Twelfth Night Literary Devices

1) Verse/Prose Usage: Shakespeare wrote his plays using two different kinds of language: verse and prose. You can tell if a passage is written in verse if

a.) The words do not go all the way across the page;

b.) The first word on each line is capitalized, regardless of the sentence break;

c.) There is a regular rhythm of unstressed and stressed syllables;

d.) There are usually 10 or 11 syllables in each line.

You can tell if a passage is written in prose if

a.) the words go all the way across the page;

b.) the first word of each line does not begin with a capital unless it is the first word of a sentence;

c.) the words do not share a consistent rhythmic pattern.

As a general rule (applicable in about 95% of the cases) you can assume that

a.) upper class characters speak verse; lower class characters speak prose.

Examples: Duke Orsino in verse (almost all the time) versus Feste in prose (almost all the time)

b.) serious material will be in verse; comic material will be in prose;

Examples: Orsino explaining his passion for Olivia in verse
The phony letter that fools Malvolio is in prose

c.) noble characters will speak verse; villains will speak prose;

Examples: Sebastian speaks in verse almost always Malvolio speaks in prose almost always

d.) romantic passages will be in verse; non-romantic passages in prose.

Examples: Viola describes in verse how she would love Olivia, I, 5, 269
Feste describes in prose Malvolio’s misperception, IV, 2, 37.

Watch for places where a character changes from one form to another in the same scene, such as when Viola Act I, scene 5 changes from prose when she banters comically with Olivia to verse when she tells her how cruel and unreasonable her rejection of Orsino’s suit is. Or watch when a character switches from one form which she has consistently used to another.