Blank Verse

Created: March 14, 2021 11:17 AM
Forest status: #soil
Last Edited: June 20, 2021 12:23 PM
Retention Rating: #3⭐⭐⭐
Review Due: July 24, 2021 12:23 PM

Blank verse is unrhymed iambic pentameter. Blank verse comes close to the natural rhythms of English speech, which is what helped to make it so useful to writers of verse dramas, such as Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, John Webster, and, later, T. S. Eliot.

A famous example from Shakespeare:

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. To die—to sleep,
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come …

Blank verse has a rhythm (iambic pentameter goes ti-TUM ti-TUM ti-TUM ti-TUM ti-TUM), but no rhyme.