hamlet is obviously in the grip of a passion, so much so that he cannot, at one point, complete his sentence, and breaks off with the exclamation "O God, a beast that wants discourse of reason would have mourned longer!" (Note how, immediately before Hamlet breaks off into this exclamation, he has three short consecutive phrases of two syllables each, as if suggesting that he is choking upon his passion at this point, and gasping for breath.) Nothing like that would have been possible in the more formal poetic world of Romeo and Juliet. And yet, despite the passion, these lines are spoken by a man who is intelligent, who notices things: note the very down-to-earth imagery of the shoes.

Now consider this speech of Othello's also spoken in a high passion:

Never Iago. Like to the Pontic Sea,
Whose icy current and compulsive course
Ne'er knows retiring ebb, but keeps due on
To the Propontic and the Hellespont,
Even so my bloody thoughts with violent pace
Shall ne'er look back, ne'er ebb to humble love,
Till that a capable and wide revenge
Swallow them up.

No imagery so down-to-earth as shoes here: Othello's mind has raced away with an unstoppable momentum - much like the icy current of the Pontic Sea itself. Although both are passionate speeches, it is clear from the nature both of the imagery and of the rhythms, that Hamlet is the more thoughtful character. Othello's speech, on the other hand, has about it an extravagance and grandeur that is quite lacking from Hamlet's lines, in which, even at the height of passion, he can focus in on details such as his mother's shoes; with Othello, it's all Hellespont and Propontic - and a diction of ringing sonority. And neither does Othello have those short, broken phrases like "...all tears, why she, even she ..." This is a man confident in his passion, and with a sweeping flow of emotion.

The verse can also dictate the tempo of the scene. When, for instance, a line of poetry is divided up amongst many speakers, it should still when spoken, emerge as a proper line - i.e. there cannot be any pauses between one actor stopping, and the next actor beginning. For instance, in "Macbeth, after the murder of Duncan, we get the following:

Shakespeare is giving clear clues to his actors on the timing of these lines. From the indentations, it is obvious that the following constitutes a single line of poetry:

Did you not speak? When? Now. As I descended?

It's based on an iambic pentameter, of course - eleven syllables, and with an extra unstressed syllable following a stressed one at the end. This exchange must emerge as a single line, without any pauses But the very next line is a single syllable - "Ay". Since the line is so far from complete, it must be followed by a pause: the pause, in effect, completes the line. There is no stage direction here indicating a pause, but it is written into the nature of the verse.

Unlike the sonnet in Romeo and Juliet, none of this is decorative: the verse almost invariably serves a dramatic purpose. This means that the poetic and the dramatic elements of these lays cannot be separated: the poetry creates the drama, and one has to understand one to understand the other.

Entire volumes can - and have - been written about Shakespeare's dramatic verse, which is more subtle, more supple, and more profound, than any other written in the English language.

Himadri Chatterjee currently works as an operational research analyst for an airline, and lives near London, UK, with his wife and two children. What spare time he has apart from his day job and family commitments, he likes to spend reading, and listening to classical music. He also loves the theatre, good conversation, and good whisky (he is a long-standing member of the Scotch Malt Whisky Society).
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