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VERSE AND PROSE. 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.
The difference between them is central to appreciating Shakespeare's writing, but understanding prose vs. verse is not as difficult as you might think. Shakespeare moved between prose and verse in his writing to vary the rhythmic structures within his plays and give his characters more depth.
Prose vs. Verse. Shakespeare intermingles verse and prose frequently in Othello. In a general sense, Shakespeare uses prose as an expression of debasement, as in the cases of Cassio’s drunkenness (Act II, scene iii), the Clown’s bawdiness (Act III, scene i), and Othello’s rage (Act IV, scene i).
The verse of the drama falls naturally into two parts: (a) blank verse, that is, unrhymed lines in iambic pentameter; (b) rhymed lines in various metres.
When we talk about prose in Shakespeare, we are referring to all the lines of a play that do not conform to a specific poetic structure. The easiest way to identify prose on the page is that prose sections appear as full blocks of text, while verse is broken into lines, which all start with capital letters.
Prose versus Verse. Macbeth contains a fairly small amount of prose compared to most of Shakespeare’s other plays. Where prose is used, it tends to distinguish characters with more humble origins from characters of noble background, to indicate sections of the play where the purpose is to deliver information or to suggest the onset of mental ...
While most of the memorable passages from the plays are in verse, many memorable scenes are in prose, or a mixture of the two: prose is one of the many ways in which Shakespeare keeps the rhythmic counterpoint* of his language alive.
