Breaking Down the Bard - Scansion

Our patterns of speech have various rhythms, made up of combinations of stressed or unstressed syllables or words. In reality, the amount of emphasis we place on words and syllables is a broad spectrum. Some people will delve into those different levels of emphasis when it comes to poetry, and that is totally cool. However, when we're looking at classical verse text, particularly Shakespeare, we generalize with either "unstressed" or "stressed" syllables.

If everything was emphasized to the same degree, odds are good you would sound like a robot... which IS a choice, if that's what you're looking for. But for the other 99.99% of the time, you're gonna need to pay attention to the patterns of speech.

Let's look at the following sentence:
I never said she stole my money.

The choice of which word to emphasize in this sentence changes the entire meaning.
I never SAID she stole my money. (But I wanted to.)
I never said SHE stole my money. (It was Ava, not Isabella!)
I never said she stole MY money. (She stole Jaxon's.)

How you choose to deliver your lines can also change how your character is perceived, and possibly even the plot of the play! Therefore, it's important to pay close attention to the weight you give your words.

"Scansion" is the name for the markings you'll make in your script to remind yourself where you'd like the stresses to fall in your lines of verse. (You "scan" a line of verse, the markings themselves are "scansion".)

SUPER IMPORTANT:
THERE IS USUALLY MORE THAN ONE WAY TO SCAN A LINE OF VERSE.
It's not about "right" and "wrong", it's about telling the story clearly and effectively. In a show, this is usually a collaborative effort.

There are many ways to mark your verse, but the most common in America (right now), is:

If you were taught something else, or prefer something else, that's okay! Formatting gets all kinds of cray on a computer, so if I can't handwrite something, you'll SEE me TYPE like THIS. it CER-tain-ly ISn't i-DEAL, BUT it GETS the POINT a-CROSS.

Let's look at some scanned perfect iambic pentameter:

See how the unstressed and stressed syllables are clearly denoted? It's super easy to follow, especially with that tricky word at the end of the second line, "deserts". It's not DESerts, like the Sahara, but it's pronounced like "desserts" (like cake), and it means merit, or claim to honor and reward.

If you're not dealing with iambic pentameter, it might look like this:

This poem by William Blake is a great example of a different kind of verse.

Additionally, some people find it helpful to mark where the end of each "foot" is. The foot is kind of like the measure, if you want to think of this as music. It's even marked just like a measure ending is in sheet music, with a vertical line:

There you have it! The easy intro to scansion - which will make you look like SUCH a pro when you walk into your next first day of rehearsal!

Wanna step up your Shakespeare game?

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