Blank verse is unrhymed iambic pentameter — five iambs per line (da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM) with no end rhyme. It is the dominant verse form in English-language poetry and drama, the form of Shakespeare’s plays, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Wordsworth’s The Prelude, and Robert Frost’s dramatic monologues.
Blank verse dominates English poetry because iambic pentameter closely mirrors the natural rhythm of English speech — long enough to sustain a complete thought, short enough to be spoken in one breath, with a rising rhythm (unstressed to stressed) that matches the language’s tendency to end phrases on stressed syllables. The absence of rhyme frees the poet from the sonic constraints of the sonnet or couplet while the meter provides an underlying pulse that the reader feels even when the poet varies it.
Variation is essential to blank verse. Strictly regular iambic pentameter — five perfect iambs, line after line — becomes monotonous. The art lies in departing from the pattern: a trochee substitution in the first foot (“NE-ver” instead of “ne-VER”), a feminine ending (an extra unstressed syllable), an enjambed line that carries the sentence across the line break. The reader hears these departures against the expected pattern, and the tension between expectation and delivery creates expressive force.
Blank verse is distinct from free verse, which has no fixed meter. Free verse may use iambic passages but is not committed to the pattern. Blank verse commits to the pattern and makes meaning through adherence and departure.
Related terms
- iamb — the metrical foot blank verse is built from
- meter — the broader concept of rhythmic pattern
- free verse — poetry without fixed meter, distinct from blank verse
- enjambment — running a sentence across a line break, a key technique in blank verse
- sonnet — another iambic pentameter form, but with rhyme