Queen Elizabeth is boss (Richard III, IV.4) Part 2
Elizabeth’s meter at the beginning and end of the sequence is irregular but to different effects. First, “I have no more sons of the royal blood” (210) combining a spondee and a trochee with the starting iamb to create four even strong stresses, the epitome of grim gravitas - a mother heart-broken (breaking the iambic line which mirrors a heart-beat) but dignified in her grief. Her second to last line, “I go. Write to me very shortly” (449) is a syllable short, a mess of weak and strong stresses, and almost seems to be attempting a terrible rhyme with ‘me very shortly’; nowhere in the rest of the scene does Elizabeth fall to pieces so completely, even when speaking of her sons being murder, and I would contend that she does so deliberately to create a picture of a “shallow, changing woman” (431).
Another place Elizabeth’s mastery of the conversation comes across is in split lines. Of the six occasions she finishes Richard’s line, five cut him off before he is finished speaking, and in all she speaks the most number of syllables (possession is nine-tenths of the law). When Richard jumps on the end of her line with the last four beats of “What cans’t thou swear by now? The time to come!” (387), Elizabeth’s long vowels stretch her beats to the maximum, squishing his reply with its desperate exclamation mark, and then she blasts him with nine lines of solid iambic pentameter. Richard is reduced to threats to counter this in his following long monologue.
An analysis of Helena's 'side', i.e. Helena's lines with brief cues - the way Shakespeare's actors would have received their scripts.
In Act Two, Scene One (lines 194-244) of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Helena has followed Demetrius into the woods outside Athens, much to his dismay. Her main objective in this scene, as it is throughout the entire play, is to get Demetrius to love her; her secondary objective particular to this scene is to make Demetrius allow her to keep following him. Though the part analysed has only Helena’s lines with no indication of who says her cues, it is obvious that she is always speaking to Demetrius as she often says his name and in lines 223-6 implies that they are all alone.
One of Helena’s strategies to achieve her objectives, particularly obvious when analysing the part as a ‘side’, is to repeat Demetrius’ last words back at him; a way of immediately creating intimacy between them. The beginning of each of Helena’s lines begins in answer to the words before it: “[Demetrius:] I cannot love you ... [Helena:] I love you the more” (201-2), “[D:] your virginity ... [H:} Your virtue” (219-20), “[D:] mercy of the wild beasts ... [H:] The wildest hath not such a heart as you”(228-9). Each time she replies to him, a little more is invested in the conversation, a little more is he sucked in, and a little longer does he stay in this space talking to her and not running after Hermia. But the exchange is conducted in blank verse not rhyming couplets (unlike most of the lovers’ lines). There is a slight distance between them, in contrast to Helena finishing Hermia’s rhymes in I.1 (194-201) which carries the understanding and familiarity of a longstanding friendship, the verse equivalent of finishing each other’s sentences. Helena wants to be close to him but at the same time does not want to presume.
Continuing that line of thought, Helena often lowers her own status to appeal to Demetrius’ pity. In her second line she creates a striking image as her self as his spaniel, begging him to let her, “unworthy”(207) as she is, follow him. The pitiful image is masterfully brought to life by the explosive sibilance and trochaic rhythm of “spurn me, strike me”(205), and the stroking, pleading effect of the letter ‘l’ in “Neglect me, lose me”(206) as it is emphasised by falling on the strong stress. In the examples in the previous paragraph, Helena adapted Demetrius’ own words to suit her argument and to draw closer to him, but on one occasion she deliberately does not use an intimacy he has given her, to lower her status: “[D:] do look on thee ... [H:] look not on you”(212-3). ‘Thee’ is familiar, whereas ‘you’ would be used by a servant when speaking to their master and Helena’s use of it underlines the previous image of an unworthy creature to be pitied. One knows that this is a deliberate strategy because throughout the passage Helena steadfastly says ‘you’, until the moment Demetrius has left the stage when she declares: “I’ll follow thee”(243) – she thinks of him intimately but does not want to aggravate Demetrius further by letting him see that.
At the beginning of the passage, Helena’s metre is irregular which would usually indicate emotional distress. Her first line, “You DRAW | me, you| HARDHEART | ed AD | aMANT” with its irregular pyrrhic and spondaic feet could be seen as the metrical representation of her confusion and distress – at being lost in the woods and Demetrius’ draw on her though he does not love her. However, as Demetrius’ attitude toward her does not change during the passage and yet her lines become almost completely a regular iambic pentameter by the end of her second line (a calm rhythm to compliment and support her logical arguments) it would appear that her erratic rhythms come from physical not emotional stimulus. She is a well-bred young lady, probably unused to physical exercise, and prior to this passage she has been trailing for hours about a forest, it is only natural that she would be out of breath and gulping down air would affect her speech patterns. As she and Demetrius stay in one place and argue, she gets her breath back and so her lines become more regular. The iambic pentameter deviates only twice after line 209. The first “RUN when | you WILL ...”(230), the trochee punctuating the beginning of her argument to focus attention to what she is about to say. The second comes after the cue “---mischief in the wood”(237) which is Demetrius threatening to rape her, the trochee which begins the next line “AY, in ...” points out her unease – the first time she has not felt perfectly safe in Demetrius’ company alone in a secluded forest.
Helena wants Demetrius to love her, to try and make him do so she employs a number of strategies; by engaging his interest and keeping him for as long as possible in her company, and appealing to his pity. She is confident of success, as her steady metre suggests once she has regained her breath lost traipsing about in a wood after the man; only one small blip worries her resolution which is quickly smoothed out and she exits still pursuing her objective.
