Chapter 4

Shakespeare’s Enjambment
What is enjambment?
• Poets, like Shakespeare, use a range of poetic devices and techniques
such as sounds, rhythms, and phrases to elevate their poems and
enhance its meaning.
• Enjambment is just one of the literary devices that can make your
writing more engaging and exciting.
• It is a French word that means “to step over or to put legs across.” In
poetry, it means running two or more lines of a poem together
without a terminal punctuation mark.
How enjambment works?
• Here, Shakespeare does not complete his thought by
the end of a line and instead leaves the reader with
excitement that they can only resolve by going to the
next line. In an enjambment, the thought
doesn’t end with the line break. This literary device
refers to the practice of running lines of poetry from
one to the next using no punctuation to indicate a
stop (periods, commas, etc.).
Shakespeare’s Enjambments
• Shakespeare was well known for including them in his plays. A well-
known example is Hamlet’s soliloquy:

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
Hamlet’s Soliloquy Continued
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to—’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. 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.
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Julliet
• JULIET: Where, for these many hundred years, the
bones
Of all my buried ancestors are packed: (Act IV, Scene
III)
• ROMEO: Why art thou yet so fair? shall I believe
That unsubstantial death is amorous,
And that the lean abhorred monster keeps
Thee here in dark to be his paramour? (Act V, Scene
III)
What for?
Enjambment , thus, allows a thought to span multiple lines. It has no
ending punctuation and allows the poet to manipulate the rhythm of
the lines by going against an expected pattern in the poem.
Enjambment can make your writing more engaging and exciting.
It adds a slight pause that contributes to the dramatic effect of each
character's soliloquy, adding tension to these crucial moments in the
play.