The description explicitly says that this trope refers to characters speaking in any form of verse. Restricting the trope to one specific metre would be unnecessarily narrow.
Linking to a past Trope Repair Shop thread that dealt with this page: Cleanup
, started by johnnye on Jan 28th 2012 at 7:36:50 PM
Previous Trope Repair Shop thread: Unclear Description, started by Redmess on Sep 25th 2019 at 5:27:39 PM
This trope should be renamed to "Unneeded Iambic Pentameter" to make it more self-demonstrating.
Cleaning up the examples that are Flowery Elizabethan English rather than this trope. From the Comic Books section:
- Thor, and all of the other Asgardians of the Marvel Universe, spoke until recently in Ren Faire-esque English. There have been several nods to Shakespeare over the years, including many quotes, mis-quotes, and even the character Volstagg the Voluminous, a parody of Shakespeare's Falstaff (from Henry IV parts 1 and 2 and Henry V. (The most recent relaunch of the character has him and his fellow Asgardians speaking formally but not archaically, and they keep their own font.)
- In Marvel 1602, all of the characters speak in (moderately) Shakespearian English, as they are living in Shakespeare's era. To stay true to Thor's archaic style of speaking, he uses many Germanic words and a great deal of alliteration, a style harkening back to Old English (though his actual words are almost all in the modern vernacular), much in the style of Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales.
- Parodied in a recent comedy version of Alpha Flight, in which the Canadian north woods Native American Yukon Jack, a loincloth-clad savage whose tribe has had very limited contact with the outside world, speaks fluent Shakespearian all the time. This is parodied at the end of this Shortpacked strip.
- Earth-X Loki said much the same thing as Shortpacked Giant-Man.
- Much like Thor, Hercules and the Olympians from Marvel generally talked like this, too. This is averted and subverted at different times in the current run by Greg Pak and Fred van Lente. Hercules talks in modern English. When he goes to the Underworld at one point, his former human half talks in Shakespearean English. Hercules gets mad and asks why he talks like that when they're from ancient Greece.
I left the below examples in, since I don't know whether they're this trope or not:
- In Empowered, the Caged Demonwolf combines this with Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness and Purple Prose (also, thesaurus abuse) for some truly remarkable dialogue.
- One professor in a story by Wilhelm Busch talks like this.
Is the Gunnerkrigg Court quote really an example? The only part of it that I could find that remotely follows iambic pentameter is "This luxury afforded by my death."
ETA: Whoops. This was meant to be a new topic. Alas.
Edited by MtheR
Couldn't find any misuse in the Film folder, but this one hasn't got enough context to determine whether it's an example:
- A not-quite-famous example in cinema would be Rudy Ray Moore's alter-ego Dolemite.
Requesting cleanup of the Western Animation folder; the Madagascar 3 example is the only one that correctly follows iambic pentameter. The remaining examples consist of characters that speak in forms of poetry that are NOT iambic pentameter. Pretty sure the person who put those examples in there have no idea what it means.
Hide / Show Replies