How To Read Shakespearean Scansion and Punctuation : PerformerStuff More Good Stuff

How To Read Shakespearean Scansion and Punctuation

Written by Rose Helsinger

August 16, 2017

As back to school rolls around again, there’s no doubt you’ll be facing some Shakespeare play in class where students halfheartedly read text aloud, pausing in the middle of every sentence. Whether you’re facing it in class or in an upcoming production, here’s a complete how to guide on the secret language of Shakespeare that makes reading the text less difficult.

Shakespearean scansion

Scansion is built on the foundation that a perfect Shakespearean verse line has 10 syllables. Those syllables are typically made up of iambs. An Iamb is an unstressed followed by a stressed syllable. Thus Shakespearean verse is referred to as being in iambic pentameter. A perfect line of text reads almost like a horse’s gallop or a heartbeat as ta-TUM, ta-TUM, ta-TUM, ta-TUM, ta-TUM. A line of text above can be broken down to “with HAIR up-STARing—THEN like REEDS not HAIR,—” This line scans perfectly as being a complete 10 syllable line made up of iambs.

Well, what if you get an imperfect line? That’s the point of scansion. Finding the moments that are breaking the rules indicate a direction for the actor. A line with 11 syllables is called a feminine ending, indicating a character is so full of emotions they spill out over the 10 syllable line. A line with 12 syllables is called an Alexandrine line, a character is overcome by emotions OR they’re delivering information (common in messenger characters), OR they won’t shut up and this a Shakespeare clue that your character is rather annoying (Polonius is a great example). A line with less than 10 syllables indicates that either a pause is allowed in the script or the character has a shared line with another character. In the text above, Ariel’s first line is only three syllables. That’s because the line that comes before her has seven syllables and together they create a perfect 10. This indicates that Ariel’s line should come right on the heels of the one before her without a pause. A scene that has many shared lines indicates that the pace of it should be rapid fire as the characters almost talk over each other.

If the text doesn’t have the distinct verse style, then it’s written in prose which means scansion rules don’t apply. Lower-class characters generally speak in prose, while upper-class and formal characters tend to speak in verse. You can tell something is in prose because it appears without line break capitalization. Here’s an example from Macbeth:

GENTLEWOMAN:
Since his majesty went into the field, I have seen her rise from her bed, throw her night-gown upon her, unlock her closet, take forth paper, fold it, write upon’t, read it, afterwards seal it, and again return to bed; yet all this while in a most fast sleep.

We analyze scansion because it tells an actor the emotional state of the character as well as their formality or relaxation in a given situation. Scansion also gives the speed at which actors should be speaking to one another. The idea of a Shakespearian actor always taking long, self-indulgent pauses is ridiculous because Shakespeare does everything he can to make sure actors are sweaty and out of breath with his use of scansion and punctuation.

The best thing about reading Shakespeare is that all the instructions are in the text for you. How fast you should go, where you should breathe, what words you should emphasize are all within the four-hundred year old lines. In analyzing Shakespeare, a level of text work is required that provides you with all the information you’ll ever need. Text work is primarily breaking down Shakespeare’s choices and why he makes them. There are three pillars of text work: scansion, punctuation, and paraphrase.

In case you’re unfamiliar with the Bard, scansion is an analysis of verse lines in Shakespeare. You can tell something is verse by the capital letter that starts every line break all down the left side. Here’s an example from The Tempest:

ARIEL
Not a soul
But felt a fever of the mad and play’d
Some tricks of desperation. All but mariners
Plunged in the foaming brine and quit the vessel,
Then all afire with me: the king’s son, Ferdinand,
With hair up-staring,—then like reeds, not hair,—
Was the first man that leap’d; cried, ‘Hell is empty
And all the devils are here.’

