Blank verse is

poetry Poetry (from the Greek language, Greek word ''poiesis'', "making") is a form of literature, literary art that uses aesthetics, aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meaning (linguistics), meanings in addition to, or in ...

written with regular metrical but unrhymed lines, usually in

iambic pentameter Iambic pentameter ( ) is a type of metric line used in traditional English poetry and verse drama. The term describes the rhythm, or meter, established by the words in each line. Meter is measured in small groups of syllables called feet. "Iambi ...

. It has been described as "probably the most common and influential form that

English poetry This article focuses on poetry from the United Kingdom written in the English language. The article does not cover poetry from other countries where the English language is spoken, including the Republic of Ireland after December 1922. The earl ...

has taken since the 16th century", and

Paul Fussell Paul Fussell Jr. (22 March 1924 – 23 May 2012) was an American cultural and literary historian, author and university professor. His writings cover a variety of topics, from scholarly works on eighteenth-century English literature to commentary ...

has estimated that "about three quarters of all

is in blank verse". The first known use of blank verse in English was by

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, KG (1516/1517–19 January 1547) was an English nobleman, politician and poet. He was one of the founders of English Renaissance poetry and was the last known person to have been executed at the insistence of King ...

in his translation of the ''

Aeneid The ''Aeneid'' ( ; or ) is a Latin Epic poetry, epic poem that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Troy, Trojan who fled the Trojan War#Sack of Troy, fall of Troy and travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Ancient Rome ...

'' (composed ; published posthumously, 1554–1557). He may have been inspired by the

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

original since classical Latin verse did not use rhyme, or possibly he was inspired by

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...

verse or the

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, a Romance ethnic group related to or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance languag ...

verse form of ', both of which also did not use rhyme. The play '' Arden of Faversham'' (around 1590 by an unknown author) is a notable example of end-stopped blank verse.

In English

The 1561 play ''

Gorboduc Gorboduc ('' Welsh:'' Gorwy or Goronwy) was a legendary king of the Britons as recounted by Geoffrey of Monmouth. He was married to Judon. When he became old, his sons, Ferrex and Porrex, feuded over who would take over the kingdom. Porrex tri ...

'' by Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville was the first English play to use blank verse.

Christopher Marlowe Christopher Marlowe ( ; Baptism, baptised 26 February 156430 May 1593), also known as Kit Marlowe, was an English playwright, poet, and translator of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe is among the most famous of the English Renaissance theatre, Eli ...

was the first English author to achieve critical fame for his use of blank verse. The major achievements in English blank verse were made by

William Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...

, who wrote much of the content of his plays in unrhymed

, and

John Milton John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet, polemicist, and civil servant. His 1667 epic poem ''Paradise Lost'' was written in blank verse and included 12 books, written in a time of immense religious flux and politic ...

, whose ''

Paradise Lost ''Paradise Lost'' is an Epic poetry, epic poem in blank verse by the English poet John Milton (1608–1674). The poem concerns the Bible, biblical story of the fall of man: the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan and their ex ...

'' is written in blank verse. Miltonic blank verse was widely imitated in the 18th century by such poets as James Thomson (in '' The Seasons'') and

William Cowper William Cowper ( ; – 25 April 1800) was an English poet and Anglican hymnwriter. One of the most popular poets of his time, Cowper changed the direction of 18th-century nature poetry by writing of everyday life and scenes of the Engli ...

(in '' The Task''). Romantic English poets such as

William Wordsworth William Wordsworth (7 April 177023 April 1850) was an English Romantic poetry, Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romanticism, Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication ''Lyrical Balla ...

Percy Bysshe Shelley Percy Bysshe Shelley ( ; 4 August 1792 – 8 July 1822) was an English writer who is considered one of the major English Romantic poets. A radical in his poetry as well as in his political and social views, Shelley did not achieve fame durin ...

, and

John Keats John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets, along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. His poems had been in publication for less than four years when he died of tub ...

used blank verse as a major form. Shortly afterwards,

Alfred, Lord Tennyson Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (; 6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was an English poet. He was the Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of ...

became particularly devoted to blank verse, using it for example in his long narrative poem " The Princess", as well as for one of his most famous poems: " Ulysses". Among American poets, Hart Crane and

Wallace Stevens Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was an American modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as an executive for an insurance compa ...

are notable for using blank verse in extended compositions at a time when many other poets were turning to

free verse Free verse is an open form of poetry which does not use a prescribed or regular meter or rhyme and tends to follow the rhythm of natural or irregular speech. Free verse encompasses a large range of poetic form, and the distinction between free ...

