The Hamlet Podcast

EPISODE ONE: Blank Verse

Iambic Pentameter

The basic rhythm of all of Shakespeare's dramatic verse is iambic pentameter - a line of five feet (a pentameter) usually made of five iambs. An iamb is a combination of an unstressed syllable and a stressed syllable. The example used in this episode is 'champagne'. The reverse of an iamb is a trochee - a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one. A clear example is the word 'never'. The two examples from this episode, of iambic and then trochaic pentameter, are as follows:

Iambic Pentameter sounds like this:

I think I’ll go and have a cup of tea.

Even if you read this in the most neutral way possible, you’ll still find that the stress will fall on every second syllable.

I think I’ll go and have a cup of tea.

By contrast, trochaic pentameter (which up-ends this rhythm entirely, uses five trochees and is very seldom used as a poetic metre) sounds like this:

Cloudy weather reaching Northern Ireland.

Again, even reading it with no emphasis or rhythm you’ll still find that the stress falls on the first syllable of each word. (Try to read it as if it were iambic pentameter and it’ll sound very strange indeed!)

Cloudy weather reaching Northern Ireland.

Feminine Endings
The basic rhythm of almost all poetic drama in English before Shakespeare is short-LONG short-LONG short-LONG short-LONG short-LONG. Or, as you might recognise, de-DUM de-DUM de-DUM de-DUM de-DUM. It is rather akin to the human heartbeat, and certainly a rhythmic pattern that has given form to some of the most beautiful poetry in the English language. But sometimes there are more syllables to a thought than will fit into such a tight rhythm. Sometimes the playwright wants to squeeze in a little more. And in this instance - often because a character is thinking about something a little more complicated or confusing or terrifying - we get a bonus syllable in the line, meaning that it goes up to eleven. Lines like this aren't guaranteed to be a signal of reflection or concern, but they certainly often are. Think about To BE or NOT to BE that IS the QUEST-ion. Eleven syllables - existential crisis. (For reference - a masculine ending happens when a line ends with a stressed syllable; “these but the trappings and the suits of woe”.

Caesura
A caesura is a pause or break in a metrical line of poetry. It is frequently suggested by a punctuation mark or the end of a phrase. The caesura is a longstanding feature of rhythmic poetry, very common across multiple languages. They appear throughout Shakespeare, Beowulf, and as far back as Latin and even Ancient Greek. The first lines of two of the greatest classics, The Iliad and The Aeneid, both have notable caesurae in their opening lines. (Indeed, Virgil’s opening line echoes Homer’s - and there’s every chance Shakespeare was emulating both in the opening line of HIS war epic, Henry V…!)

Homer: The Iliad
μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ <caesura> Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος
(Sing, Goddess, of the rage of Achilles, son of Peleus…)

Virgil: The Aeneid
Arma virumque cano <caesura> Troiae qui primus ab oris
(Of arms and the man, I sing. || Who first from the shores of Troy...)

Shakespeare: Henry V
O for a muse of fire, <caesura> that would ascend…

EPISODE TWO: More Verse

Rhyming Verse
When Shakespeare was starting out as a playwright, the majority of plays were written in rhyming couplets - that is, lines of verse that rhymed, We get a very clear sense of this within Hamlet during the play in Act 3. The Player King’s first six lines give us a sense of this:

Full thirty times hath Phoebus' cart gone round
Neptune's salt wash and Tellus' orbed ground,
And thirty dozen moons with borrow'd sheen
About the world have times twelve thirties been,
Since love our hearts and Hymen did our hands
Unite commutual in most sacred bands.

The rhythm is quite measured, and each line tends to be a phrase unto itself. Contrast with the freedom and immediacy of Hamlet’s speech at the end of the very same scene:

Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood,
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on. Soft! now to my mother.

(Feel free to count the syllables in each of these lines - you’ll find a few anomalies, as discussed within the episode!)

Shared Lines
Click here to go to Act Three Scene Four, to look at all the various shared lines between Hamlet and Gertrude.

Soliloquy
A soliloquy is a dramatic device whereby a playwright has a character speak to themselves alone on stage. The word itself comes from Latin (solus, alone, and loquor, I speak...). Shakespeare's plays are filled with countless examples of the form, in comedy, history, and tragedy, and indeed the device has been popular from as far back as the writings of Montaigne (believed to have inspired Shakespeare) all the way as far as contemporary versions of it, such as Netflix' House of Cards. The soliloquies in Hamlet are among the play’s most noted features, but what is particularly interesting is that the speakers aren’t always alone.

