Hi Sarah, I see this was two days ago, but I wanted to offer you some info anyway. 1) Blank Verse is iambic pentameter that doesn't rhyme. 2) Prose looks like blocks of text, kind of like regular sentences. On the page, prose doesn't look a lot like poetry, but I'd say it still is.
So! If we imagine characters in Shakespeare making decisions about how to speak to different people, just like we do, now, in 2019... What does it say about Caliban's relationship or opinion about who he is speaking to when he's formalizing his speech using blank verse, vs. when he is communicating with less structure by using prose? It may not always the obvious choice. For example, if I want to let someone know I don't respect them, I might not use fancy words, I might swear. In doing that, I'm lowering the level of discourse in some way. However, I may also lower my level of discourse when I'm speaking to someone who knows me well and we're just hanging out--no need for formality there. As for blank verse, if I want to raise my status, I may speak more formally to someone who has higher status than me, and in that way I raise my status. Further to that point, I may speak in a more formalized way if something is of high importance to me because regular words and sentence structure simply wouldn't do that subject justice.
I'll leave it there for now. I'm around for this type of help if you ever wanted to book a class. Thanks!
