Introduction

Abstract The introduction first considers some unsatisfactory yet pre-eminent ways of thinking about versification, found in places from the lecture hall to the rehearsal room to the prosodic guidebook to the scholarly edition to the secondary-/high-school classroom. It then suggests some fresh approaches to the subject which give due attention to the ambiguities and multiplicities of metre/meter. It sets out some of the ways in which this book will supply an ‘alternative’ account of Shakespeare’s blank verse: by reading blank verse in such prosodically alternative ways, by considering pre- and non-Shakespearean blank verse, by reading for the ‘identities’ of early modern blank verse, by reading blank verse beyond English borders, by challenging blank verse’s canonical hegemony and received histories, by entertaining ‘alternatives’ to blank verse, and by seeing—or hearing—the ‘alternativity’ immanent in blank verse in particular.