A Rational Guide to Verse: Scansion Made Simple, Second Edition

The purpose of this book is to show how to analyze metered verse. It is written especially for the student or actor who, tackling Shakespeare or other classical verse for the very first time, wants clear and direct instructions about what to do. Its content is designed to be a quick and simple explication of principles with which a reader can immediately begin analyzing verse.

From this book, readers will learn how verse is constructed. The explanations given here are grounded in the natural law of equality, so that any reader may intuitively grasp the logic and sense of metered verse. Readers will learn how and why verse structure produces aesthetic effects.

FOR STUDENTS AND ACTORS: This guide will help you analyze Shakespeare and other classical poetry. In these pages, you will find simple step-by-step instructions. For the novice who has never worked with classical poetry, this guide provides an essential foundation of knowledge. For a more experienced performer, its principles offer a new perspective to your ongoing work. Using this guide, you will be able to "scan" any verse with accuracy and confidence.

FOR TEACHERS AND PROFESSIONALS: This guide can help your students learn scansion. Its approach to scansion is adapted from principles of verse set forth by Edgar Allan Poe and is supported by evidence from psycholinguistics and phonetic science. This guide's essential goal is to explain the rationale of verse-- why verse is structured the way it is. Poe's rationale is grounded in fundamental laws of human perception and natural principles of speech. You can adapt the rationale described here to help your students understand any approach to scansion.

INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION: This second edition of Scansion Made Simple has developed out of practical application of the first-edition material. Students are using Scansion Made Simple to recite Shakespeare in the classroom, and the analyses at prescannedshakespeare.com have revealed certain rhythmical patterns which have required new scan-marks and new instructions. New explanations and discoveries arising from these applications are incorporated into this book.

For student recitation, the relationship between punctuation, scansion, and recitation has been clarified, and a breath mark [ ] has been introduced to encourage thoughtful use of expressive pausing. Students should find it easier to speak verse more naturally.

The scansion has new marks. Each of these new marks has been derived from rhythmic patterns observed across multiple Shakespearean texts, and all of them have been implemented on prescannedshakespeare.com.

Not all of Shakespeare's blank verse is pentameter. The first edition of this book recognized Shakespeare's use of non-pentametric rhyming verse; however, the scans created for prescannedshakespeare.com have also found pairs of lines, within stanzas of blank verse, that are a length other than pentameter. These lines of unusual length always appear in pairs; therefore, because they are equal to each other, they maintain the principle of equality essential for rhythmical verse.

The second edition of A Rational Guide to Verse: Scansion Made Simple provides a helpful guide, and a more-complete toolbox, for analyzing and reciting classical verse.