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What is prose, and how is it different to poetry? The short answer is that prose is the form of writing that I’m using now, and the form we most commonly use in speech with each other. Prose is the term for any sustained wodge of text that doesn’t have a consistent rhythm.
But the clash between verse and prose can also resemble a direct contest of wills, a confrontation in which one character ultimately succeeds in imposing his speech habit onto a more compliant...
Read more about the deliberate use of prose to point to madness in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Another function of prose is to mark the speech of lower-status characters. Members of the nobility, like Claudius, almost always speak in verse, but commoners like the gravedigger use prose.
Shakespeare constructs the characters through language, so we can look at what the characters’ language and ways of speaking says about them. For example, much of Othello’s speech in the first half of the play is in blank verse.
What is prose? How does it differ from verse? The difference between them is central to appreciating Shakespeare's writing, but understanding prose vs. verse is not as difficult as you might think.
In As You Like It, one of the ways Shakespeare utilizes prose is to signify romantic connection between Rosalind and Orlando. Additionally, Shakespeare’s use of verse is significant in its role of characterizing Orlando and Oliver as virtuous.
Using examples from Shakespeare’s early, middle, and late plays and from his Tragedies, Comedies, and Histories, this chapter charts developments and explores patterns in Shakespeare’s dramatic verse line across the genres and time span of his writing career.
