Shakespeare’s 'Short' Pentameters and the Rhythms of Dramatic Verse

Shakespeare’s ‘Short’ Pentameters and the Rhythms of Dramatic Verse

This chapter investigates Shakespeare’s innovative use of lacunae (empty slots in the

metrical template of iambic pentameter) as rhythmic devices operating in dramatic verse

either deictically or mimetically. Lacunae represent either silent beats or silent offbeats,

produced in our negotiation as performers between written line and known phonological

and metrical constraints. The silent offbeat comes itself in two distinct flavours: the ‘jolt’,

which occurs between intonational phrases, and which has the effect of emphasizing

discontinuity, and in mimetic terms of suggesting surprise, alarm, anger, urgency and so

on; and the much rarer ‘drag’, which occurs within a phrase and has the effect of locally

slowing down the tempo and forcing pitch-accent emphasis on the syllable that precedes

it. The silent beat or ‘rest’, on the other hand, functions as a way of cueing gesture and

action in the theatre, and in addition has a number of interesting deictic uses, marking and

drawing attention to features of the interaction between characters. The chapter will

explore the ontology and epistemology of lacunae — how as readers we recognise them,

and as performers produce them — and investigate in detail the sorts of aural and

experiential effects they produce in performance

1. The Short Pentameter

[We should] pay more attention to such "indicative" or deictic markers in

Shakespearean dialogue [as ‘the frequent use of SIR and LORD’].

Pointing to or calling out to people and things seems an almost obsessive

verbal function in the dialogue. "Ye powers," and "O Nature" and that run-

of-the-mill "my Lord" encourage vigorous verbal and physical actions of

Groves, Shakespeare’s Short Pentameters

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pointing and looking. If I may suggest further, I think it is just this dense

web of actions that makes Shakespeare so appealing to actors and

audiences. … If you find yourself snoozing at a performance, just check to

see if the actors are using those "addresses" as vocal springboards or

instead are sliding past them. (Steve Urkowitz)

Just before the much anticipated joust in Richard II, the Marshal abruptly calls a

halt to the proceedings: ‘Stay, the King hath throwne his Warder downe.’ (R2 1.3.118). 1 Because

this line has only nine syllables it has worried many of Shakespeare’s editors, who have generally

assumed that metricality in the pentameter consists in a standard — or at any rate a minimum —

number of ten syllables, and who for three centuries have been conscientiously tidying up his

versification, anxious to defend him against the traditional charges of artlessness and

lawlessness.2 Eighteenth-century editors simply added words ad libitum to fill in the apparent

gaps: they ‘repaired’ this line, for example, by arbitrarily inserting a ‘But’ before ‘Stay’. Later

editors have usually been more cautious, and have tried to remove apparent gaps by relineation

where possible. Where it is not, a note of desperation sometimes creeps in: the Arden 2 editor of

Richard II, for example, suggests pronouncing the Q1 spelling throwen to ‘regularize the metre’

of the line (thus creating a highly irregular sequence of three successive reversed feet [Ure

1961:28n.]). More recent editors have tended to pay less attention to the metre, but have (oddly)

retained many previous re-lineations designed solely to remove apparent gaps (see Groves 2007).

What I wish to suggest in this paper is that many examples of syllabic deficit in the early

texts of Shakespeare represent not compositorial botching, metrical licence or authorial

inadvertence, but rather choices within the signifying system of the metre, a way of ‘pointing’

performance for actors (and readers).3 Take the Marshal’s headless line: the surprise of the silent

initial offbeat — performatively a little like treading in the dark on a step that isn’t there — arises

from our perception that the first position should (by default) be an offbeat. We experience the


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same surprise in the case of an initial reversal or trochee: with the headless line, however, the

surprise is prolonged as the metre fails to re-stabilize itself with the familiar POM-titty-POM or

‘O for a Muse’ opening. I shall use the word ‘catalexis’ to refer to any off-beat or non-ictic

position not realised by a syllable: this catalexis draws attention to Richard’s coup de théâtre and

mimetically it conveys the abruptness of the Marshal’s injunction.

I am not, of course, the first to suggest that Shakespeare’s lacunae might

represent a rhythmical device rather than a metrical lapse or licence, but there has been little

attempt to theorise either the conditions under which they might arise or or the effects they might

produce. Among the very few attempts to investigate the phenomenon is Carol Sicherman’s, for

whom they represent “metrical pauses” (1982:175). Thus, for example, after the short line “For

Hecuba!”, Hamlet should, it seems, “remain silent for the equivalent of three feet” (1982:176).

Sicherman’s initial account of what I call ‘jolts’ (below) is sound as far as it goes (1982:175): the

problem is that she places virtually no constraints, phonological or otherwise, on the invocation of

these metrical pauses, so that they become a kind of talisman that can transform any phrase or

fragment into a pentameter: “He’s tane” becomes a pentameter when followed by eight metrical

pauses (1984:185), for example, as does “No, my Lord” when preceded by seven (1984:193).

Consider the following passage of fragmentary lines from F1 Julius Caesar:

Bru. What meanes this Showting?

I do feare, the People choose Caesar

For their King.

Cassi. I, do you feare it? (TLN 176-9)

Shakespeare’s first editor, Rowe, saw that this represented, when re-lineated, two iambic

pentameters, and for three hundred years editors have reproduced this correction:

BRUTUS: What means this shouting? I do fear the people

Choose Caesar for their king.

