Read the excerpt from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet.


To be, or not to be, that is the question:

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;

No more; and by a sleep to say we end

The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;

To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause: there's the respect

That makes calamity of so long life;


This excerpt is an example of


blank verse.

free verse.

heroic couplet.

common meter.

Verified Answer :

The correct answer is A. blank verse. Shakespeare wrote all of his plays using the blank verse - it is a type of verse written in the iambic pentameter (10 syllables in each line, unstressed syllable is followed by a stressed one) which has no rhyme. A free verse doesn't follow any poetic rules, a heroic couplet means that every two lines rhyme, and common meter refers to a stanza of four lines, which contain eight and six syllables alternately.