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.

Respuesta :

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.