Prologue

Bradstreet generally favored the iambic pentameter couplet to structure her lines. In the 1650 edition of The Tenth Muse, Lately Sprung Up in America, only two poems deviate from the couplet pattern, and one of them is “Prologue.” 

“Prologue” is made up of 48 lines, separated into eight stanzas of six lines each, known as sestets. These sestets are written in iambic pentameter (meaning each line is composed of 10 syllables, with the stress falling on each second syllable; one stressed and one unstressed syllable make up an iamb). 

The poem follows the rhyme scheme of ABABCC, also known as the heroic sestet. Used in epic poetry, this sestet form was revived by William Shakespeare in his poem “Venus and Adonis” (1593), after which the form became known as “the Venus and Adonis stanza.” Generally, this stanza posits an idea in its first four lines (ABAB) and then comments on this idea in the rhyming couplet (CC). For example, in the fourth stanza, Bradstreet compares her weak lines to a novice, a broken instrument, and a faulty muse. In the rhyming couplet, she comments that this state, “to mend, alas, no Art is able, / ’Cause Nature made it so irreparable” (Lines 17-18).