. Marlowe and then Shakespeare developed its potential greatly in the late 16th century. Marlowe was the first to exploit the potential of blank verse for powerful and involved speech: Shakespeare developed this feature, and also the potential of blank verse for abrupt and irregular speech. For example, in this exchange from '' King John'', one blank verse line is broken between two characters: Shakespeare also used

enjambment In poetry, enjambment (; from the French ''enjamber'') is incomplete syntax at the end of a line; the meaning 'runs over' or 'steps over' from one poetic line to the next, without punctuation. Lines without enjambment are end-stopped. The origin ...

increasingly often in his verse, and in his last plays was given to using feminine endings (in which the last syllable of the line is unstressed, for instance lines 3 and 6 of the following example); all of this made his later blank verse extremely rich and varied. This very free treatment of blank verse was imitated by Shakespeare's contemporaries, and led to general metrical looseness in the hands of less skilled users. However, Shakespearean blank verse was used with some success by

John Webster John Webster (c. 1578 – c. 1632) was an English Jacobean dramatist best known for his tragedies '' The White Devil'' and ''The Duchess of Malfi'', which are often seen as masterpieces of the early 17th-century English stage. His life and car ...

and

Thomas Middleton Thomas Middleton (baptised 18 April 1580 – July 1627; also spelt ''Midleton'') was an English Jacobean playwright and poet. He, with John Fletcher and Ben Jonson, was among the most successful and prolific of playwrights at work in the Jac ...

in their plays.

Ben Jonson Benjamin Jonson ( 11 June 1572 – ) was an English playwright, poet and actor. Jonson's artistry exerted a lasting influence on English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours; he is best known for the satire, satirical ...

, meanwhile, used a tighter blank verse with less enjambment in his comedies ''

Volpone ''Volpone'' (, Italian for "sly fox") is a comedy play by English playwright Ben Jonson first produced in 1605–1606, drawing on elements of city comedy and beast fable. A merciless satire of greed and lust, it remains Jonson's most-perfo ...

'' and '' The Alchemist''. Blank verse was not much used in the non-dramatic poetry of the 17th century until ''

'', in which Milton used it with much license. Milton used the flexibility of blank verse, its capacity to support syntactic complexity, to the utmost, in passages such as these: Milton also wrote ''

Paradise Regained ''Paradise Regained'' is an epic poem by English poet John Milton, first published in 1671. The volume in which it appeared also contained the poet's closet drama '' Samson Agonistes''. ''Paradise Regained'' is connected by name to his earlie ...

'' and parts of '' Samson Agonistes'' in blank verse. In the century after Milton, there are few distinguished uses of either dramatic or non-dramatic blank verse; in keeping with the desire for regularity, most of the blank verse of this period is somewhat stiff. The best examples of blank verse from this time are probably

John Dryden John Dryden (; – ) was an English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who in 1668 was appointed England's first Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, Poet Laureate. He is seen as dominating the literary life of Restoration (En ...

's tragedy '' All for Love'' and James Thomson's '' The Seasons''. An example notable as much for its failure with the public as for its subsequent influence on the form is John Dyer's ''The Fleece''. At the close of the 18th century,

ushered in a renewal of blank verse with his volume of kaleidoscopic meditations, '' The Task'', published in 1784. After Shakespeare and Milton, Cowper was the main influence on the next major poets in blank verse, teenagers when Cowper published his masterpiece. These were the

Lake Poets The Lake Poets were a group of English poets who all lived in the Lake District of England, United Kingdom, in the first half of the nineteenth century. As a group, they followed no single "school" of thought or literary practice then known. They ...

and

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge ( ; 21 October 177225 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian who was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets with his friend William Wordsworth ...

. Wordsworth used the form for many of the ''

Lyrical Ballads ''Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems'' is a collection of poems by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, first published in 1798 and generally considered to have marked the beginning of the English Romantic movement in literature. ...

'' (1798 and 1800), and for his longest efforts, ''

The Prelude ''The Prelude or, Growth of a Poet's Mind; An Autobiographical Poem '' is an autobiographical poem in blank verse by the English poet William Wordsworth. Intended as the introduction to the more philosophical poem ''The Recluse,'' which Wordswort ...

