Blank verse is a type of poetry, distinguished by having a regular meter, but no rhyme. In English, the meter most commonly used with blank verse has been iambic pentameter. The Chinese poem Quatrain on Heavenly Mountain by Emperor Gaozong (Song Dynasty) Poetry (from the Greek , poiesis, a making or creating) is a form of art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its ostensible meaning. ... Meter (British English spelling: metre) describes the linguistic sound patterns of a verse. ... A rhyme is a repetition of identical or similar terminal sounds in two or more different words (i. ... Iambic pentameter is a meter in poetry. ...

The first known us e of blank verse in the English language was by Henry Howard, Earl of Arundel and Surrey in his interpretation of the Æneid (c. 1554). He was possibly inspired by the Latin original, as classical Latin verse (as well as Greek verse) did not use rhyme; he may have been inspired by the Italian verse form of versi sciolti, which also contained no rhyme. The unknown author of Arden of Faversham (circa 1590) is the most interesting example of end-stopped blank verse. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517 – January 13, 1547) was an English aristocrat, and one of the founders of English Renaissance poetry. ... Events January 5 - Great fire in Eindhoven, Netherlands. ... End-stopping is a feature in poetry where the syntactic unit (phrase, clause, or sentence) corresponds in length to the line. ...

Christopher Marlowe was the first English author to make full use of the potential of blank verse, and also established it as the dominant verse form for English drama in the age of Elizabeth I and James I. The major achievements in English blank verse were made by William Shakespeare, who wrote much of the content of his plays in unrhymed iambic pentameter, and Milton, whose Paradise Lost is written in blank verse. After Milton (in fact, during his later life), blank verse went out of fashion and for a century and a half the favored verse form in English was that of couplets. Romantic English poets such as William Wordsworth, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats revived blank verse as a major form. Following shortly afterwards, Alfred Lord Tennyson 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 are notable for using blank verse in extended compositions at a time when many other poets were turning to free verse. Christopher (Kit) Marlowe (baptised 26 February 1564 – 30 May 1593?) was an English dramatist, poet, and translator of the Elizabethan era. ... This does not cite any references or sources. ... Elizabeth I redirects here. ... James Stuart (19 June 1566 – 27 March 1625) was King of Scots as James VI, and King of England and King of Ireland as James I. He ruled in Scotland as James VI from 24 July 1567, when he was only one year old. ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ... For other persons named John Milton, see John Milton (disambiguation). ... Title page of the first edition (1667) Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. ... A couplet is a pair of lines of verse. ... Romantic poetry was part of the Romantic movement of European literature during the 18th-19th centuries. ... William Wordsworth (April 7, 1770 – April 23, 1850) was a major English romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their 1798 joint publication, Lyrical Ballads. ... -1... John Keats (31 October 1795 – February 23, 1821) was one of the principal poets of the English Romantic movement. ... Alfred, Lord Tennyson Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom and is one of the most popular English poets. ... Ulysses is a poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson, written in 1833 but not published until 1842. ... Harold Hart Crane (July 21, 1899 in Garrettsville, Ohio, United States – April 27, 1932 at sea) was a U.S. poet. ... Wallace Stevens Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was a major American Modernist poet. ... Free verse (also at times referred to as vers libre) is a term describing various styles of poetry that are not written using strict meter or rhyme, but that still are recognizable as poetry by virtue of complex patterns of one sort or another that readers will perceive to be...

Russian bylinas are in blank verse. Bylina (Russian: были́на, also Byliny and Stariny) is a traditional epic, heroic narrative poetry of early East Slavs of Kievan Rus, the tradition continued in Russia and Ukraine. ...

History of English blank verse

Gorboduc (1561), the first blank-verse tragedy, illustrates how monotonous such verse could be. 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: Gorboduc, also titled Ferrex and Porrex, was a transitional English play from 1562. ... // Events The Edict of Orleans suspends the persecution of the Huguenots. ...

You stars that reign'd at my nativity,

Whose influence hath allotted death and hell,

Now draw up Faustus like a foggy mist

Into the entrails of yon labouring clouds,

That when they vomit forth into the air,

My limbs may issue from their smoky mouths,

So that my soul may but ascend to Heaven.

