Soiloquoy of Acts I & II

Bottom:

That will ask some tears in the true performing of

it: if I do it, let the audience look to their

eyes; I will move storms, I will condole in some

measure. To the rest: yet my cheif humour is for a

tyrant: I could play Ercles rarely, of a part to

tear a cat in, to make alll split.

The raging rocks

And shivering shocks

Shall break the locks

Of prison gates;

And Phibbus' car

Shall shine from far

And make and mar

The foolish Fates

This was lofty! Now name the rest of the players.

This is Ercles' vein, a tyrant's vein, a love is

more condoling.

To get the technical language stuff out of the way, i believe this soliloquoy to have an iambic pentameter rhythm for the most part- every other word is stressed. I believe this soliloquoy to be a combination of blank verse and rhyme: as you can see in the first six lines and the last three lines, there is no rhytmical pattern whatsoever. But in this core of thisspeech, there is an interesting rhyme scheme occurring: a-a-a-b-a-a-a-b; and as it's stated in the study guied that most of Shakespeare's work consists of couplets, this particular soliloquoy actually kind of has a triplet feel. Plus, one can notice this by looking at the rhyme scheme.

To all of you, this may not seem like a soliloqouy at all and if it does, you may think it's not the typical eye - catching shakespearian tangent - that's the exact reason as to why i chose Bottom's spiel about the certain role he wants to play in this play. I love the playful and bouncey tone in the middle of this tangent (watching the clip definitely made me like it all the more!) I just think this whole rant is absolutely hilarious and rediculous. Bottom just reminds me of one of those over confident theater rats (Tabias on Arrested Development...anyone, anyone?) When watching the play and hearing Bottom speak, the image of the cowardly lion from The Wizzard of Oz popped up in my head. Ya know, the lion's who spiel about how he's so courageous. Also, i thought it was funny when bottom does his own impression of what a lion sounds like later on in that scene. But anyhoot, i really enjoyed the playfulness of this section...the other sections are just soo typical Shakespeare. All in all, i've enjoyed reading the first few acts of this play very much so.