Oh, and (third) because when Hecate speaks, it’s primarily in full iambic tetrameter (are the witches Hecate without her head?).Įarlier in the discussions, I looked at the “Tomorrow…” speech, and got into some depth of meter on that one. Though most critics go for the catalectic trochaic tetrameter categorization, I like “acephalous iambic tetrameter,” not just to be perverse and contrary (though I can be), but because (first) it sounds like “a syphilis” (heh heh, he said “syphilis”) and (second) the other word for acephalous is “headless” which is just so fitting for the witches. In other words, this would be a four-foot iambic line, only we’re missing the first syllable. Or…you might call them acephalous iambic tetrameter. So you could call these lines catalectic trochaic tetrameter. But these lines are, for the most part, seven-syllable affairs that’s where the “catalectic” descriptor comes into play…instead of a full trochee at the end of the line, the line loses that final unstressed syllable. Tetrameter would be comprised of four-foot lines so eight-syllable lines. Trochees, as you might remember, are the exact opposites of iambs: instead of a two-syllable foot with the first syllable unstressed and the second stressed, a trochee is a two-syllable foot with the first syllable stressed. Incomplete or catalectic form of trochaic tetrameter, perhaps. Now there’s some argument as what to call the witches’ sing-songy incantations.
These supernatural entities don’t speak in our expected blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter)–or rhymed iambic pentameter, for that matter. OK, first of all, let’s deal with the elephant in the room, or rather the four elephants in the room: the three witches and Hecate.
Not necessarily the words within the lines, mind you, not the diction, but rather the syntax, the scansion, the pauses. As I wrap up discussion of the plays, I like to take a quick look back on some of the more noteworthy clues I’ve noticed in the lines of the play.
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