• To understand what blank verse and iambic pentameter are.

• To understand what prose and rhyming verse is.

• To apply knowledge of Shakespeare’s verse forms to an

  independent task.

Ed Sheeran

Love him or hate him, there’s no denying that Ed Sheeran is a global music phenomenon. He’s released four albums, sold 150m records around the world and has been awarded an MBE for services to music and charity.

Sheeran’s music can be varied in terms of the form he uses. Listen to his music in these three clips. How would you describe his style in each of the extracts?

Sing (1 min 37 sec – 2 min 10 sec)

Thinking Out Loud ( up to 1 min 23 sec)

Shape of You (0 min 55 sec – 1 min 35 sec)

Why do you think Ed Sheeran uses these different styles in his music? What is he trying to convey with each one?

William Shakespeare

By choosing different styles for his music, depending on his theme, Ed Sheeran is using a technique which has been around for hundreds of years.

William Shakespeare changed the style of text in his plays, depending on what he wanted to convey. This l

• Blank verse
• Prose
• Rhyming verse

Do you recognize any of these? Can you say what they are?

Look at the three extracts from Shakespeare’s plays on Shakespeare’s Verse Examples. What do you notice about the form they use? Look at:

• how they sound when you read them aloud;
• how they are laid out;
• what their rhythm is like;
• whether they rhyme.

Fill in the Shakespeare’s Verse Worksheet with your observations.

Blank Verse

Blank verse is the form most frequently used by Shakespeare. At the time he was writing, this was the form most favored by playwrights.

Blank verse is simply lines of verse that don’t rhyme.
The lines usually conform to a particular rhythm or beat.
The rhythm Shakespeare favored was iambic pentameter.

What do you know about iambic pentameter?

Iambic pentameter is simply five lots of stressed and unstressed syllables.

Iambic          A ‘foot’ or unit consisting of
                      one unstressed ˘ and one stressed /  syllable     

Pentameter      A rhythm of five.

Look at the blank verse example on your sheet. Read it aloud. Can you hear the iambic pentameter?

Now   is   the   winter       of      our    discontent

Duh  Dum  Duh  DumDuh   Dum     Duh    DumDuhDum

Iambic pentameter is said to be one of the most natural forms of verse –
it mirrors our speech patterns and can be compared to a heartbeat. In Shakespeare’s time, it was thought to be a heightened way of speaking, so it was the way that royalty and noblemen were portrayed as speaking on stage.

It’s interesting to note when Shakespeare breaks this rhythm because it can often mean he’s trying to convey a message to the audience. Look at the first line of this famous speech, where the character of Hamlet is contemplating his own death:

o be, or not to be; that is the question

  Hamlet, Act III, Scene i

Is this line in perfect iambic pentameter? If not, why do you think Shakespeare has chosen to break the rhythm here?

Pause!

Write down everything you can remember about the blank verse on your Notes Sheet.