Why did Shakespeare's noble characters speak in iambic pentameter while commoners spoke mainly in blank verse or prose?

Answer 1

Blank verse is iambic pentameter that doesn't rhyme. If commoners speak in blank verse (and they do), they necessarily speak in iambic pentameter. Occasionally they speak in rhyming iambic pentameter too. It is not the nature of the speaker, but the nature of what they are saying that determines what form the lines will take. Blank verse gives the impression of measured, well-thought-out speech. It conveys seriousness and wisdom (or the appearance of it). Prose is more appropriate for utterances which are funny, stupid or insane. When characters like King Lear and Othello go insane, they start talking in prose when they spoke in blank verse before. The characters who are written as funny or stupid in Shakespeare's plays are often workmen or servants, as a result of social snobbery. Middle-class people who show signs of nobility, like Romeo and Juliet, speak in iambic pentameter, heck, even in sonnets!

Answer 2

Blank verse is iambic pentameter which doesn't rhyme. Iambic pentameter is the rhythm of blank verse.

Most of the time, Shakespeare's characters speak either in blank verse or prose. Prose is speech without a fixed rhythm, like what I am writing now.

Blank verse, while a very natural rhythm in English, is also more stately, more impressive and can be much more powerful than prose. It is appropriate to declaimed speeches, lofty soliloquys and passionate declarations of love. When the language does not require this level of power, like when people are goofing around, telling jokes, flirting and the like, prose works better.

So, when Henry V is giving his locker-room speech to the troops before the battle, he uses blank verse like this:

This story shall the good man teach his son;

And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,

From this day to the ending of the world,

But we in it shall be remember'd;

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he to-day that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,

This day shall gentle his condition:

And gentlemen in England now a-bed

Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,

And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

But when he is standing around chewing the fat with them, he talks in prose like this:

"For, though I speak it to you, I think the king is but a man, as I am: the violet smells to him as it doth to me: the element shows to him as it doth to me; all his senses have but human conditions: his ceremonies laid by, in his nakedness he appears but a man; and though his affections are higher mounted than ours, yet, when they stoop, they stoop with the like wing."

It is not a matter of whether the character is noble or common; it is more about whether he is talking about noble or common things.

Answer 3

Blank verse is iambic pentameter that doesn't rhyme. If commoners speak in blank verse (and they do), they necessarily speak in iambic pentameter. Occasionally they speak in rhyming iambic pentameter too. It is not the nature of the speaker, but the nature of what they are saying that determines what form the lines will take. Blank verse gives the impression of measured, well-thought-out speech. It conveys seriousness and wisdom (or the appearance of it). Prose is more appropriate for utterances which are funny, stupid or insane. When characters like King Lear and Othello go insane, they start talking in prose when they spoke in blank verse before. The characters who are written as funny or stupid in Shakespeare's plays are often workmen or servants, as a result of social snobbery. Middle-class people who show signs of nobility, like Romeo and Juliet, speak in iambic pentameter, heck, even in sonnets!