Blank verse is poetry written with regular metrical but unrhymed lines, almost always in iambic pentameter. 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 Republican Ireland after December 1922. The earliest ...

has taken since the 16th century", and Paul Fussell has estimated that "about three quarters of all English poetry is in blank verse". The first known use of blank verse in English was by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey in his translation of the ''

Æneid The ''Aeneid'' ( ; la, Aenē̆is or ) is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who fled the fall of Troy and travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the R ...

'' (composed c. 1540; published posthumously, 1554–1557). He may have been inspired by the Latin original since classical Latin verse did not use rhyme, or possibly he was inspired by Ancient Greek verse or the Italian verse form of '' versi sciolti'', 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.

History of English blank verse

The 1561 play '' Gorboduc'' by Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville was the first English play to use blank verse.

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

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, who wrote much of the content of his plays in unrhymed iambic pentameter, and

John Milton John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet and intellectual. His 1667 epic poem '' Paradise Lost'', written in blank verse and including over ten chapters, was written in a time of immense religious flux and political ...

, whose ''

Paradise Lost ''Paradise Lost'' is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton (1608–1674). The first version, published in 1667, consists of ten books with over ten thousand lines of verse (poetry), verse. A second edition fo ...

'' 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 (in ''The Task'').

Romantic Romantic may refer to: Genres and eras * The Romantic era, an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual movement of the 18th and 19th centuries ** Romantic music, of that era ** Romantic poetry, of that era ** Romanticism in science, of that e ...

English poets such as William Wordsworth,

Percy Bysshe Shelley Percy Bysshe Shelley ( ; 4 August 17928 July 1822) was 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 during his lifetime, but recognition of his achie ...

, and

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

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 his ...

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 Harold Hart Crane (July 21, 1899 – April 27, 1932) was an American poet. Provoked and inspired by T. S. Eliot, Crane wrote modernist poetry that was difficult, highly stylized, and ambitious in its scope. In his most ambitious work, '' The Brid ...

and Wallace Stevens are notable for using blank verse in extended compositions at a time when many other poets were turning to free verse. 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 King John may refer to: Rulers * John, King of England (1166–1216) * John I of Jerusalem (c. 1170–1237) * John Balliol, King of Scotland (c. 1249–1314) * John I of France (15–20 November 1316) * John II of France (1319–1364) * John I o ...

'', one blank verse line is broken between two characters: 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. 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''. Blank verse was not much used in the non-dramatic poetry of the 17th century until ''

'', in which Milton used it with much license and tremendous skill. 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'' 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'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 John Dyer (1699 – 15 December 1757) was a painter and Welsh poet who became a priest in the Church of England.Shaw, Thomas B. ''A Complete Manual of English Literature''. Ed. William Smith. New York: Sheldon & Co., 1872. 372. Print. He was m ...

's ''The Fleece''. At the close of the 18th 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: Coleridge's blank verse is more technical than Wordsworth's, but he wrote little of it: His so-called "conversation Poems" such as "

The Eolian Harp ''The Eolian Harp'' is a poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1795 and published in his 1796 poetry collection. It is one of the early conversation poems and discusses Coleridge's anticipation of a marriage with Sara Fricker along with the ...

" and " Frost at Midnight" are the best known of his blank verse works. The blank verse of Keats in ''

Hyperion Hyperion may refer to: Greek mythology * Hyperion (Titan), one of the twelve Titans * ''Hyperion'', a byname of the Sun, Helios * Hyperion of Troy or Yperion, son of King Priam Science * Hyperion (moon), a moon of the planet Saturn * ''Hyp ...

'' 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. 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 poets. He was noted for irony, characterization, dark humour, social commentary, historical settings ...

. 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 Gilbert and Sullivan was a Victorian era, Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the dramatist W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) and the composer Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900), who jointly created fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which ...

'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". 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. His work was initially published in England before it was published in the United States. Known for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloq ...

'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" 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 architecture, ...

'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.

Blank verse in German literature

Blank verse is also common in German literature. It was used by

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

in the tragedy ''Nathan der Weise'' ('' Nathan the Wise'') in 1779, where the lines are 10 or 11 syllables long:German literature.
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Notes

References

*The Department of English. "Blank Verse" in ''The UVic Writer's Guide''. University of Victoria, 1995. https://web.archive.org/web/20070105170201/http://web.uvic.ca/wguide/Pages/LTBlankVerse.html *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

History of English blank verse

Blank verse in German literature

See also

Notes

References