CASSIUS: Ay, do you fear it? (JC 1.2.79-80)


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The principle here is fairly straightforward: given that we know (a) that the compositors of F1

would re-lineate blank verse as prose or free verse in order to ‘accommodate . . . the copy to its

allotted space’ (Hinman 1955:263),7 (b) that this passage is surrounded by blank verse, and (c)

that without emendation it can be re-divided as metrical blank verse, the argument for editorial re-

lineation would seem hard to refute. For Sicherman, however, the disrupted lineation of F1

represents an authorial encoding of pauses and silences:8

Bru. Ŏ Ó Ŏ Ó Ŏ Ó Whăt meánes thĭs Shówtĭng?

Ŏ Í dŏ feáre, thĕ Péoplĕ choŏse Ŏ Cáesăr

Ŏ Fór thĕir Kíng.

Cassi. Ŏ Ó Ĭ, dó yŏu feáre ĭt? (1984:186)

This fails as a code in two ways: there does not seem to be any consistently reliable way for

Shakespeare to encode the positioning of these metrical pauses (how are we to know that there

should be six before “What meanes this Showting?”, for example, and none after?), and, much of

the time there is no reliable way for the actor to encode them for the audience (how is one to

perform precisely five metrical pauses, for example, or distinguish them from seven?) This is

not to deny that Shakespeare uses short lines and fragments to indicate pauses, but it is the code

of the metre and not the vagaries of the type-setter that tell us where they are. One very clear

instance is found at Ham. 2.2.483, but it is only revealed by editorial revision of the Folio

lineation, which gives the following as three lines, not four:

So as a painted Tyrant Pyrrhus stood.

And like a Newtrall to his will and matter, →

did nothing.

But as we often see against some storme, (Ham. 2.2.481-4)

We cannot, then, accept F1’s lineation blindly, but we must not relineate the text

ad hoc to justify our intuitions about individual lines. We need some non-circular way of

determining what is and is not a possible Shakespearean pentameter, allowing the rules that seem


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to work in the clear cases to adjudicate where possible the murky ones. For this reason I shall use

in these scansions a system of phonologically based prosodic and metrical analysis which I call

Base and Template (BT) scansion, which can distinguish metrical and unmetrical lines; it is set

forth fully in Groves (1998), but I will need to sketch in some salient features here. It begins

from the fact that metre is an organization of speech, and that English speech is itself structured

(and, in part, timed) around periodic recurrences of articulatory intensity called ‘beats’: they are

not directly features of sound but rather of the muscular organization of articulation,

sympathetically perceived by the listener. Those who accompany their speech with gestures will

tend to time those gestures on the beats. Beats occur most frequently on stressed syllables, but

not on all: we say three blind mice, not three blind mice (unless we want to emphasize both the

number and the blindness). They can, moreover, fall upon unstressed syllables to break up a long

run of them, and (since they are not a form of sound, but of muscular activity, a means of

organizing utterances in time), they may (unlike stress and accent) fall (and be perceived) upon

silence, like a rest in music. The silent beat distinguishes (for example) between the restrictive

and nonrestrictive relative clauses in a pair like the following: ‘I spoke to the waiter who

brought my soup’ (bringing precedes speaking); ‘I spoke to the waiter, <!> who brought my

soup’ (bringing follows speaking). As Derek Attridge (1982) has suggested, silent beats are a

typical structural feature of chantable English demotic verse ─ nursery rhymes, protest chants,

and so on ─ where they represent a beat-long pause, a ‘rest’, in the chant. It is easy to clap on the

eight beats of an appropriate performance of the following, for example, including on the final

rest:

What do we want? Ten per cent!

When do we want it? Now! <!>

A once well-known football chant goes:

Georgie Best! Georgie Best!

Georgie! <!> Georgie Best!


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Metrical structure in English is produced through the placement of beats in the

spoken line, and this is enabled and limited by three prosodic phenomena: by the disposition of

lexical and syntactic stress, by the location of syntactic junctures, and by the speaker’s

(contextually motivated) placing of pragmatic accent (used for pointing contrast or highlighting

information) within the utterance. To simplify somewhat the argument of an entire book, an

iambic pentameter is an utterance or part-utterance that can be accommodated (by rule-governed

elisions where necessary) to five feet (pairs of syllable-positions), each of which contains at least

one independent syllable, normally the second syllable of the foot. An independent syllable is

one capable of carrying a beat, and it must be either (a) a fully stressed syllable, (b) an accented

syllable, or (c) an unstressed syllable that is not dominated by a neighbouring stressed syllable

(that is, it is protected by an intervening syntactic break or liberated by accent). Where the

independent occurs on the first syllable we say the foot is reversed, and enclose it in angle

brackets: “<Wanton> as youth|ful goats|, <wild as> young bulls|” (1H4 4.1.103); each reversal

must be followed by a normal foot. Syncopated syllables are printed in superscript to suggest that

they should be pronounced quickly and lightly: ‘<Myriads> of ri|vulets hu|rrying through| the

lawn|’

If (to illustrate) I enclose dominated syllables in brackets and bold all

independent ones, the following line can be shown to have five normal feet (or iambs), because

“by”, though unstressed, is not dominated: “(I ùn|der)stánd| (your méa|ning) by| (your éye|)”.

As George Gascoigne, the earliest English metrist, points out, this verse “may passe the musters”

metrically, whereas the following re-arrangement “is neyther true nor pleasant” (1575: T.iii.v);

this is because the second pair of syllables has no independent and cannot, therefore, function as a

foot: “(Your méaning) (I ùnder)(stánd by) (your éye ).”

