I know that poetry week is over BUT

Our study of poetry has come and gone, but not for me! This is because my personal learning plan centers around poetry, and in an effort to work on it during this drama week, I found some very interesting cross-overs between it and poetry. Having talked about Hamlet in my last post, I couldn't help but delve into some other works of Shakespeare. I chose another one of my favorites, Othello, The Moore of Venice. 

Othello and Iago

Although not of all the play is written in poetic form, I found many instances where Shakespeare used iambic pentameter:

"Thus do I ever make my fool my purse:
For I mine own gain'd knowledge should profane,  
If I would time expend with such a snipe.
But for my sport and profit. I hate the Moor:"

I began to wonder why Shakespeare would structure parts of the play in this way. Then, as I was reading, I noticed that the shifts between meter and no meter often correlated  with who the character is speaking to and what they were speaking about. For instance, in the excerpt above Iago is first commenting on his use of Roderigo (where there is iambic pentameter,) but then there is a transition to a sort of rant about his hatred for Othello (which is followed by prose.) In other words, Iago is at first more calm, paralleled by his structured language, but as his emotions grab a hold of him he begins to speak more freely.

I though that this was an interesting thing to point out, because it shows that an element usually associated with poetry can also have an effect when used in other genres, such as drama in this case.  This also helped me in that I:

•  recognized poetic elements portrayed in unusual means---->
•  which is helping me better understand how they work to have an effect on the literature they are presented in ---->
• In turn, this relationship will help me to make claims about the intentions authors have in using these elements to create a theme or make a point. 

Have you observed any crossovers like this?