Shakespearean punctuation

Shakespearean punctuation is more than just ending a sentence. It’s direction for the actor’s breath. There’s a reason Shakespeare is called “aerobic acting.” One of the main reasons is the use of breath, or lack thereof. Despite whatever lackluster productions you might have seen full of dramatic pauses, the actual text moves like wild fire. Here’s what each punctuation mark means to an actor:

PERIOD: This means you come to a complete stop in your monologue to do a full breath, not a long pause. I repeat a period is a place to breathe and switch between thoughts, not a place to have a lengthy pause. If you’re doing Shakespeare, you should get one, maybe two, long pauses in the entire show.

SEMICOLON/COLON: This is a slightly shorter breath than a period. You’re not fully ending an idea. Your momentum is still going, but it’s switched into another direction.

COMMA: This is the shortest breath, much like a catch breath, you just get your lungs filled enough for the next line, using your momentum to propel into the next thought.

Never let breaths drain your energy. A saying in Shakespeare work is “energy to the end of the line!” Meaning that an actor’s intensity should drive all the way through the line and hit the last word the strongest. A common exercise is kick the box or pillow in which an actor winds up their kick saying their line and lands it on the last word. This propels their energy onto the next line or onto another character. Usually, the most important word is the last one, so don’t drop your voice!

An extreme example of punctuation is in The Taming of the Shrew:

BIONDELLO
Why, Petruchio is coming in a new hat and an old jerkin, a pair of old breeches thrice turned, a pair of boots that have been candle-cases, one buckled, another laced, an old rusty sword ta’en out of the town-armory, with a broken hilt, and chapeless; with two broken points: his horse hipped with an old mothy saddle and stirrups of no kindred; besides, possessed with the glanders and like to mose in the chine; troubled with the lampass, infected with the fashions, full of wingdalls, sped with spavins, rayed with yellows, past cure of the fives, stark spoiled with the staggers, begnawn with the bots, swayed in the back and shoulder-shotten; near-legged before and with, a half-chequed bit and a head-stall of sheeps leather which, being restrained to keep him from stumbling, hath been often burst and now repaired with knots; one girth six time pieced and a woman’s crupper of velure, which hath two letters for her name fairly set down in studs, and here and there pieced with packthread.

Yes, you read that right. There is only one period in that entire monologue and it’s when Biondello stops talking. There’s plenty of catch-breaths with commas, colons, and semicolons that indicate a list and changes in thought, but only one actual pause. Much of this monologue is one long-winded list, which brings up an important point about Shakespearean (and really all theatrical) lists: always escalate or descalate your lists. This a fairly lengthy monologue, if Biondello talked at one or two intensities without building at all, it would be torturously boring. The comedy comes from the fact that he just keeps going and going, getting either bigger and bigger in intensity as he gets wrapped up in his story or smaller and smaller as he loses his breath. The choice is up to the actor, but both are full of comedy gold. However if Biondello didn’t escalate/descalate his list and paused all throughout it, I guarantee you that audience would be asleep.

Paraphrasing is taking the Shakespearean text and putting it into your own words. It’s one of the most important parts of text work as you understand what Shakespeare is saying and form your own connection to the piece. If you want a more complete description of paraphrasing and why it’s necessary as well as why No-Fear Shakespeare isn’t a good resource, here’s a link to that article.

It’s easy to view Shakespeare as long, slow scenes and monologues that are as dead as the playwright himself. That couldn’t be further from the truth. The reason Shakespeare is still being performed today, four hundred years later, is because Shakespearean text is alive. The amount of dedicated work that goes into dissecting and connecting to the text, the way it moves back and forth between actors like a game of hot potato, the style of barely allowing its actors a chance to breathe is invigorating to an audience as they watch performers run a verbal marathon and push their bodies, minds, and souls in a way only Shakespeare play can.

More Shakespeare? Yes, please!

Rose Helsinger is an eighteen year old writer from Florida. She’s majoring in Creative Writing at Florida State University and is on the way to her dream career of being a collegiate professor. She loves reading, Shakespeare, cheesy ’80s music, and her dog.’