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Soliloquy
Key Examples in Measure for Measure
Act 5, Scene 1
Explanation and Analysis:
Shakespeare’s style in Measure for Measure contrasts “high” and “low” characters and their different ways of speaking, emphasizing these contrasts. The various aristocratic characters in the play speak in blank verse, a form of poetry composed of unrhymed iambic pentameter. Further, these characters often end their speech with a rhyming couplet: two lines of a similar length that rhyme and complete a thought. Notice both blank verse and a rhyming couplet in this speech by the Duke, in which he condemns Angelo to death before granting him clemency:
The very mercy of the law cries out
Most audible, even from his proper tongue,
“An Angelo for Claudio, death for death.”
Haste still pays haste, and leisure answers leisure;
Like doth quit like, and measure still for
Measure.—
