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- A very important thing to know, that I didn't know for a long time, is that most of Shakespeare's plays are written mostly in prose, not in verse. (Source) (Source 2)
- So that suggests that when writing for the English language, it is extremely difficult (perhaps impossible) to tell a complicated story entirely with verse in a reasonable span of time. Instead you need to do what musicals / operas / Shakespeare's plays do, which is to switch back and forth between prose and verse, using the prose to advance the story and using the verse for emotional emphasis.
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What's so great about Shakespeare and his works?
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- Related links
- Wikipedia - Shakespeare's writing style
- Shakespeare's characters were complex and human in nature.
- He made the protagonist's character development central to the plot
- He changed what could be accomplished with drama (by making character development central to the plot).
- Wikipedia - Shakespeare's writing style
- Dramatic techniques
- http://penandthepad.com/dramatic-techniques-shakespeare-8540495.html
- Monologues and Soliloquies
- Recurring Imagery
- Unexpected Asides
- Dramatic Irony
- http://penandthepad.com/dramatic-techniques-shakespeare-8540495.html
- He writes lyrics that are open to more than one interpretation / ambiguous / have more than one meaning.
- The Beatles wrote lyrics that were open to interpretation, but I think in some cases they were just writing nonsense that their listeners would interpret as containing secret meaning.
- Shakespeare also wrote things that had full double-meanings, like double-entendres.
Misc
- 2017.02.24 - YouTube - NativLang - What Shakespeare's English Sounded Like - and how we know
- Towards the end he gives an example of Shakespeare playing around with the ordering of words, where he combines two sentences into one, so that the audience has to untangle them:
- I with death and with
Reward did threaten and encourage him,
Not doing ’t and being done - Translation:
I threatened to kill him if he didn’t and to reward him if he did.
- I with death and with
- Towards the end he gives an example of Shakespeare playing around with the ordering of words, where he combines two sentences into one, so that the audience has to untangle them:
- StackExchange - Literature - Why did Shakespeare write in iambic pentameter?
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