EPISODE THREE - Prose

Prose 
Prose is the other great style of writing in Shakespeare’s plays. While there are some plays that are exclusively in verse, no play is entirely written in prose. (Although The Merry Wives of Windsor comes very close…) Prose is tricky to lock down, because there are no absolute rules for what it means or why it is used. Certainly, it’s no less beautiful than poetry; 

I have of late - but wherefore I know not -
lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises;
and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition
that this goodly frame, the earth,
seems to me a sterile promontory, this most
excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave
o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted
with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to
me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.
What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!
how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how
express and admirable! in action how like an angel!
in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the
world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me,
what is this quintessence of dust?

Why should this beautiful piece of writing be in prose instead of verse? Any number of reasons - Hamlet is speaking with his friends, who happen to be his inferiors, but he’s also talking to people that he doesn’t trust, so is he telling the truth, or is this a performance for their benefit? (All of these? Or something else?!)

In the episode I list five possible uses for prose. None of them are absolute, but they all crop up as uses for prose in Hamlet and in other plays. 

- prose can indicate status or a difference in status
- prose can indicate one’s mental state
- prose indicates self-consciousness, or an awareness that people are watching/listening
- prose can indicate that a character is being honest
- prose can be used for reported speech, especially letters

An extra tip for you to differentiate between prose and verse: on the page, lines of verse all begin with a capital letter. So, if the line breaks seem slightly arbitrary, and each new line is capitalized, then you’re looking at verse. If this is not the case (as in the quintessence of dust paragraph above) it’s prose.

EPISODE FOUR: Antithesis

Antithesis
The word antithesis comes to us from the ancient Greek words ἀντί "against" and θέσις “placing”. It is used to describe how a writer will balance opposite ideas.  

To be or not to be, that is the question
Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing, end them.

Shakespeare was very fond of this device, and his writing overflows with antitheses. Several of Hamlet’s major soliloquies rely on antithesis, as he argues with himself and compares his situation with others: 

O that this too too solid flesh would melt (see Episode 25)

O what a rogue and peasant slave am I (see Episode 69)

To be or not to be, that is the question (see Episode 75)

How all occasions do inform against me (see Episode 123)

Juxtaposition

Juxtaposition, meanwhile, comes from the Latin words iuxta “beside” and positio “placing” - very similar to ‘antithesis’, but with a different meaning. Juxtaposition is usually the placement of words/ideas that reverberate against each other to create a contrast or a comparison. Hamlet juxtaposes figures to compare his father and his uncle;

So excellent a king; that was, to this,
Hyperion to a satyr…

Shakespeare uses juxtaposition at a macro level too - within the play, it could be argued that he juxtaposes the old and the new king, and of course Laertes and Fortinbras are juxtaposed with Hamlet. 

Paradox

A paradox is a statement that appears to contradict itself, and subverts our expectations. The clearest example is when Hamlet says 

I must be cruel, only to be kind. 

This is a paradox, a juxtaposition AND an antithesis. Beat that! 

EPISODE FIVE - Apposition

Apposition

Moving on from antithesis and juxtaposition, apposition is the placement of ideas and phrases that stack up to create a situation. (If you’ve learned English grammar you’ll know how appositional phrases work; “Shakespeare, the great writer, was the son of a Warwickshire glove-maker.”) Apposition can incorporate antithesis, but doesn’t have to. The example in the episode is the opening soliloquy from Richard III:

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that loured upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visaged war hath smoothed his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamped, and want love's majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtailed of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence and the king
In deadly hate the one against the other:
And if King Edward be as true and just
As I am subtle, false and treacherous,
This day should Clarence closely be mewed up,
About a prophecy, which says that 'G'
Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be.

Try reading the speech aloud, and try to give a different weight to every different apposite phrase. Then try what happens when you let them build up one from another. Once you have a sense of how these ideas all stack up, it becomes very exciting, listening to Richard’s evil plans.

The phrases in Richard’s speech are all quite equal - each idea tends to last for a single metrical line, which means that they’re quite easy to follow and deliver. By contrast, Polonius’ advice from Hamlet is a lot more complicated; 

Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatched, unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,
Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

Again, try reading it aloud, identifying all of the various uses of antithesis or apposition. It’s trickier than it looks! 

