ELLSWORTH (CONT'D)
I tell you what -- I may have fucked
~~ life up flatter"n hammered shit,
but I stand before you today
beholden to no human cocksucker
and working a paying fucking gold
claim -- and not the U.S. Government
saying I'm trespassing or the savage
fucking Red Man himself or any of
these other limber-dick cocksuckers
passing themselves off as
prospectors had better try to stop
me.
I can’t hear it, although it certainly has certain rhythm to it (like any good dialogue does). Iambic rhythm however is so typical to English that you can kinda force most dialogue into it? I also believe writers make these rules to brake them the first change they get. Or perhaps I couldn’t find it skimming the pilot script: https://assets.scriptslug.com/live/pdf/scripts/deadwood-101-...
The claim comes from Milch himself. I don't know how much he was exaggerating, or how much of it may be true but didn't make it into the final shooting script.
E.B.'s soliloquy isn't in strict blank verse, but there is clearly some sort of metric structure.
You have been tested, Al Swearengen.
And your deepest purposes proved, there’s gold
On the woman’s claim. You might as well have shouted
It from the rooftops. That’s why I’m jumpin’
Through hoops to get it back. Thorough as I fleeced
The fool she married, I will fleece his widow, too.
Using loyal associates like Eustace
Bailey Farnum as my go-betweens and dupes.
To explain why I want her bought out I’ll make
A pretext of my fear of the Pinkertons.
I’ll throw Farnum a token thief. Why should
I reward E.B. with some small fractional
Participation in the claim? Or let him
Even lay by a little security
And source of continuing income, for
His declining years. What’s he ever done for me?
Except let me terrify him every
Goddamned day of his life ’til the idea
Of bowel regularity is a forlorn
Fuckin’ hope. Not to mention orderin’
A man killed in one of E.B.’s rooms.
So every fuckin’ free moment of his life
E.B. has to spend scrubbin’ the bloodstains
Off the goddamned floor! To keep from havin’
To lower his rates. Goddamned that motherfucker!
Most of the lines in that soliloquy is over 10 syllables, so it technically can’t be in pentameter. So either I am very confused about my understanding of the English poetry or this:
Most of the show is written in iambic pentameter. I believe one way God says, “I too have a hand here” is in the rhythms and metrics of speech, that the metrics of speech are important and representative of our fellowship even in those of us who feel, mistakenly, that we are separate from each other as individuals.
When a character in Deadwood, or anyone, talks in certain locutions, unbeknownst to themselves, they honor a divine presence.[1]
is a very contradictory statement indeed.
To be fair, I don’t care. I loved the series and now I started to read the script and oh man, it’s like a really good novel. Very much prose in no foxed meter, but damn if it isn’t great prose. I might just start reading through Deadwood scripts, since I watched the series to death anyway.
