Why does Shakespeare let two or more actors finish a pentameter?
To complete the number of syllables in a pentameter Shakespeare (and other contemporaries) let multiple actors say a verse, like shown in Macbeth
Were two actors complete a pentameter:
DUNCAN: As seemeth by his plight, of the revolt
The newest state
MALCOLM: This is the seargent
Who like a good and hardy soldier fought
Or sometimes three actors:
ROSS: The victory fell on us
DUNCAN: Great happiness!
ROSS: That now
Sweno, the Norway's king, craves composition
I was wondering if anyone knew how this technique is called. Also, I know there's a practical reason for doing this but would there also be a stylistic one?. Source any stylistic motives please.
In literary criticism, such lines are often called short lines. For example, see Bowers, 1980):
Because of its abrupt break with regularity, the Shakespearean short line within a pentameter speech is immediately noticed by the ear and, in a reading edition, by the eye.
Sicherman (1984) also uses short lines as well as part-lines. She argues that many (though not all) of the short lines in Shakespeare plays have a stylistic effect (put in italics), and she uses Julius Caesar as evidence:
Using the example of Julius Caesar, widely considered the best printed of the Folio texts and therefore not so susceptible to editorial tampering, I shall try to show that the Folio short lines often provide eloquent implicit directions for stage-business, rhetorical emphases, and - above all - nuances of characterization.
This terminology also appears in more popular sources, like public-facing websites (Elizabethan Drama):
- Using Short Lines. Finally, an individual line may just simply fall well short of 10-syllables for no obvious reason at all. A speech may end with a short line, for example with only 4 or 5 syllables; this is followed by a different character speaking the next line, that line containing its full complement of 10 syllables. This technique can be used to signal that the speakers are about to change topics or ideas.