HAMLET TO HAMILTON
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    • Seasons >
      • Season One >
        • S1 E1: Defining Verse Drama
        • S1 E2: Content Dictates Form
        • S1 E3: Schwumpf, There It Is
        • S1 E4: Heresy!
        • S1 E5: So You Think You Know Scansion?
        • S1 E6: Whose Line (Ending) Is It Anyway?
        • S1 E7: What's My Line (Ending)?
        • S1 E8: First Folio and Emotive Formatting
        • S1 E9: The Rules of Emotive Formatting
        • S1 E10: Silences, Spacing, Stage Directions & Shared Lines
      • Season Two >
        • S2 E1: The Earliest Arthur: Thomas Hughes
        • S2 E2: Verse Drama Meets Opera: John Dryden
        • S2 E3: Burlesque and Verse Drama: Henry Fielding's "Tom Thumb"
        • S2 E4: Defenestrating Lancelot!
        • S2 E5: Empowering Guinevere
        • S2 E6: More Hovey, More Honey
        • S2 E7: Melodrama!
        • S2 E8: Gilbert and Sullivan Do King Arthur...Kinda
        • S2 E9: King Arthur and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Play
        • S2 E10: New Arthur, New Millennia
        • S2 E11: A Philosophical "King Arthur" by Lucy Nordberg
        • S2 E12: The First Folio in the 21st Century: Daniel James Roth's "The Tragedy of King Arthur"
        • S2 E13: Stage Violence and Verse: "The Table Round" & "The Siege Perilous" by Emily C. A. Snyder (2019)
      • Season Three >
        • S3 E1: So You Think You Know Soliloquies?
        • S3 E2: Redefining Verse Drama, Pt. 1 - Four Types of Verse
        • S3 E3: Deep Dive: Exploring Hamlet's Seven Soliloquies
        • S3 E4: Deep Dive: Exploring Macbeth's Soliloquies
        • S3 E5: The Villain Soliloquies: Richard III, Iago, Edmund Don John...and Petruchio?
        • S3 E6: "Madness" in Soliloquy:- Re-examining King Lear, Lady Macbeth and Ophelia
        • S3 15: Discovering Character Through Line Breaks - Part 3
    • Bonus Episodes >
      • Interviews >
        • Interview: Tim Carroll
        • Interview: Peter Oswald
        • Interview: Glyn Maxwell
        • Interview: Kasia Lech
        • Interview: Caeden Musser
        • Interview: Deb Victoroff
      • Round Tables >
        • Round Table of the Round Table: Lucy Nordberg, Daniel James Roth, Emily C. A. Snyder
        • Round Table: Daniel James Roth, Grace Bardsley, Benedetto Robinson
      • BAR(D) TALKS
      • Unhinged Rants
  • Additional Resources
    • Types of Verse >
      • What is Verse?
      • Prose vs. Poetry
    • Meter and Scansion >
      • What is Meter?
      • Rhythm and Prosody
      • Stressed and Unstressed Syllables
      • Prosody (Wikipedia)
    • Contemporary Verse Dramatists >
      • 18th Century
      • 19th Century
      • 20th Century
      • 21st Century
    • Timeline of Arthurian Verse Drama
  • Patreon
    • Fractured Atlas

What is Meter?

Introduction

"Scansion" and "Meter" are probably terms you've heard a lot.  But what are they?  And how do they work?

First, if you've ever spoken a word - congratulations!  You've used meter! 

In this tutorial, we're going to use scansion, which is the study of meter.

Vocabulary

  • Scansion: The study of meter
  • Meter: The interplay of rhythm and beat
  • Beat: The strong pulse of a line or sentence, which creates a foot
  • Rhythm: The interplay of accented syllables over the beat
  • Foot: A single unit of one (1) beat and the rhythms over it

So what is meter?

Meter is the interplay of rhythm and beat.  That means that when we study (scan) meter, we're asking three questions in this order:

  1. How many strong beats do we feel on a single line of verse?  This tells us how many metric feet are on a line of verse.  This is what we will study on this page.
  2. How many syllables are on each metric foot (beat)?  This is called syllabic rhythm.
  3. Which syllables are stressed on each metric foot?  And what pattern do they create?  This is called accentual rhythm.

All of these questions tell us:
  • How many beats are on a line of verse
  • How many metric feet are on a line of verse
  • How many syllables are on a line of verse
  • What rhythmic pattern is on a line of verse

Let's look at an example, using music

If we scan (the verb of scansion) the line, we see that:
  • There are three strong beats
  • That means that there are three metric feet (strong beats)
  • The syllabic rhythm over it is one syllable per beat "Three blind mice."
  • The accentual rhythm seems to be all emphasized, with no one syllable emphasized over another.

