Lyric meaning question

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Lyric meaning question

Posted: 7/15/17 at 10:24pm

hi all, I just have a question for the meaning of a line in Something Rotten's song "Will Power". Will says "Let me hear you say 'now is'!" the people repeat "Now is!" And will says "that scans". I'm actually not a native English speaker... so I'm just curious what does "that scans" mean? Sorry for such a stupid question but I'm translating this song into my native language for my friends and I'm having no problem except this line. Thank you so much!

Updated On: 7/15/17 at 10:24 PM

Lyric meaning question

Posted: 7/15/17 at 10:54pm

I believe it's short for scansion, it's a poetry term that I honestly don't know exactly what it means.

"now is" is the beginning of the phrase "now is the winter of our discontent" which they are reading off like cheerleaders have fans at sports games do.

hope this helps! I'm awful at other languages so props for taking on the translators baton!

Keeping BroadwayWorld Illustrated

Lyric meaning question

Posted: 7/15/17 at 11:03pm

Scansion is the process of marking the stresses in a poem, and working out the metre (This means that, in a formal poem, the poet will be counting the syllables, the stresses, and keeping them to a pattern. ) from the distribution of stresses. The verb is to scan.

now is

the winter of

our discontent

Made glorious summer

by this son of York.

As a poet/playwright Will has succeeded if his line scans.

Lyric meaning question

Posted: 7/15/17 at 11:04pm

Mr. Nowack said: "I believe it's short for scansion, it's a poetry term that I honestly don't know exactly what it means.

"now is" is the beginning of the phrase "now is the winter of our discontent" which they are reading off like cheerleaders have fans at sports games do.

hope this helps! I'm awful at other languages so props for taking on the translators baton!

"

Thank you so much for this answer!!! I got the Richard III quote but had no idea "scans" is an abbreviation for scansion. I was scratching my head off trying to figure out lol

Lyric meaning question

Posted: 7/15/17 at 11:06pm

sabrelady said: "Scansion is the process of marking the stresses in a poem, and working out the metre (This means that, in a formal poem, the poet will be counting the syllables, the stresses, and keeping them to a pattern. ) from the distribution of stresses. The verb is to scan.

now is

the winter of

our discontent

Made glorious summer

by this son of York.

As a poet/playwright Will has succeeded if his line scans.

"

Thank you so much for such a detailed explanation, you guys are saving my life!! This is so extremely helpful!

Lyric meaning question

Posted: 7/15/17 at 11:13pm

I'm pretty sure "scans" is NOT an abbreviation of "scansion." "scancion" is a noun that refers to the process of scanning (verb) the verse. Will is using "scans" as a verb. In my experience, when working on Shakespearean text, people will often pick apart a line to determine whether or not it "scans" i.e whether or not it fits the meter. He's saying "that scans" as in "that piece of verse I just said scans to correctly to fit the iambic pentameter." So yes, the "scans" he uses is referring to scansion as a concept, but it's not an abbreviation. It's just a different part of speech, and a more colloquial usage.

Updated On: 7/15/17 at 11:13 PM

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