Today’s Totally Random
Lines
No?
What needed, then, that terrible dispatch of it into your pocket? The quality
of nothing hath not such need to hide itself. Let’s see: come, if it be nothing, I shall not need my spectacles.
Earl of Gloster
King Lear Act
I Scene ii, Line 33
The Earl is talking to his son, Edmund, about the letter that Edmund is holding and not letting his father see.
Yesterday we were looking at meter, and the question came up concerning the use of meter and prose in Will’s works. Yes, whilst much of his plays are written in the infamous iambic pentameter, there is much that is written in plain old prose, like Today’s Lines and like what you’re reading right now. And, in fact, this scene is a perfect example. It begins with Edmund alone, talking about his illegitimacy and how he’s going to get the upper hand on his half- brother by forging a letter that he will make sure his father will find. All this is in verse (iambic pentameter). Gloster enters, also speaking in verse, until he sees the letter that Edmund is trying to “hide” from him. As soon as the topic goes to the letter, the text leaves verse and goes to prose. And it remains prose for the rest of the scene until Edmund is alone again at the end where it goes back to verse for the last six lines of the scene.
Why does Will flip back and forth twixt verse and prose? I can make all sorts of speculations, but the fact of the matter is, wait for it…
I don’t…………………………knooowwwww.
And I’m not sure anyone really does.
Acckk! I knew he was gonna say that.
I just…knew!
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