Antilabe

The Antilabe ( Greek  ἀντιλαβή “ handle ”, metaphorically “objection”) is the distribution of a spoken verse in a drama to two or more people in mostly incomplete sentences, which results in a clear dynamization of the dialogue. Despite this division, the meter is preserved. An antilabe is practically the intensification of a stitch mystery (change of the speaking figure from line to line), since this change even takes place within a line of verse. The antilabe is often made recognizable in the typeface by indenting the second (and possibly third, etc.) part.

An example of an antilabe can be found in Goethe's Faust II (1st act), where the five accents of the blank verse are distributed over three speech sections. For clarity, the stressed syllables are highlighted here in bold:

Mephistopheles	The Müt ter are there!
fist		Mothers !
Mephistopheles			Do you see it ? '

Another example from Richard Wagner's Mastersingers (I 3):

Kothner	Nikolaus Vogel? - are you silent?
An apprentice		Is sick.
Kothner	Good love to the master!
The master		Walt's god!
The apprentice			Thank you!

literature

• Dieter Burdorf, Christoph Fasbender, Burkhard Moennighoff (Hrsg.): Metzler Lexicon literature. Terms and definitions. 3. Edition. Metzler, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-476-01612-6 , p. 34.
• Gero von Wilpert : Subject dictionary of literature. 8th edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 2013, ISBN 978-3-520-84601-3 , p. 34.