Prescanned Shakespeare.com
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Equality and stress produce rhythm. Language becomes verse whenever it produces rhythm. Say the lines below out loud, and tap your finger with each stressed syllable, and you will feel the rhythm of each line.
Once upon a midnight dreary
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For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of course, you can't see the rhythm you just tapped. To experience rhythm from language, you need to hear it or speak it. On the written page, rhythm is invisible.
To make rhythm visible, you apply scansion. Scansion (pronounced skan-shun) means "a system of marking you use to show rhythm." The word reflects the fact that you can't perceive rhythm without hearing the words; to find the rhythm of a line, you must scan through it. Then, to keep track of the rhythm that you've scanned, you mark its scansion.
Every feature of rhythm requires its own scansion mark. You've already seen one mark: a vertical line that indicates the rhythmic division between feet. Another is the stress mark [ ´ ]; stress marks may be used to indicate long syllables, because long syllables produce rhythmic stress. Short syllables can be left unmarked; because their function is to fill space between stresses, having no mark makes it easier to see the rhythmic space. Once scansion is marked, the rhythmic features of a line can be seen.
, , , ,
Once u|pon a | midnight | dreary
, , , ,
For the moon | never beams | without bring|ing me dreams
Long syllables are usually on the same side of each foot, producing a steady, even rhythm. Now that scansion is marked in the above lines, you can see where their stresses are placed. In the first line, all the long syllables are on the left; in the second line they're all on the right.
However, the long syllable can be on either side. Provided that feet are equal in total length, they will still feel rhythmical.
, ,
Kermit | the Frog
, , , , ,
That had | he Dun|can's sons | under | his key
You perceive rhythm whenever you hear beats equally spaced in time. Because stressed syllables provide a beat, and equal feet provide equal spaces of time, verse makes you feel rhythm. This is why you recognize equal language to be verse.
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