The phonological conditions for silent offbeats and silent beats may be simply

stated: a silent offbeat or catalexis can only occur in a position that is flanked by fully

independent syllables, and a silent beat can only occur at the site of an obligatory intonational


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break (normally marked by terminal punctuation). Sicherman’s strings of silent feet are thus

exposed as fantasies: a lacuna can by definition only exist in relation to the non-lacunae that

flank it, just as the hole cannot exist without the doughnut. The adjacency of beats that in metre

may generate the perception of a catalexis is something that English generally tries to avoid (three

successive stresses in the same phrase will typically produce only two beats (three blind mice)

Adjacent beats will be produced in one of two ways: by the occurrence of an intonational phrase-

break between two stressed syllables (Run, Spot!) or by the contiguity of pragmatically accented

syllables within a phrase (Not white coffee but green tea), and each of these produces a distinct

kind of catalexis, which I term respectively the ‘jolt’ ( ^ ) and the ‘drag’ ( ~ ).

2. The Jolt

A catalexis that is mapped onto a potential or obligatory intonational break will

accentuate that break (where — in general — regular metre by its insistent continuity tends to

bridge and smooth over such gaps), and this is why I call it a ‘jolt’. It can have the expressive

effect of suggesting urgency and spontaneity, most commonly at the beginning of the line, where

it often underscores attention-seeking imperatives and vocatives:

^ Goe|, take hence| that Tray|tor from| our sight|, (2H6 2.3.100)

^ Come| my Lord|, Ile leade| you to| your Tent|. (1H4 5.4.9)

^ Proue| it Hen|ry, and| thou shalt| be King|. (3H6 1.1.131)\

^ Gen|tlemen|, impor|tune me| no far|{ther} (TS 1.1.48)

^ Iay|lor, take| him to| thy cus|todie|. (CE 1.1.155)

^ Ti|tus, I| am come| to talke| with thee|, (Tit. 5.2.16)

Headless lines constitute the most common kind of lacuna, and do not represent an innovation on

Shakespeare’s part. He probably learned the trick of button-holing vocative headlessness from

Marlowe:

^ Bar|barous| and bloo|dy Tam|burlaine|, (1Tam. 2.7.1)


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^ Trea|cherous| and false| Theri|damas|, (1Tam. 2.7.3)

^ Bloo|dy and| insa|tiate Tam|burlain|. (1Tam. 2.7.11)

Shakespeare’s innovation consists in extending the possibility of lacuna to every position in the

line. A jolt, for example, may draw attention to imperatives and vocatives within the line:

<Vnder> my Batt|lements|. ^ Come| you spi|{rits} (Mac. 1.5.40)

Good Mar|garet|[,] ^ runne| thee to| the par|{lour}, (MAN 3.1.1)

<As may| compact| it more|. ^ Get| you gone|, (KL 1.4.339)

But roome|[,] ^ Fai|ry, heere| comes O|beron|. (MND 2.1.58)

That what| he feard|, is chanc’d|. Yet speake|[,] ^ (Mor|{ton}), (2H4 1.1.87)

^ Nurse|, ^ wife|, what ho|? what Nurse| I say|? (RJ 4.4.24)

It can also mark a turning to a new addressee (each new passage of verse begins with a bolded

line and is subsequently indented):

Cornwall: [To Gloucester] make your owne purpose,

<How in> my strength| you please|: for you| ^ Ed|{mund}, (KL 2.1.112)

Brutus: <Lucius> my Gowne|: ^ fare|well good| Messa|{la}; (JC 4.3.231)

Malcolm: [To Duncan] This is the Seriëant,

Who like a good and hardie Souldier fought

<’Gainst my> Capti|vitie|: ^ Haile| braue friend|: (Mac. 1.2.5)

The jolt can also work mimetically, to represent interrupted speech: it can, for

example, indicate a pause or hesitation. In the following examples it represents the ‘thinking on

the fly’ or ‘er-um’ pause: Prospero, arbitrarily instructing Ariel to make a pointless costume-

change that will be ‘invisible / To every eyeball else’, seems to hesitate whimsically before the

final selection (a modern playwright might write ‘Go make yourself — [thinks] — like a nymph

of the sea’):10

Goe make| thy selfe| ^ like| a Nymph| o’th’sea|; (Tp. 1.2.301)


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Gonzalo, inventing a Utopia on the spur of the moment, hesitates a couple of times in deciding on

its elements:

<Letters> should not| be knowne|: ^ Ri|ches, po|{uerty},

And vse| of ser|uice, none|: <Contract>, succe|{ssion}

Borne, bound| of Land|, ^ Tilth|, ^ Vine|yard none|; (Tp. 2.1.151-3)

Northumberland, rebuked by York for referring to the threatened king as mere ‘Richard’,

hesitates before arriving at an insolently lame excuse:

Your Grace| mistakes|: ^ one|ly to| be briefe|,

Left I his Title out. (R2 3.3.10)

Between two speakers the jolt may represent the hesitation of disagreement, anything from

Gloucester’s polite demurral to Leontes’ outright contradiction:

Gloucester: Me thinkes the ground is eeuen.

Edgar: Horrible steepe.

<Hearke, do> you heare| the Sea|?

Gloucester: ^ No| ^ tru|{ly}. (KL 4.6.4)

Brutus: For he can do no more then Cæsars Arme,

When Cæ|sars head| is off|.

Cassius: ^ Yet| I feare |{him},(JC 2.1.183)

Hermione: <You did|11 mistake|.

Leontes: ^ No|: <if I| mistake| (WT 2.1.100)

There are, of course, other kinds of hesitation: Messala’s tactful reluctance to

confirm bad news, for example, or the Nurse’s cautious awareness that her ‘comfort’ is unlikely

to be very welcome:

Cassius: <Cice>ro one|?

