How the Play is Written

Abstract

‘Blank verse’ is sometimes thought of as monotonous unrhymed tensyllabled lines, going ti-tum, ti-turn, ti-tum, ti-turn, ti-turn. But Romeo and Juliet illustrates not only the very great variety of rhythms which ‘blank verse’ can comprehend, but also Shakespeare’s skill with prose, and with various sorts of rhymed verse (particularly in the first part of the play): couplets, stanzas and sonnets. And in this most lyrical of his plays he wrote several passages which, though completely relevant in the play, can be enjoyed as poems even if detached from it: Mercutio’s ‘Queen Mab’ speech (I.iv.53–103), Juliet’s epithalamium or ‘wedding song’ (IIl.ii.l–31) and the aubade or ‘dawn song’ when the lovers part (II1.v.l–36) (see pages 22, 73 and 76).