The Metre of Macbeth: Its Relation to Shakespeare's Earlier and Later Work

Excerpt from The Metre of Its Relation to Shakespeare's Earlier and Later Work

In Maooeflz prose makes its appearance in four places, though only one of these (v. I) is a prose scene properly SO called. In Act I Scene 5, it is used for Macbeth's letter to his Lady; prose is the normal medium for letters, proclamations, and other written documents.1 The Porter's rhythmical2 speech (ii. 3) is a good example of the use of prose for purposes of comedy, though, as befits the tone of the play, the jesting here is rather grim. Poor men and Clowns are regularly speakers of prose in Shakespeare. Macduff, except for two lines, descends to the level of the Porter, because, as Sharpe frames the law,3 if an educated man who usually speaks metre meets a poor man, both Speak prose. Being the language of every-day life prose contributes much to that effect of the reflux of the human world upon the fiendish which De Quincey makes the rationale of the scene. With the subsidence of the Porter and the return to serious business at the entrance of Macbeth, prose gives way to blank verse. Act IV., Scene 2, illustrates how prose lowers the dra matic pitch for the sake of emotional relief. After Lady Macduff's bitter discussion of her husband's conduct with Ross, in impassioned verse, she begins a gentle word-play with her son in prose, half-sad, half-merry. It is not, however, altogether prose. LI. 40, 41 are surely prose, but 11. 43 are as surely verse. Prose is resumed in l. 44 and thence continued as far as l. 64; This rather curious intermingling has led Professor Liddell4 to question the genuineness of the prose parts.

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