Messala: ^ Ci|cero| is dead|, (JC 4.3.179)

Juliet: Some com|fort Nurse|.


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Nurse: ^ Faith| ^ here| it is|.

... I thinke it best you married with the Countie. (RJ 3.5.214)

Such interlocutory jolts may represent a kind of double-take, as when Hamlet (in F1) responds

with incredulity to Gertrude’s attempt to dismiss his criticisms as madness, Bolingbroke is

surprised to find King Richard in Flint castle, or Caesar’s centurion is amazed to come across

Enobarbus soliloquizing in a ditch:

Gertrude: This bodilesse Creation extasie →

is ve|ry cu|nning in|.

Hamlet: ^ Ex|tasie|? (Ham. 3.4.139)

Percy: The Castle royally is mann’d, my Lord,

Against| thy en|t[e]rance|.12

Bolingbroke: ^ Roy|ally|? →

Why, it containes no King?

Percy: Yes (my good Lord) (R2 3.3.23)

Enobarbus: … thou blessed Moone … poore Enobarbus did

Before| thy face| repent|.

Centurion: ^ E|nobar|{bus}? (AC 4.9.10)

Sometimes the medial jolt represents a catch in the voice at a moment of high emotion:

Duncan: My plenteous Ioyes,

Wanton in fullnesse, seeke to hide themselues

In drop|s of so|rrow. Sonnes|, ^ Kins|men, Thanes|, (Mac. 1.4.36)

Helena: Is all the counsell that we two have shar’d ,...

When wee haue chid the hasty footed time,

For par|ting vs|; ^ O|, is all| forgot|? (MND 3.2.201)

Antony: You did know ...

My sword, made weake by my affection, would


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Obey| it on| all cause|.

Cleopatra: ^ Par|don, par|{don}! (AC 3.11.68)

Alternatively (it depends, of course, on the context of meaning), it can evoke a sudden start:

Achilles’ or Capulet’s anger, or the feigned exasperation of Petruchio:

Ulysses: ’Tis knowne Achilles, that you are in loue

With one| of Pri|ams daugh|ters.

Achilles: Ha|? ^ knowne|? (TC 3.3.194)

Nurse: <May not| one speake|?

Capulet: ^ Peace| you mum|bling foole|, (RJ 3.5.173)

Petruchio: What’s this|, ^ Mu|tton?

First servant: I|.

Petruchio: Who brought| it?

Peter: I|. (TS 4.1.160)

Multiple jolts are always mimetic, for example

of anger:

Lear: Blowe windes|, & crack| your cheeks|; ^ Rage|, ^ blow (KL 3.2.1)

Solanio:<Why then| you are| in loue|.

Antonio: ^ Fie|, ^ fie|. (MV 1.1.46)

Timon: ^ Gold|? ^ Ye|llow, gli|ttering, pre|cious Gold|? (Tim. 4.3.26)

Of jumpiness:

Lady Macbeth: ^ Hearke|, ^ peace|: <it was| the Owle| that shriek’d|,13

(Mac. 2.2.3)

Horatio: ^ Stay|: ^ speake|; ^ speake|: I Charge| thee, speake|. (Ham. 1.1.51)

Of surprise:

Horatio: My Lord, I thinke I saw him yesternight.

Hamlet: ^ Saw|? ^ Who|?


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Horatio: My Lord|, the King| your fa|{ther}.

(Ham. 1.2.190)

Or of panic:

Edmund: my Writ / Is on the life of Lear, and on Cordelia:

Nay, send| in time|.

Albany: ^ Run|, ^ run|, O, run|. (KL 5.3.249)

3. The Drag

A drag, by contrast, is a catalexis between two syllables in the same phrase where

there is no potential intonational break, as between an adjective and its noun. Since within a

phrase one of two adjacent stressed syllables will normally be subordinated to the other, and since

catalexis requires fully independent syllables on either side, the result is to force the actor to

accent the subordinated syllable, in order to promote it to full independence. It is a method, in

other words, of pointing the text for performance. Take the following line: ‘Not i’ th’ worst ranke

of Manhood, say’t,’ (Mac. 3.1.102). One C19 editor says of it ‘a syllable is wanting’ and proposes

‘most worst’; others read ‘worser’ (Furness 1873:144). We find the pointing of the line by

negotiating between our (tacit) knowledges of the metre and of the language: the only way to

produce the requisite five beats within the constraints of metre and phonology is to place an

emphatic accent on worst, which not only allows the necessary catalexis but at the same time

encourages (because of the rough periodicity of beats) a suitably sarcastic dwelling on the word,

as Macbeth exhorts them ‘Now, if you haue a station in the file,’

<Not i’> th[e] worst| ~ ranke| of Man|hood, say’t|,

In prose speech, of course, accenting “worst” would simply attract the beat away from “ranke”; to

speak the line as verse we must accent both to ensure a beat on both (as in the following

exampeles). To take another occurrence: Aegeon, having spoken of his own wife’s giving birth,


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is instructed by the metre to put an appropriate contrastive accent on mean by the drag in the

second line:

That very howre, and in the selfe-same Inne,

A meane| ~ wo|man was| deli|uerëd| (CE 1.1.53-4)

Nevertheless the word is emended (without textual support) to mean-born by Wells and Taylor

(1986), and some modern editions print meaner. In the following post-mortem on the Battle of

Actium, in which the two dragged pronouns must be given contrastive accent to save the metre

(‘what though you [a woman, unused to battle] fled? Why should he [a hardened soldier]

follow?’), earlier editors would routinely emend though to although in 4, but leave the

structurally similar line 6 alone, presumably because it already has ten syllables:

Cleopatra: Is Anthony, or we in fault for this?

