Drama Dr.

Faustus 1

Write a critical note on blank verse in Dr. Faustus.

Blank verse has been considered as the best medium for the higher kind of
drama. It is accepted that Marlowe was the creator of the most famous, versatile,
unrhymed decasyllabic English measure known as blank verse. Blank verse is
technically an unrhymed, iambic pentameter. It means that it has five feet (iambic
Pentameter) and every foot has two syllables. Thus, each line in Blank Verse has ten
syllables in it and five feet. In each foot, there are two syllables of which the second is
stressed and the first is unstressed. Swinburne says,
"Marlowe was the first English great
poet and the creator of English blank verse."
Blank verse poetry has no fixed number of lines. It has a conventional meter that
is used for verse drama and long narrative poems. It is often used in descriptive and
reflective poems and dramatic monologues — the poems in which a
single character delivers his thoughts in the form of a speech. Blank verse can be
composed in any kind of meter, such as iamb, trochee, spondee, and dactyl.
Though blank verse and free verse sound like similar concepts, there are some
notable differences. The definition of blank verse stipulates that, while there is no rhyme,
the meter must be regular. Free verse, on the other hand, has no rhyme scheme and no
pattern of meter. Free verse generally mimics natural speech, while blank verse still
carries a musical quality due to its meter.
But T.S. Eliot seems to be correct in his evaluation when he says.........
“Marlowe can be called the great innovator who by his
genius made blank verse the supreme instrument of dramatic
poetry for the first time."
Marlowe can't be credited as the pioneer of blank verse. In fact, he was the
great innovator who infused new soul into the lifeless blank verse. Gorbuduc was the
first English play to employ blank verse as a medium of dramatic writings by Sackville &
Norton.
The blank verse before Marlowe was dull, artificial and monotonous. Those
works were generally composed in heroic couplets with artificiality which made the
dialogues unnatural in drama. They had accented and unaccented syllable altering with
regularity.
Hence, according to Saints bury
“The blank verse before Marlowe was like a dried preparation waiting for the
infusion of blood."
Thus, Marlowe infused new blood and enlivened the blank verse of his
predecessors. His genius worked wonders. He freed the blank verse from formalism,
regularity and conventional restraints. Credit must be given to Marlowe for perfecting
blank verse to a great extent and giving it amazing force variety and rhyme. Marlowe
used run on line in his blank verse. We find Marlowe's run on lines that the sense flows
on from line to line until the idea or the image is completed. Dr. Faustus shows most
effectively the extent of Marlowe’s achievement in developing blank verse. Faustus’s
magnificent apostrophe (speech) to Helen with its poetic excellence, romantic and
musical touch is probably the most celebrated verse - paragraph in English literature.
"Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?
Sweet Helen make me immortal with a kiss"
Ending lines in Dr. Faustus, Marlowe carried the blank verse as a medium of
dramatic expression with its poetic and musical words.
“O, soul, be changed into little water-drops,
And fall into the ocean, never be found".

Composed by M. Arif M.A English Part-1 Govt. College Civil Lines Multan
Drama Dr. Faustus 2

Take the lines in which the blank verse not merely obeys the stress of passion
but expresses its very intensity.
“The stars move still, time runs, clock will strike,
The devil will come, and Faustus must be damned."
Then there is elasticity, simplicity and the change in beat and pause in the lines.
"O, what a world of profit and delight,
Of power, of honor, of omnipotence.”
As we have already mentioned that mighty line consists of decasyllabic (ten
syllable) iambic pentameter. Each line has five feet and each foot has two syllables.
Usually, first syllable is unstressed but second syllable would be stressed. For example,
"In courts of kings, where state is overturn".
A foot in English prosody is a group of either two or three syllables, one of which
bears a stress and the others don't , rarely a foot may have two stresses or none.
Trochee is a technical term used for disyllabic feet. In fact, trochee is a disyllabic word
in which first syllable is stressed and second is unstressed.
For example,
“Gainful" the stress falls on Gain. sometimes stress falls on second syllable
like Again.
A foot without stress is called a Pyrrhic.
For example,
"Not marching now in fields of Thrasmene,”
We may conclude "the major defect in mighty line is that it is pompous and high
sounding and some where it appears to be artificial". Despite that, it was Marlowe's
work that paved a way for the poet like Shakespeare to work upon it.

Checked by Sir Pro. Fakhar Alam

Composed by M. Arif M.A English Part-1 Govt. College Civil Lines Multan