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Measure For Measure

Shakespeare's play Measure for Measure uses language strategically to represent the characters' religious and sexual struggles. The play uses both iambic pentameter verse and prose. Iambic pentameter, with its rhythmic heartbeat pattern, is used for 65% of the play. Rhyming couplets are also frequently used by characters to conclude speeches. The play employs techniques like antithesis, which pairs opposites, to explore dramatic tensions between ideas like life and death.

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18 views9 pages

Measure For Measure

Shakespeare's play Measure for Measure uses language strategically to represent the characters' religious and sexual struggles. The play uses both iambic pentameter verse and prose. Iambic pentameter, with its rhythmic heartbeat pattern, is used for 65% of the play. Rhyming couplets are also frequently used by characters to conclude speeches. The play employs techniques like antithesis, which pairs opposites, to explore dramatic tensions between ideas like life and death.

Uploaded by

bivix92661
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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MEASURE FOR MEASURE :

LANGUAGE
DONE BY
ELISHBA HUSSAIN
L62
WHAT IS LANGUAGE

• Language refers to the words that are spoken in a


drama

• Carefully choosing the words in a drama helps to create


characters
• Communicate ideas and creates dramatic meanings
THE LANGUAGE USED BY
SHAKESPEARE
• Shakespeare’s plays are verse dramas with some
sections written in prose
• The use of poetry does not mean the characters are
poets , it means that the playwright is using the power ,
descriptiveness and the flexibility of poetry to express
thoughts and feelings of many characters
THE LANGUAGE IN MEASURE FOR
MEASURE
• Shakespeare’s play Measure for Measure uses words to both
confuse and represent the religious and sexual struggles of the
characters.
• We can see this in act two, scene four of the play.
• This conversation between Angelo and Isabella shows how the
characters use language to convey their ideas, to each other and
against each other, and how sexual and religious influences are
undercurrents throughout, especially for Isabella
CONTINUATION

• Iambic pentameter is the name given to the rhythm that


Shakespeare uses in his plays. The rhythm of iambic
pentameter is like a heartbeat, with one soft beat and
one strong beat repeated five times.
• Iambic pentameter is used in 65% of the play. If you
count the syllables in this line where Isabella turns on
Claudio in his prison cell and read it out, you can see
how it works: ‘O faithless coward! O dishonest
wretch!’
CONTINUATION
• Shakespeare writes in a combination of prose and verse. Prose
is a conversational way of speaking which doesn’t have a set
rhythm or structure. Verse always has a set rhythm and
structure.
• 65% of Measure for Measure is written in verse and 35% in
prose, so it’s interesting to look for where and why it changes.
You can tell which is which by looking at the page in the play
text. Where it looks like a poem, Shakespeare is using verse and
when it looks like writing in a book that goes the whole way
across the page, prose is being used.
CONTINUATION
• Rhyming couplets are two lines written in iambic
pentameter that end in the same sound, or a rhyme.
They are often used to sum up the end of a character’s
speech.
• Characters often use rhyming couplets to finish
thoughts and speeches in Shakespeare. In Measure for
Measure, they can often be found at the end of a
soliloquy. The duke uses one in his speech condemning
Angelo to death, which also features the title of the
play: ‘Haste still pays haste, and leisure answers
leisure, / Like doth quit like, and measure still for
CONTINUATION
• Antithesis happens when two opposites are put
together. For example, hot and cold or light and dark.
• Dramatic opposites such as life/death, light/dark and
cold/warm are used a lot in the play. In Act 3 Scene 1,
Claudio says: ‘To sue to live, I find I seek to die’ and
compares the ‘cold obstruction’ of death to the ‘warm
motion’ of life. Describing the duke in Act 3 Scene 2,
Lucio says he would ‘have dark deeds darkly
answered; he would never bring them to light.’

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