Enobarbus: Anthony onely, that would make his will

<Lord of> his Rea|son. What| though you| ~ fled|

From that great face of Warre, whose seuerall ranges

<Frighted> each o|ther? Why| should he| ~ fo|{llow}? (AC 3.13.2-6)

4 The Silent Beat

A catalexis is only a presence – and an absence – in metrical terms: it has no

existence for someone not experiencing the performance as being governed by a metre

(phonologically it is no more than a successive occurrence of beats). By contrast a silent beat

(represented in what follows as <!>) is a distinct articulatory and perceptual phenomenon, a ‘rest’.

In demotic verse, the predictability of the silent beat both in structure (occurring, for example, at

every eighth beat in the ballad stanza) and in performance (due to the rather regularly-timed

‘sing-song’ performance) permits it to be adequately signalled by a silence. Neither of these

regularities obtains in sophisticated forms like pentameter, however, and so the natural

assumption is that Shakespeare makes no use of the silent beat. Yet Fredson Bowers has drawn


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attention to a couple of instances in the operatic love-duet at the beginning of Act 5 of The

Merchant of Venice: there are six mid-line baton-changes in the passage, and in each case the

second speaker begins with the two-foot refrain ‘In such a night’. At Lorenzo’s second serve he

tries to put Jessica off her stride by providing a ‘feminine’ caesura, but she lobs it right back at

him; at his third he withholds the final beat of his half-line, but undismayed she supplies it and

returns the same truncated half-line to him. As Bowers says, ‘the symmetry . . . can only be

designed’ (Bowers 1980:99) — two normal transitions, two ‘excessive’ ones, and then two

‘defective’ ones — showing that Shakespeare clearly intended silent beats in this passage:

Lorenzo 1: Where Cre|ssed lay| that night|. / In such| a night|

Jessica 1: And ranne| dismayed| away|. / In such| a night|

Lorenzo 2: To come| againe| to Car|{thage}. / In such| a night|

Jessica 2: <That did| renew| old E|{son}. / In such| a night|

Lorenzo 3: As farre| as Bel|mont. / <!>| In such| a night|

Jessica 3: And nere| a true| one. / <!>| In such| a night| (MV 5.1.6-20)

But how do Jessica and Lorenzo signal these silent beats? A mere pause — silence itself — will

not do the job in pentameter verse, as I have pointed out. But since beats represent muscular

activity, peaks of effort in articulation, unexpected silent beats may be signalled by— and thus in

a sense cue —some form of gesture (perhaps in this case a playful admonitory tap from Jessica

and a patronizing kiss from Lorenzo).

Occasionally the beating of the verse is played out more violently on the human

body, as in the case of the messenger both unlucky enough to bring the news of Antony’s

marriage and reckless enough to recommend ‘pa-ti-ence’ to Cleopatra (the stage direction is in

F1):

Messenger: Good Ma|dam pa|tïence|.

Cleopatra: What say| you? <!>| Strikes him

(AC 2.5.63)


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Less violently, a beat may be signalled by a touch: the two following are marked by a touch on

the shoulder, from the king’s sword or the bailiff’s hand:

King John: <Kneele thou> downe Phi|lip, <!>| but rise| more great|,

Arise Sir Richard, and Plantagenet. (KJ 1.1.161)

Antonio: <But be| of com|fort.

Second officer: <!>| Come sir| away|. (TN 3.4.339)

A piece of stage-business may be cued by a rest: Bassanio’s opening of the fateful casket or the

flourishing of a prop:

Portia: I feele too much thy blessing, make it lesse,

For feare| I sur|feit.

Bassanio: <!>| What finde| I here|? (MV 3.2.115)

Sicinius: Haue you a Catalogue

Of all the Voices that we haue procur’d, →

<set downe| by’th Pole|?

Aedile: I haue|: ’tis rea|dy <!>|. (Cor. 3.3.10)

Jeweller: And rich|: <heere is> a Wa|ter looke| ye <!>|. (Tim. 1.1.18)

The rest may cue a gestural pointing to or indication of some object or person:

England: And there|upon| <giue me> your Daugh|ter <!>|. (H5 5.2.347)

Lear: Death on my state! Wherefore

<Should he| sit he|ere <!>|? This act| perswades| {me} (KL 2.3.113)

Hamlet: My fa|ther, <!>| me thinkes| I see| my fa|{ther}. (Ham. 1.2.184)

Horatio’s alarm (‘Oh where, my Lord?’) makes more sense if the rest in Hamlet’s line cues a

gesturing, pointing or turning towards the imaginary father.

A second function of the silent beat is to cue an expressive bodily gesture that

represents a character’s response or emotion. Take Polonius’ ‘you’re-a-man-of-the-world, work-


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it-out-for-yourself’ shrug as he ekes out his list of suggested ‘slips’ on Laertes’ part to Reynaldo,

who has tentatively suggested ‘gaming’:

Polonius: ^ I|, or drink|ing, fenc|ing, swear|ing, <!>|

<Quarrel>ling, dra|bbing. You| may goe| so farre|. (Ham. 2.1.25)

It can equally cue a mock-shrug: King Henry’s simulated bafflement (first pointed out by George

Wright 1988) or Flavius’ mimicry of the embarrassed prevarications of Timon’s ungrateful

parasites:

Worcester: I haue not sought the day of this dislike.

