Note to As You Like It, 4.1.31-32: "and you talk in blank / verse"


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As You Like It,
Act 4, Scene 1, lines 31-32.
and you talk in blank / verse: i.e., if you're going to be all poetical. —Blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter) was the common verse used in tragic drama of Shakespeare's time (such as Romeo and Juliet). But As You Like It is a comedy, and in this scene everyone has been speaking plain prose until Orlando comes in and says to the youth Ganymede [Rosalind in disguise], "Good day and happiness, dear Rosalind!" That one line can be heard as a blank verse line, but what Jaques rejects is not the verse form itself, but the happy romanticism of Orlando's greeting, as Jaques is addicted to melancholy.