What is blank verse?
Unrhymed iambic pentameter.
Breaking down Blank Verse: An Introduction to Unrhymed Iambic Pentameter
Blank verse is a type of poetry that is written in unrhymed iambic pentameter.
Iambic pentameter is a type of meter that consists of 10 syllables per line, with a pattern of iambic feet. This means that each line is made up of five sets of unstressed syllables followed by stressed syllables.
The term “blank” in blank verse simply means that there is no rhyme pattern, unlike other types of poetry such as sonnets or limericks.
Blank verse was popularized by William Shakespeare in his plays, most notably in Macbeth, Hamlet, and King Lear.
One example of blank verse in literature is the famous Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare:
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Another example of blank verse in literature is John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost:
Of Man's first disobedience and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us and regain the blissful seat,
Sing, Heavenly Muse, that on the secret top
Of Oreb or of Sinai didst inspire
That shepherd who first taught the chosen seed
In the beginning how the heavens and earth
Rose out of Chaos: or, if Sion hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that flowed
Fast by the oracle of God, I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventrous song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th' Aonian mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.