King: <You haue| not sought| it: <!>| how comes| it then|? (1H4

5.1.27)

Flavius: They answer in a ioynt and corporate voice,

That now they are at fall, want Treasure[,] cannot

Do what they would, are sorry: you are Honourable,

But yet| they could| have wisht|, they know| not <!>|,

Something hath beene amisse; a Noble Nature

May catch a wrench; would all were well; tis pitty, (Tim. 2.2.207)

Other possible gestures include the shudder or grimace:

Ophelia: As if he had been loosed out of hell,

To speak| of ho|rrors: <!>| he comes| before| {me}. (Ham. 2.1.81)

Claudius: O, my offence is ranke, it smels to heauen,

It hath the primall eldest curse vpon’t,

A Bro|thers mur|ther. <!>| <Pray can> I not|, (Ham. 3.3.38)

The sigh:

Portia: I must go in. Aye me! How weake a thing

The heart| of wo|man is|? O Bru|tus, <!>|

The Heauens speede thee in thine enterprize! (JC 2.4.40)


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Aegeon: In Syracusa was I borne, and wedde

Vnto a woman, happy but for me,

And by| me; <!>| <had not| our hap| beene bad|: (CE 1.1.38)

The sob, genuine or simulated:

Antony: Haply you shall not see me more, or if,

A mang|led sha|dow. <!>| Perchance| to mo|{rrow}

You’l serue another Master. (AC 4.2.27)

Octavian: Looke you sad Friends,

The Gods| rebuke| me, <!>| <but it| is Ty|{dings}

To wash the eyes of Kings. (AC 5.1.27)

A silent beat can cue a start of surprise:

Volumnia: I kneele before thee, and vnproperly

Shew duty as mistaken, all this while,

Between| the Childe|, and Pa|rent.

Coriolanus: <!>| What’s this|? →

your knees to me? \ To your Corrected sonne? (Cor. 5.3.56)

Desdemona: And bid| me to| dismisse| you.

Emilia: <!>| Dismisse| {me}? (Oth.

4.3.14)

Or a gesture of exasperation:

Hotspur: Sicke now? droope now? this sicknes doth infect

The very Life-blood of our Enterprise. ...

He writes me here, that inward sicknesse, <!>|

And that his friends by deputation … (1H4 4.1.31)

Othello: And he that is approu'd in this offence, ...

Shall loose| me. <!>| <What[,] in> a Towne| of warre|, ...


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To Manage priuate, and domesticke Quarrell? (Oth. 2.3.213)

Othello: The Handkerchiefe.

Desdemona: A man that all his time

Hath founded his good Fortunes on your loue;

Shar’d dan|gers with| you.

Othello: <!>| The Hand|kerchiefe|. (Oth.

3.4.95)

A silent beat may cue a theatrical registration of dismay or alarm at being

suddenly at a loss for an answer. One delightful example arises when Cleopatra, wrinkled deep in

time, confronts her messenger (still smarting from their earlier interview) with a dangerous

request:

Cleopatra: The Fellow ha’s good iudgment.

Charmian: Excellent.

Cleopatra: <Guesse at> her yeares|, I pry|thee.

Messenger: Ma|dam, <!>|→

she was a widdow.

Cleopatra: Widdow? Charmian, hearke.

(AC 3.3.30)

His momentary alarm is effaced by an inspired answer, both satisfying and non-committal. Some

further examples of embarrassment:

Olivia: But would you vndertake another suite,

I had rather heare you, to solicit that,

Than Mu|sicke from| the spheares|.

Viola: Deere La|dy <!>|.(TN 3.1.110)

Clarence: Who sent you hither? Wherefore do you come?

Second Murderer: To, to|, to — <!>|


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Clarence: To mur|ther me|?

Both Murderers: I, I|.

Clarence: You scarcely haue the hearts to tell me so, (R3 1.4.172)

George Wright has drawn attention to a line (printed as two fragments in most editions) in which

Iago just hints a fault, and hesitates dislike of Cassio:

Othello: <Is he| not ho|nest?

Iago: <!>| <Honest>, my Lord|? (Oth. 3.3.103)

Bob Hoskins, in the BBC Othello, takes advantage of the intimacy of television to half-raise a

skeptical eyebrow on the third beat.

In addition to these mimetic and expressive applications of the silent beat, we

also find a couple of interesting deictic uses, marking and drawing attention to features of the

interaction between characters. One common one, for example, is to mark the end of a question,

perhaps with a conventional head-tilt or some similar item of body language:

King Richard: What sayes| he <!>|?

Northumberland: Nay no|thing; all| is said|: (R2 2.1.148)

King Richard: <Shall I| obtaine| it <!>|?

Bolingbroke: <Name it,> faire Cou|{sin}.(R2 4.1.304)

Gloucester: <Would he| deny| his Le|tter, said| he <!>|? (KL 2.1.78)

Another kind of rest is the interruption, where the silent beat involves the speaker breaking off in

mid-sentence, as when the Jeweller breaks into the Osric-like verbosity of the Merchant’s praise

of Timon with an intrusive gesture such as showing the jewel, or Gertrude interrupts her son’s

intolerable tirade about Claudius by (perhaps) throwing up her hands:

Merchant: A most incomparable man, breath’d, as it were,

To an untyreable and continuate goodnesse:

He pa|sses [―]

Jeweller: <!>| I haue| a Ie|well heere|.14 (Tim. 1.1.12)


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Hamlet: … A Cutpurse of the Empire and the Rule.

That from a shelfe, the precious Diadem stole

And put| it in| his Po|cket.

