Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T03:40:56.724Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Case of the Rhyming Couplets: the Sonances of ‘Richard II’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2009

Kenneth C. Bennett
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Among the infinite variety of critical approaches to Shakespeare, relatively little attention has been paid, even by scholars professedly concerned with Shakespeare's language, to the quality and nature of the sound of his words – despite the commonplace assumption that the young Shakespeare, in particular, was in love with language. One consequence is that such a major element of Richard II as its high proportion of rhyming couplets is either briefly (and negatively) dismissed, or ignored. Here, Kenneth C. Bennett, who teaches in the Department of English at Lake Forest College, lllinois, considers in detail the distinctive qualities and ‘sonances’ of language in the play, looking in particular at the couplets, whose use and significance he analyzes and defends.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Theatre Quarterly , Volume 4 , Issue 16 , November 1988 , pp. 356 - 367
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Dryden, John, The Literary Criticism of John Dryden, ed. Kirsch, Arthur C.. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1966.Google Scholar
Jorgensen, Paul A., ‘Vertical Patterns in Richard II’, Shakespeare Association Bulletin, XXIII (1948), p. 119–34.Google Scholar
Joseph, Miriam, Shakespeare's Use of the Arts of Language. New York: Columbia University Press, 1947.Google Scholar
Omstein, Robert, A Kingdom for a Stage: the Achievement of Shakespeare's History Plays. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972.Google Scholar
Shakespeare, William, King Richard the Second, ed. Wells, Stanley. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969 (New Penguin Shakespeare).Google Scholar
Tillyard, E. M. W., Shakespeare's History Plays. London: Chatto, 1944.Google Scholar
Van Doren, Mark, Shakespeare. London: Allen, 1941.Google Scholar
Wright, George T., ‘The Play of Phrase and Line in Shakespeare's lambic Pentameter’, Shakespeare Quarterly, XXXIV (1983), p. 147–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar