Dramatis Personae
JOHN ENDICOTT Governor.JOHN ENDICOTT His son.RICHARD BELLINGHAM Deputy Governor.JOHN NORTON Minister of the Gospel.EDWARD BUTTER Treasurer.WALTER MERRY Tithing-man.NICHOLAS UPSALL An old citizen.SAMUEL COLE Landlord of the Three Mariners.
Words in this poem
- walter v. i.
- To roll or wallow; to welter. [Obs. or Prov. Eng. & Scot.] [See Welter.]
- cole n.
- A plant of the Brassica or Cabbage genus; esp. that form of B. [OE. col, caul, AS. cawl, cawel, fr. L. caulis, the stalk or stem of a plant, esp. a cabbage stalk, cabbage, akin to Gr. Cauliflower, Kale.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Dramatis Personae is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Project Gutenberg ebook #1365; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Dramatis Personae, in The Complete Poetical Works (1839–1882), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1365, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/longfellow-poems/dramatis-personae.html, id L17951.
Form and metre
Dramatis Personae is 8 lines in a single stanza. The metre is trochaic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 78%). 74% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.6 syllables. 6 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
See other poems in trochaic pentameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 A-A--BB- governorA · son · governorA · gospel · treasurer · manB · citizenB · mariners
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against trochaic pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| JOHN ENDICOTT Governor. | 7 | ·/˘·/˘˘ |
| JOHN ENDICOTT His son. | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| RICHARD BELLINGHAM Deputy Governor. | 11 | /˘/˘·/˘˘/˘˘ |
| JOHN NORTON Minister of the Gospel. | 10 | ·/˘/˘˘··/˘ |
| EDWARD BUTTER Treasurer. | 7 | /˘/˘/˘˘ |
| WALTER MERRY Tithing-man. | 7 | /˘/˘/˘· |
| NICHOLAS UPSALL An old citizen. | 10 | /˘˘····/˘˘ |
| SAMUEL COLE Landlord of the Three Mariners. | 11 | /˘·/····/˘˘ |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.