Queen: <!>| No more|! (Ham. 3.4.101)

And then there’s the absolutely final interruption:

Hotspur: ... O, I could Prophesie,

But that the Earth, and the cold hand of death,

Lyes on my Tongue: →

No Pe|rcy thou| art dust| / And food| for — <!>|15 (1H4 5.4.86)

Like the jolt, the rest can deictically underscore an imperative, presumably with a

supporting gesture. In the following, York perhaps points to or lays a hand on the desired dagger;

in King Richard’s case, the first injunction ‘leave me’, marked by a jolt, doesn’t seem to work, so

the repetition is accompanied by an intensifying silent beat (perhaps an impatient wave of the

hand or a thump on the table):

York: I pray| you, Vn|ckle, <!>| <giue me> thìs Da|{gger}. (R3 3.1.110)

King Richard: ^ Set| it downe|. Is Inke| and Pa|per rea|{dy}?

Ratcliff: It is| my Lord|.

King Richard: <Bid my> Guard watch|; ^ leaue| {me}.

Ratcliffe, →

about the mid of night come to my Tent

And help| to arme| me. <!>| <Leaue me> I say|. (R3 5.3.78)

Ghost: <Thinke on> Lord Has|tings: <!>| dispaire|, and dye|! (R3 5.3.156)

Another deictic use of the rest is in turning towards a new interlocutor (perhaps cuing an actual

turning of head or body):

Bolingbroke: Thankes gen|tle Vn|ckle: <!>| <come Lords| away|, (R2 3.1.42)

Stanley: My Lord| good mo|rrow, <!>| good mo|rrow, Cates|{by}. (R3 3.2.73)


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Brabantio: [To Othello] I here do giue thee that with all my heart,

Which but thou hast already, with all my heart

<I would| keepe from| thee. [Turns to Desdemona]

<!>| For your| sake (Ie|{well})

I am glad at soule, I haue no other Child, (Oth. 1.3.195)

Sometimes exits are punctuated by a silent beat:

Martius: Your va|lour puts| well forth|: Pray fo|llow. <!>|[Exeunt]

(Cor. 1.1.251)

Imogen: I am bound| to you|.

Belarius: And shalt| be e|ver. <!>| [Exit Imogen]

(Cym. 4.2.46)

Brutus: Let’s ... carry with us Ears and Eyes for th’ time,

But hearts| for the| euent|.

Sicinius: <Haue with> you. <!>| [Exeunt]

(Cor. 2.1.270)

As are entrances:

Lady: How my good name? or to report of you

<What I> shall thinke| is good|[?] The Prin|cesse <!>|.

[Enter Imogen] (Cym. 2.3.85)

Coriolanus: Shall I be tempted to infringe my vow

<In [the same] time| ’tis made|? I will| not. <!>|

[Enter Virgilia, etc.] (Cor. 5.3.21)

Cassio: I humbly thanke you for’t. I neuer knew

A Flo|rentine| more kinde|, and ho|nest. <!>|

[Enter Emilia] (Oth. F1 3.1.40)


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An interesting variant is when the entrance-rest coincides with interruption of the speaker.

Macbeth doesn’t want his wife to find him contemplating tergiversation, any more than Iago

wants his general to find him gossiping about him, and so the words side and Desdemona are not

just cut off by the entrances but replaced by gestural responses of surprise or alarm:

Macbeth: Vaulting Ambition, which ore-leapes it selfe,

And falls| on th’ o|ther <!>|. [Enter Lady.]

How now|? What Newes|?

(Mac. 1.7.28)

Cassio: I do not vnderstand.

Iago: He’s married.

Cassio: To who?

Iago: <Marry> to — <!>| [Re-enter Othello]

Come Cap|taine, will| you go|? (Oth. 1.2.53)

To illustrate the lacuna at work in an extended passage consider the following, in

which Emilia hears for the first time of her husband’s slander of Desdemona. It contains four

occurrences of the phrase ‘my husband’, all of which are placed by their prosodic and pragmatic

contexts in different relations to the metre. The first (l.138) is simply a puzzled query (‘Why

mention him? What has he got to do with all this?’); the second (l.142) repeats that query after a

silent beat that signifies a kind of stunned double-take (the penny is beginning to drop). The third

utterance (l.145) has a drag, cueing an incredulous, horrified accent on my; by the fourth (l.148)

accentuation has returned to normal as she desperately seeks a contradiction from Othello (whose

exasperation provides the jolts in this line):

Othello: …. Thy Husband knew it all.

Emilia: My Hus|{band}?

Othello: Thy Hus|{band}.

Emilia: <That she| was false| to


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Wed|{locke}?

Othello: ^ I, with Cassio: had she bin true,

If Heauen would make me such another world

Of one entyre and perfect Chrysolite,

I’ld not| have sold| her for| it.

Emilia: <!> | My Hus|{band}?

Othello: ^ I, ’twas he that told me on her first,

An honest man he is, and hates the slime

That stickes| on fil|thy deeds|.

Emilia: ^ My| ~ Hus|{band}?

Othello: What needs this Itterance, Woman? I say, thy husband.

Emilia: O Mistris, villany hath made mockes with loue:

My Hus|band say| she was false|?

Othello: ^ He|, ^ Wo|{man};

I say thy Husband: Do’st vnderstand the word?

My friend, thy Husband; honest, honest Iago. (Oth. 5.2.136-54)

Despite such bravura passages lacunae remain relatively rare in Shakespeare’s

verse, probably because they are parasitic upon the normative syllabic regulation of the line; too

many of them would undermine our sense of the decasyllabic norm against which they must be

perceived. Moreover, despite Shakespeare’s powerful stylistic influence on them, contemporary

dramatists seem to have made little use of lacunae in their blank verse, and subsequent non-

dramatic poets avoided them entirely before the twentieth century (see Groves 2001).