In this case, we're going to presume a single line of verse equals a single measure.
  • A "measure" of music just means the notes between two lines.  You can see the line at the end of the image.
Picture

Metric Feet

A metric foot will always have one (1) strong beat and a rhythm over it.  Depending on how many metric feet (beats) are on a line of verse, we have different names.  Here are a few common names:

  • Monometer: When there's only one (1) foot.  Example: "Yes."
  • Dimeter: When there are two (2) feet. Example: "Go there."
  • Trimeter: When there are three (3) feet.  Example: "I love you."
  • Tetrameter: When there are four (4) feet. Example: "Will you help me?"
  • Pentameter: When there are five (5) feet.  Example: "Take the keys with you."
  • Hexameter: When there are six (6) feet.  Example: "I'll take your coat now, please."
  • Heptameter: When there are seven (7) feet. Example: "Take a left, then just go straight."
  • Octameter: When there are eight (8) feet.  Example: "I left the dog at home with Bill"...and so on

Putting it together

So, in our example of "Three blind mice" above, if we were to scan (study) the meter, we would see that:
  • Because there are three (3) strong beats
  • That means that the line has three (3) feet
  • So we would call it trimeter

Next up!

We've named the type of metric feet according to beat...but what about rhythm?
Next

Related Episode: So You Think You Know Scansion?

Intellectual property of Emily C. A. Snyder
© 2022

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  • Home
    • Team
    • Turn to Flesh Productions
    • DM Me Podcast
  • Episode Guide
    • Seasons >
      • Season One >
        • S1 E1: Defining Verse Drama
        • S1 E2: Content Dictates Form
        • S1 E3: Schwumpf, There It Is
        • S1 E4: Heresy!
        • S1 E5: So You Think You Know Scansion?
        • S1 E6: Whose Line (Ending) Is It Anyway?
        • S1 E7: What's My Line (Ending)?
        • S1 E8: First Folio and Emotive Formatting
        • S1 E9: The Rules of Emotive Formatting
        • S1 E10: Silences, Spacing, Stage Directions & Shared Lines
      • Season Two >
        • S2 E1: The Earliest Arthur: Thomas Hughes
        • S2 E2: Verse Drama Meets Opera: John Dryden
        • S2 E3: Burlesque and Verse Drama: Henry Fielding's "Tom Thumb"
        • S2 E4: Defenestrating Lancelot!
        • S2 E5: Empowering Guinevere
        • S2 E6: More Hovey, More Honey
        • S2 E7: Melodrama!
        • S2 E8: Gilbert and Sullivan Do King Arthur...Kinda
        • S2 E9: King Arthur and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Play
        • S2 E10: New Arthur, New Millennia
        • S2 E11: A Philosophical "King Arthur" by Lucy Nordberg
        • S2 E12: The First Folio in the 21st Century: Daniel James Roth's "The Tragedy of King Arthur"
        • S2 E13: Stage Violence and Verse: "The Table Round" & "The Siege Perilous" by Emily C. A. Snyder (2019)
      • Season Three >
        • S3 E1: So You Think You Know Soliloquies?
        • S3 E2: Redefining Verse Drama, Pt. 1 - Four Types of Verse
        • S3 E3: Deep Dive: Exploring Hamlet's Seven Soliloquies
        • S3 E4: Deep Dive: Exploring Macbeth's Soliloquies
        • S3 E5: The Villain Soliloquies: Richard III, Iago, Edmund Don John...and Petruchio?
        • S3 E6: "Madness" in Soliloquy:- Re-examining King Lear, Lady Macbeth and Ophelia
        • S3 15: Discovering Character Through Line Breaks - Part 3
    • Bonus Episodes >
      • Interviews >
        • Interview: Tim Carroll
        • Interview: Peter Oswald
        • Interview: Glyn Maxwell
        • Interview: Kasia Lech
        • Interview: Caeden Musser
        • Interview: Deb Victoroff
      • Round Tables >
        • Round Table of the Round Table: Lucy Nordberg, Daniel James Roth, Emily C. A. Snyder
        • Round Table: Daniel James Roth, Grace Bardsley, Benedetto Robinson
      • BAR(D) TALKS
      • Unhinged Rants
  • Additional Resources
    • Types of Verse >
      • What is Verse?
      • Prose vs. Poetry
    • Meter and Scansion >
      • What is Meter?
      • Rhythm and Prosody
      • Stressed and Unstressed Syllables
      • Prosody (Wikipedia)
    • Contemporary Verse Dramatists >
      • 18th Century
      • 19th Century
      • 20th Century
      • 21st Century
    • Timeline of Arthurian Verse Drama
  • Patreon
    • Fractured Atlas