(Doctor Faustus)

Shakespeare developed this feature, and also the potential of blank verse for abrupt and irregular speech. The earliest effects were like these: The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus is a play by Christopher Marlowe, based on the Faust story (Faustus is Latin for Faust), in which a man sells his soul to the devil for power and knowledge. ...

Death?

My lord?

A grave.

He shall not live.

(King John, 3.3)

Shakespeare also used enjambment 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. The Life and Death of King John is one of the Shakespearean histories, plays written by William Shakespeare and based on the history of England. ... Enjambement is the breaking of a linguistic unit (phrase, clause or sentence) by the end of a line or between two verses. ...

Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves,

And ye that on the sands with printless foot

Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him

When he comes back; you demi-puppets that

By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make

Whereof the ewe not bites; and you whose pastime

Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice

To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid,

Weak masters though ye be, I have bedimmed

The noontide sun, called forth the mutinous winds,

And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault

Set roaring war - to the dread rattling thunder

Have I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak

With his own bolt;...

(The Tempest, 5.1)

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 and Thomas Middleton in their plays. Ben Jonson, meanwhile, used a tighter blank verse with less enjambment in his great comedies Volpone and The Alchemist. To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... John Webster (c. ... Thomas Middleton (1580 – 1627) was an English Jacobean playwright and poet. ... For other persons of the same name, see Ben Johnson (disambiguation). ... An illustration for an 1898 edition of Volpone by Aubrey Beardsley. ... The Alchemist is a comedy by English playwright Ben Jonson. ...

Blank verse was not much used in the non-dramatic poetry of the 17th century until Paradise Lost, in which Milton used it with much licence and tremendous skill. Milton used the flexibility of blank verse, its capacity to support syntactic complexity, to the utmost, in passages such as these: Title page of the first edition (1667) Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. ...

into what Pit thou seest

From what highth fal'n, so much the stronger provd

He with his Thunder: and till then who knew

The force of those dire Arms? yet not for those

Nor what the Potent Victor in his rage

Can else inflict do I repent or change,

Though chang'd in outward lustre; that fixt mind

And high disdain, from sence of injur'd merit,

That with the mightiest rais'd me to contend,

And to the fierce contention brought along

Innumerable force of Spirits arm'd

That durst dislike his reign, and me preferring,

His utmost power with adverse power oppos'd

In dubious Battel on the Plains of Heav'n,

And shook his throne. What though the field be lost?

All is not lost; the unconquerable Will,

And study of revenge, immortal hate,

And courage never to submit or yield:

(Paradise Lost, Book 1)

Milton also wrote Paradise Regained and parts of Samson Agonistes in blank verse. Title page of the first edition (1667) Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. ... Paradise Regaind is a poem by the 17th century English poet John Milton, published in 1671. ... An Etching of Samson, from an 1882 German Bible Samson Agonistes (Greek: Samson the agonist) is a work of blank verse tragedy by John Milton. ...

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'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. John Dryden John Dryden (August 19 {August 9 O.S.}, 1631 - May 12 {May 1 O.S.}, 1700) was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator and playwright, who dominated the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles... All for Love is a heroic drama by John Dryden written in 1678. ... James Thomson (September 11, 1700 – August 27, 1748) was a Scottish poet. ... The Seasons is a Lithuanian poem written by Kristijonas Donelaitis. ...

