Rhythm and Meaning in Shakespeare: A Guide for Readers and Actors [Paperback]

Description: Rhythm and Meaning in Shakespeare explores the rhythmical organisation of Shakespeare's verse and how it creates and reinforces meaning both in the theatre and in the mind of the reader. Because metrical form in the pentameter is not passively present in the text but rather something that the performer must co-operatively re-create in speaking it, pentameter is what John Barton calls "stage-direction in shorthand," a supple instrument through which Shakespeare communicates valuable cues to performance. This book is thus an essential guide for actors wishing to perform in his plays, as well as a valuable resource for anyone wishing to enhance their understanding of and engagement with Shakespeare's verse. (and from the author proposal): It is divided into seven chapters; the first explores the material of metre and its performance - the prosody of English speech - and the second deals with the normal ways in which that material is structured and patterned into blank verse, with its essential metrical and prosodic variations from the prototype, and discusses ways in which those variations are performed. Chapters three and four consider the 'short' pentameter, a feature more or less unique to Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatic verse, with its innovative use of silent beats and silent offbeats, considering how to recognise and perform such lacunae and how they function as performance indicators. The fifth chapter discusses breaks and pauses within lines, and transitions between lines: how they work in the theatre, how to recognise them and how they are performed. The sixth chapter briefly covers other kinds of spoken verse in the plays, and the last shows the more advanced reader how to explore systematically through metrical and prosodic analysis the possibilities of the verse for performance. There are also a couple of appendices that cover the pronunciation - specifically, the stress-pattern - of words that differ in Shakespeare's English, and the pronunciation of names in the plays.

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Location: Hillsdale, NSW

End Time: 2025-01-19T02:39:40.000Z

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