'' and '' The Excursion''. Wordsworth's verse recovers some of the freedom of Milton's, but is generally far more regular: Coleridge's blank verse is more technical than Wordsworth's, but he wrote little of it: His conversation poems such as " The Eolian Harp" and " Frost at Midnight" are the best known of his blank verse works. The blank verse of Keats in '' Hyperion'' is mainly modelled on that of Milton, but takes fewer liberties with the pentameter and possesses the characteristic of Keats's verse. Shelley's blank verse in ''

The Cenci ''The Cenci. A Tragedy, in Five Acts'' ( ; 1820) is a verse drama in five acts by Percy Bysshe Shelley written in the summer of 1819, and inspired by a real Roman family, the House of Cenci (in particular, Beatrice Cenci). Shelley composed t ...

'' and '' Prometheus Unbound'' is closer to Elizabethan practice than to Milton's. Of the Victorian writers in blank verse, the most prominent are Tennyson and

Robert Browning Robert Browning (7 May 1812 – 12 December 1889) was an English poet and playwright whose dramatic monologues put him high among the Victorian literature, Victorian poets. He was noted for irony, characterization, dark humour, social commentar ...

. Tennyson's blank verse in poems like "Ulysses" and "The Princess" is musical and regular; his lyric "

Tears, Idle Tears "Tears, Idle Tears" is a lyric poem written in 1847 by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892), the Victorian-era English poet. Published as one of the "songs" in his '' The Princess'' (1847), it is regarded for the quality of its lyrics. A Tennys ...

" is probably the first important example of the blank verse stanzaic poem. Browning's blank verse, in poems like " Fra Lippo Lippi", is more abrupt and conversational.

Gilbert and Sullivan Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the dramatist W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) and the composer Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900) and to the works they jointly created. The two men collaborated on fourteen com ...

's 1884 opera, ''

Princess Ida ''Princess Ida; or, Castle Adamant'' is a comic opera with music by Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It was their eighth operatic collaboration of fourteen; the next was ''The Mikado''. ''Princess Ida'' opened at the Savoy Thea ...

'', is based on Tennyson's "The Princess". Gilbert's dialogue is in blank verse throughout (although the other 13

Savoy opera Savoy opera was a style of comic opera that developed in Victorian England in the late 19th century, with W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan as the original and most successful practitioners. The name is derived from the Savoy Theatre, which imp ...

s have prose dialogue). Below is an extract spoken by Princess Ida after singing her entrance aria "Oh, goddess wise". Blank verse, of varying degrees of regularity, has been used quite frequently throughout the 20th century in original verse and in translations of narrative verse. Most of

Robert Frost Robert Lee Frost (March26, 1874January29, 1963) was an American poet. Known for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American Colloquialism, colloquial speech, Frost frequently wrote about settings from rural life in New E ...

's narrative and conversational poems are in blank verse; so are other poems like

's " The Idea of Order at Key West" and " The Comedian as the Letter C",

W. B. Yeats William Butler Yeats (, 13 June 186528 January 1939), popularly known as W. B. Yeats, was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer, and literary critic who was one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the ...

's " The Second Coming",

W. H. Auden Wystan Hugh Auden (; 21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973) was a British-American poet. Auden's poetry is noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in tone, ...

's "The Watershed" and

John Betjeman Sir John Betjeman, (; 28 August 190619 May 1984) was an English poet, writer, and broadcaster. He was Poet Laureate from 1972 until his death. He was a founding member of The Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architect ...

's '' Summoned by Bells''. A complete listing is impossible, since a sort of loose blank verse has become a staple of lyric poetry, but it would be safe to say that blank verse is as prominent now as it has been any time in the past three hundred years.

In German

Blank verse is also common in

German literature German literature () comprises those literature, literary texts written in the German language. This includes literature written in Germany, Austria, the German parts of Switzerland and Belgium, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, South Tyrol in Italy ...

. It was used by

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (; ; 22 January 1729 – 15 February 1781) was a German philosopher, dramatist, publicist and art critic, and a representative of the Enlightenment era. His plays and theoretical writings substantially influenced the dev ...

in the tragedy (''

Nathan the Wise ''Nathan the Wise'' (original German title: , ) is a play by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing from 1779. It is a fervent plea for religious tolerance. It was never performed during Lessing's lifetime and was first performed in 1783 at the Döbbelinsches ...

'') in 1779, where the lines are 10 or 11 syllables long:

Notes

References

*The Department of English
"Blank Verse" in ''The UVic Writer's Guide''
University of Victoria, 1995. *Deutsch, Babette, ''Poetry Handbook'', fourth edition. 1974. * *Milton, John, ''Paradise Lost''. Merritt Hughes, ed. New York, 1985. {{DEFAULTSORT:Blank Verse Poetic forms Types of verses

In English

In German

See also

Notes

References