At the close of the eighteenth century, William Cowper 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 William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Wordsworth used the form for many of the Lyrical Ballads (1798 and 1800), and for his longest efforts, The Prelude and The Excursion. Wordsworth's verse recovers some of the freedom of Milton's, but is generally far more regular. It is often tedious and prosaic, but at its best it has a calm resonance that is almost unique to Wordsworth. Coleridge's blank verse is technically dazzling, but he wrote little of it: so-called "conversation Poems" such as "The Aeolian 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 beauties of Keats's verse. Shelley's blank verse in The Cenci and Prometheus Unbound is closer to Elizabethan practice than to Milton's. Portrait of William Cowper attributed to Romney. ... The Lake Poets all lived in the Lake District of England at the turn of the nineteenth century. ... Wordsworth, an underground hip hop MC from Brooklyn. ... Samuel Taylor Coleridge (October 21, 1772 – July 25, 1834) (pronounced ) was an English poet, critic, and philosopher who was, along with his friend William Wordsworth, one of the founders of the Romantic Movement in England and one of the Lake Poets. ... Lyrical Ballads, 1798, was the flame that lit the English Romantic movement, its spark being that of the somewhat earlier William Blake. ... Year 1798 (MDCCXCVIII) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Friday of the 11-day slower Julian calendar). ... // ON MAY 5 1853 MR.FADER HAD SEX WITH A MAN NAME MR WIEN THEN THEY HAD SON NAMEDMRS COTURE AND MR MANOOGIAN WENT INTO MRS HASKELLS OFFICE NAKED AND DANCED AROUND AND MASTERBATED ON HER CHEST AND SHE LICKED IT OFF THEN THEY HAD ORAL SEEX WITH NAPLOEAN OF... The Prelude is an autobiographical poem in blank verse by the English poet William Wordsworth. ... John Keats (31 October 1795 – February 23, 1821) was one of the principal poets of the English Romantic movement. ... Hyperion is an uncompleted epic poem by 19th-century English Romantic poet John Keats. ... -1... The Cenci was a verse drama by Percy Bysshe Shelley written in the summer of 1819, and inspired by a real Italian family, the Cencis (in particular, Beatrice Cenci). ... There are two plays named Prometheus Unbound. ...

Of the Victorian writers in blank verse, the most prominent are Tennyson and Robert Browning. Tennyson's blank verse in poems like "Ulysses" and "The Princess" is musical and regular; his lyric "Tears, Idle Tears" 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's 1884 opera, Princess Ida, is based on Tennyson's "The Princess". Gilbert's dialogue is in blank verse throughout (although the other 13 Savoy operas have prose dialogue). Below is an extract spoken by Princess Ida after singing her entrance aria "Oh, goddess wise". Lord Tennyson, Poet Laureate Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (August 6, 1809 - October 6, 1892) is generally regarded as one of the greatest English poets. ... Robert Browning (May 7, 1812 – December 12, 1889) was a British poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets. ... W. S. Gilbert Arthur Sullivan Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian era partnership of librettist W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) and composer Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900). ... Wikisource has original text related to this article: Princess Ida Wikisource has original text related to this article: The Princess (Tennyson) Princess Ida, or Castle Adamant, is the eighth operetta written by Gilbert and Sullivan. ... The Savoy Operas are a series of operettas written by Gilbert and Sullivan. ...

Women of Adamant, fair neophytes-

Who thirst for such instruction as we give,

Attend, while I unfold a parable.

The elephant is mightier than Man,

Yet Man subdues him. Why? The elephant

Is elephantine everywhere but here (tapping her forehead)

And Man, whose brain is to the elephant's

As Woman's brain to Man's - (that's rule of three),-

Conquers the foolish giant of the woods,

As Woman, in her turn, shall conquer Man.

In Mathematics, Woman leads the way:

The narrow-minded pedant still believes

That two and two make four! Why, we can prove,

We women-household drudges as we are-

That two and two make five-or three-or seven;

Or five-and-twenty, if the case demands!

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's narrative and conversational poems are in blank verse; so are other important poems like Wallace Stevens's "The Idea of Order at Key West" and "The Comedian as the Letter C", W. B. Yeats's "The Second Coming", W. H. Auden's "The Watershed", John Betjeman's Summoned by Bells, and so on. 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. Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) was an American poet. ... Wallace Stevens Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was a major American Modernist poet. ... William Butler Yeats, 1933 photograph, author unknown. ... Wystan Hugh Auden (21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973) (IPA: ; first syllable of Auden rhymes with law), who signed his works W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet, regarded by many as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. ... A collection of Betjemans poetry, published by John Murray in January 2006 Sir John Betjeman CBE (28 August 1906 – 19 May 1984) was an English poet, writer and broadcaster who described himself in Whos Who as a poet and hack. He was born to a middle-class family... Book cover Summoned by Bells Summoned by Bells, the blank verse autobiography by John Betjeman, describes his life from his early memories of a middle class home in Edwardian Hampstead, London to his premature departure from Magdalen College, Oxford. ...

References

• The Department of English. "Blank Verse" in The UVic Writer's Guide. University of Victoria, 1995. http://web.uvic.ca/wguide/Pages/LTBlankVerse.html

• Deutsch, Babette, Poetry Handbook, fourth edition. 1874.

• Milton, John, Paradise Lost. Merritt Hughes, ed. New York, 1985.

See also

• Free verse