Abstract
It is the purpose of this paper to assess the importance of prose, in its alternation with blank verse, in comparison with Shakespearean usage elsewhere, and the part played by various devices of rhyme and sound patterning in a play otherwise marked by diversity of styles and a careful blending of the prosaic and the poetic. Prose is found in expected contexts (comic scenes, secondary characters), almost exclusively in the first three acts, except for the short clown scene in the final act, but there are a few places where it is difficult to decide whether the medium is prose or verse. If the blank verse of Antony and Cleopatra tends to come close to prose (as in the late Shakespearean dramas), with the exception of some lyrical passages, rhymed verse is used abundantly, as the presence of familiar stanzaic schemes (more or less masked or disturbed by foreign elements) testifies. Rhyme, in all its forms, fulfils all its usual architectural, rhythmical, musical functions and more often than not has also a considerable role to play in the revelation of meaning.
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