EPISODE SIX - Alliteration

Alliteration

Put simply, alliteration is the literary device of repeating sounds for (comic, dramatic, rhetorical, surprising) effect. Our human ears seem to be rather fond of it, as detailed with several examples within the episode. Gilbert and Sullivan created a terrific sequence of them in The Mikado:

To sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock
In a pestilential prison, with a life-long lock
Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock
From a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block!

Tongue-twisters and trademarks aside, it’s worth examining any speech in Shakespeare to see how he is using alliteration. For this episode we focused on the first soliloquy, from Act 1 Scene 2 of Hamlet. I haven’t marked all of the alliteration in it for you below - I’ll leave that to you…!

O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't! Oh, fie, fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two:
So excellent a king; that was, to this,
Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him,
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on: and yet, within a month -
Let me not think on't - Frailty, thy name is woman! -
A little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she followed my poor father's body,
Like Niobe, all tears: - why she, even she -
O, God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason,
Would have mourned longer - married with my uncle,
My father's brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules: within a month:
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married. O, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not nor it cannot come to good:
But break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue.

EPISODE SEVEN - Word Play

Assonance
Comparable to alliteration, assonance features repeated vowel sounds.

The fair Ophelia. Nymph in thy orisons
Be all my sins remembered.

A little more than kin and less than kind.

Hyperbole
Hyperbole means obvious exaggeration. (“I’ve told you a million times” is a clear and frequent example!)
There are several within the third soliloquy - a source for so many of these various techniques!
See how many hyperboles you can find in this speech:

To be, or not to be, that is the question,
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?

Understatement
The opposite of an understatement - when, instead of saying too much, a character doesn’t say enough!

It is not, nor it cannot come to good.

Paradox
As promised within the episode, here’s the link to that article: “The Seven Paradoxes of Shakespeare’s Hamlet” by Edmund Bergler.
The verbal paradoxes I mention all came from Claudius’ speech in Act One Scene Two:

Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death
The memory be green, and that it us befitted
To bear our hearts in grief and our whole kingdom
To be contracted in one brow of woe,
Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature
That we with wisest sorrow think on him,
Together with remembrance of ourselves.
Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen,
The imperial jointress to this warlike state,
Have we, as 'twere with a defeated joy -
With an auspicious and a dropping eye,
With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage,
In equal scale weighing delight and dole -
Taken to wife:

Onomatopoeia
Rather typically, the actual word for this device in Greek is not onomatopeia. In English, it means a word whose sound and meaning are equal,
like cuckoo, tick tock, splash, bang, and so on. (The internet has countless fun lists of examples…!) The only remote instance of it that I’ve managed to find in the play is from Ophelia:

Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh;
That unmatched form and feature of blown youth
Blasted with ecstasy…

Puns
A pun is a play on words - there are so many examples studded throughout the play that it seems crazy to try to list any specific examples.
If you’re a regular listener to the podcast you’ll have heard a great many of these already!

EPISODE EIGHT - Rhyme

Heroic Couplets
Also known as rhyming couplets, heroic couplets are pairs of rhyming verse lines.

More relative than this - the play’s the thing
Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.

They tend to land quite effectively in the ear, and Shakespeare often uses them to end a speech, or a scene, or when a character is exiting the stage.
Some of Hamlet’s soliloquies end with couplets, some do not. Have a look at them all and see if you can think of why they do or don’t!

Songs
Hamlet is not a play that has much music in it. Unlike some of the comedies, which have songs throughout, there’s very little singing in the play. Really there’s only Ophelia and the Gravedigger. Ophelia’s songs show us her madness, while the Gravedigger merrily sings at his work - a startling image that Hamlet himself comments on. Their songs rhyme, and have quite memorable lines, like these from Ophelia:

Quoth she, before you tumbled me,
You promised me to wed.
So would I ha' done, by yonder sun,
An thou hadst not come to my bed.

Rhyme and Reason
This episode attempts to look at whether there’s a thematic connection in the play, operating to differentiate between rhyme and reason. The phrase itself was proverbial as far back as the 15th century, so there’s every chance that Shakespeare could have had it in mind.

EPISODE NINE - Metaphor

To conclude this series of episodes, we take a look at metaphor and simile. For good measure, we end with a sonnet!