Shakespeare failed to influence his successors in this regard because of a strange phenomenon

that might be termed ‘operational invisibility’: when silent beats and offbeats are working as they

should we don’t tend to notice them, because when we hear pentameters, or perform them in our

heads, we (unconsciously) count not syllables but events ─ beats and offbeats. Unless your ear


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has become sensitized to them it is only when you are examining the text (rather than

experiencing the verse), like an editor, or a poet revising his work, that you will notice them ─

and then, of course, the prevailing assumption that the basis of the metre is syllabic will cause you

to take them for solecisms.16 Shakespeare himself scrupulously avoided them in his literary

verse; it is only in the more relaxed oral mode of the dramatic pentameter, it seems, that he felt at

liberty simply to record the rhythmic structures he imagined, pauses and gestural beats included,

without worrying about counting syllables.

References

Abbott, Edwin A. A Shakespearian Grammar. Third edn. London: Macmillan and Co., 1879.

Attridge, Derek. The Rhythms of English Poetry. London: Longmans, 1982.

Bowers, Fredson. ‘Establishing Shakespeare’s Text: Notes on Short Lines and the Problem of

Verse Division’. Studies in Bibliography 33 (1980): 74-130.

Evans, G. Blakemore, ed. The Riverside Shakespeare. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1974.

Furness, Howard H. ed., Macbeth, vol. 2 of A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare. 3rd edn.

London & Philadelphia: J. B Lippincott Co., 1873.

Gascoigne, George. “Certayne Notes of Instruction Concerning the Making of Verse or Ryme in

English”, in The Posies of George Gascoigne Esquire. London: For Richard Smith, 1575.

Groves, Peter L. Strange Music: The Metre of the English Heroic Line. ELS Monograph Series

74. Victoria, B.C.: University of Victoria, 1998.

──, ‘What Music Lies in the Cold Print’: Larkin’s Experimental Metric”, Style 35(2001):703-23.

──, ‘Shakespeare’s Pentameter and the End of Editing’, Shakespeare (Journal of the British

Shakespeare Association), 3 (2007), 126-42.

Hinman, Charlton. ‘Cast-off Copy for the First Folio of Shakespeare,’ Shakespeare Quarterly 6

(1955): 259-73.


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O’Connor, John. ‘A Qualitative Analysis of Compositors C and D in the Shakespeare First Folio’.

Studies in Bibliography 30 (1977): 57-74.

Sicherman, Carol. ‘Meter and Meaning in Shakespeare’, Language and Style 15 (1982): 169-192.

──, ‘Short Lines and Interpretation: The Case of Julius Caesar’, Shakespeare Quarterly 35

(1984): 180-195.

Ure, Peter, ed. King Richard II. New Arden Shakespeare, fifth edn. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd.,

1961.

Wells, Stanley and Gary Taylor, with John Jowett and William Montgomery. William

Shakespeare: The Complete Works. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986.

Werstine, Paul. ‘Line Division in Shakespeare’s Dramatic Verse: An Editorial Problem’.

Analytical and Enumerative Bibliography 8 (1984): 73-125.

Wright, George, Shakespeare’s Metrical Art. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.

Notes

1 Quotations are from F1 except where otherwise indicated; line-numberings refer to the widely used

Riverside edition (Evans 1974).

2 The process begins as early as the First Folio itself (see O’Connor 1977).

3 It is true that metrical and prosodic variations cannot mean directly, but they can certainly “seem an Eccho

to the Sense” (Pope, Essay on Criticism 365).

7 Paul Werstine has even identified ‘distinctive kinds of mislineation . . . associated with individual

compositors’ (1984:111).

8 The symbol Ó in theory represents a “silent stress” (Sicherman 1982:175), though in practice the two

kinds of “metrical pauses” seem not to be distinguished.

10 Note that the line cannot be salvaged simply by pronouncing the contractions: “Gò máke (thysélf like) (a

nýmph of) (the séa)” contains no independent in what would be foot 3 (“like a”) and is thus unmetrical.

11 This foot has two indpendents and so may be realised either as a normal or as a reversed foot.


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12 Compare ‘That croakes| the fa|tall en|t[e]rance| of Dun|{can}’, Mac. 1.5.39. Four out of the nineteen

verse-occurrences of entrance in Shakespeare are trisyllabic.

13 Macbeth 2.1.5-7 as it appears in F1 needs relineation; since Rowe, however, editors have routinely (and

mistakenly) relineated the entire sequence 2.1.2-7.

14 Most editions print a full stop after passes, as in F1, but while the verb could be used intransitively to

mean ‘excels’ this leaves the silent beat unexplained (and in any case ‘He passes.’ seems far too laconic for

this speaker when he could say something like ‘He passes the extolment of all virtues, / And ...’).

15 Editors follow F1 in placing ‘No, Percy, thou art dust’ after ‘Lies on my tongue’, and stranding ‘and food

for ─’ as a fragment. My arrangement arguably makes better sense, with an expressive pause after ‘Lies on

my tongue’ and the grunt or death-rattle expressed as the final rest of Hotspur’s final line.

16Even editors don’t, I suspect, start counting syllables unless they have grounds for suspicion: it is

significant, for example, that Frank Kermode in his New Arden Tempest makes a great show of objecting to

those lacunae Abbott (1879) draws attention to, but seems not to notice the ones Abbott fails to mention.

Shakespeare’s 'Short' Pentameters and the Rhythms of Dramatic Verse

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