#[1]About.com [2]Lee's Shakespeare Blog ____________________ (Submit) Search [3]About.com [4]Shakespeare 1. [5]Home 2. [6]Education 3. [7]Shakespeare [8][education_shakespeare;kw=;site=shakespeare;chan=education;pos=lb;sz =728x90;ord=1A1JJ840B20SA0c8m] * [9]Share * * [10]Shakespeare * [11]Shakespeare's Life * [12]Plays * [13]Sonnets * Free Shakespeare Newsletter! ____________________ (Submit) Sign Up * [14]Discuss in my Forum [15]Lee Jamieson Lee's Shakespeare Blog By [16]Lee Jamieson, About.com Guide to Shakespeare * [17]My Bio * [18]My Blog * [19]My Forum Add to: * [20]iGoogle * [21]My Yahoo! * [22]RSS Iambic Pentameter: The Rhythm of Life? Sunday March 22, 2009 [bencrystal.jpg] Does the thought of [23]iambic pentameter terrify you? I remember being baffeled by it at school myself because I got bogged down in counting syllables and working out where the stresses go but, I now know that this is a very technical way of studying iambic pentameter. In later life, Ive grown to love iambic pentameter. Theres something beautiful about it that I cant put my finger on. I know for sure that its in the speaking because on the page it is inert. When you [24]speak those words aloud, they literally jump off the tongue and the rhythm is the easiest of all meters to find. I asked Ben Crystal about this [25]in our interview a few months ago. He said that iambic pentameter is the rhythm of our English language and of our bodies a line of that poetry has the same rhythm as our heartbeat. A line of iambic pentameter fills the human lung perfectly, so its the rhythm of speech. I think this is true. When you [26]learn how to speak verse, you soon discover that its a very instinctive rhythm. Once you relax and go with the flow, it comes naturally. And, strange as it might sound, classic iambic pentameter lines like If music be the food of love, play on and Now is the winter of our discontent do happen to fit a single breath perfectly if spoken with passion. So, if youre having trouble with iambic pentameter, remember that its designed to be spoken, not studied. Open your mouth and speak aloud those great words. Photo of Ben Crystal © Scott Wishart * [27]Comments (2) * [28]See All Posts * [29]Share * [30]Prev * [31]Next [32]Leave a Comment Comments March 30, 2009 at 2:29 pm [33](1) [34]Kent Richmond says: In doing verse translations of five Shakespeare plays, I have had to learn how Shakespeares iambic pentameter works in order to give my translations the feel of the original. One of the beauties of iambic pentameter is that the poet can temporarily relax the meter without violating it. In this series of made-up and rather prosaic lines, the first line is straight-ahead iambic pentameter. The second and third lines, if read independently, are less obviously iambic pentameter, yet they do not violate the rhythm. The fourth line is clearly unmetrical and removes the sense that we are listening to verse. 1. Her mother took the kids to shop for clothes, 2. Planning to buy them all some warmer sweaters. (trochaic start; feminine ending) 3. No! No! No! No she bellowed at the oldest. (Two spondees to start; feminine ending) 4. Dont you ever hit your little sister. (unmetrical) Shakespeare, at least in the plays I have translated, did not write verse lines with the rhythm of (4). To make this line sound a bit more like Shakespeares iambic pentameter, we need to make a few alterations to line 4. 1. Her mother took the kids to shop for clothes, 2. Planning to buy them all some warmer sweaters. 3. No! No! No! No she bellowed at the oldest. 4. Dont ever hit that little girl again. To make the whole passage sound like prose, we need to change the first line a little. Then her mother took the kids clothes shopping, planning to buy them all some warmer sweaters. No! No! No! No she bellowed at the oldest. Dont you ever hit your little sister. The first and fourth lines now have trochaic feet exposed in the wrong places, and most editors would print such a passage as prose. Shakespeares iambic pentameter certainly places constraints on what rhythms are allowed, yet it allows for flexibility and naturalness. Take a look at George Wrights book titled Shakespeares Metrical Art to see the techniques Shakespeare employed. April 11, 2009 at 8:25 pm [35](2) Dave says: The words literally jump off the tongue? I'd like to see that! 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