With Shakespeare, you can't count on anything! It's true, for the most part, noble or high born characters speak in verse and low born folk in prose - BUT NOT ALWAYS. It's far safer to look at all of this in another way. Serious, passionate, elegant matters can be expressed in verse and lighter, witty matters can be expressed in prose.
Sometimes Wiley Will uses verse and prose in the same scene - with upper class and lower class characters uttering both. A great example of same is in Romeo and Julietwhere Romeo, in his encounter with The Nurse, (II,4)teases her, and not nicely, either, in prose, and she replies in kind. But when they turn to the serious business of Romeo's meeting with Juliet, Romeo speaks in verse and Nursie follows right along. So they're both speaking verse, low born and high born. When the matter's resolved, though, and the bantering resumes, they both revert to prose. Pretty tricky stuff, dear actor, and you have to deal with it seamlessly and without effort. Seeing and understanding the pattern is the key to success here.
I haven't touched on Rhymed Couplets yet, so here's a light, and I hope, deft touch. The young lovers in A Midsummer Night's Dream are fools - or, more properly, foolish. Shakespeare emphasizes their shallowness by having them speak (not entirely, mind you) in rhymed couplets. They come off as silly things and again, actor friends, If you understand the purpose behind the writer's choice of style, it's a big help in discovering what to do with and how to play the text.
The other use Shakespeare devised for the rhymed couplet was to use them to end things. Scenes, acts and the like. As in Hamlet (II,2)
". . .- the play's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King.
That ends Act II, Scene two of Hamlet - and, similarly, ends today's sermon.
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