{"history":[],"article":{"id":"f5cb34a8-57cb-4fa9-98ba-6e784ce9ac09","title":"Iambic pentameter","slug":"iambic-pentameter","content":":::summary\n:::\n\n# \n**Iambic pentameter** is a type of [metric line](https://bliptext.com/articles/line-[poetry](https://bliptext.com/articles/poetry)) used in traditional English [poetry](https://bliptext.com/articles/poetry) and [verse drama](https://bliptext.com/articles/verse-drama).\nThe term describes the rhythm, or [meter](https://bliptext.com/articles/metre-poetry), established by the words in each line.\nRhythm is measured in small groups of syllables called \"[feet](https://bliptext.com/articles/foot-poetry)\".\n\"Iambic\" indicates that the type of foot used is the [iamb](https://bliptext.com/articles/iamb-poetry), which in English is an [unstressed syllable](https://bliptext.com/articles/unstressed-syllable) followed by a [stressed syllable](https://bliptext.com/articles/stressed-syllable) (as in a-BOVE).\n\"[Pentameter](https://bliptext.com/articles/pentameter)\" indicates that each line has five \"feet\".\nIambic pentameter is the most common meter in [English poetry](https://bliptext.com/articles/english-poetry).\nIt was first introduced into English by [Chaucer](https://bliptext.com/articles/geoffrey-chaucer) in the 14th century on the basis of French and Italian models.\nIt is used in several major English [poetic forms](https://bliptext.com/articles/poetic-form), including [blank verse](https://bliptext.com/articles/blank-verse), the [heroic couplet](https://bliptext.com/articles/heroic-couplet), and some of the traditionally rhymed [stanza forms](https://bliptext.com/articles/stanza).\n[William Shakespeare](https://bliptext.com/articles/william-shakespeare) famously used iambic pentameter in his [plays](https://bliptext.com/articles/shakespeare-s-plays) and [sonnets](https://bliptext.com/articles/shakespeare-s-sonnet), [John Milton](https://bliptext.com/articles/john-milton) in his [Paradise Lost](https://bliptext.com/articles/paradise-lost), and [William Wordsworth](https://bliptext.com/articles/william-wordsworth) in [The Prelude](https://bliptext.com/articles/the-prelude).\nAs lines in iambic pentameter usually contain ten syllables, it is considered a form of [decasyllabic verse](https://bliptext.com/articles/decasyllable).\n\n# Meter\n\n## Example\nAn iambic foot is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.\nThe rhythm can be written as:\n
\nda DUM\nA standard line of iambic pentameter is five iambic feet in a row:\n\nda DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM\nStraightforward examples of this rhythm can be heard in the opening line of [William Shakespeare](https://bliptext.com/articles/william-shakespeare)'s [Sonnet 12](https://bliptext.com/articles/sonnet-12):\nand in [John Keats](https://bliptext.com/articles/john-keats)'s ode [To Autumn](https://bliptext.com/articles/to-autumn):\nIt is possible to notate this with a \"/\" marking [ictic syllables](https://bliptext.com/articles/systems-of-scansion) (experienced as beats) and a \"×\" marking non[ictic syllables](https://bliptext.com/articles/systems-of-scansion) (experienced as offbeats).\nIn this notation a standard line of iambic pentameter would look like this:\n\n×  /   ×   /   ×   /   ×   /   ×   /\nThe [scansion](https://bliptext.com/articles/scansion) of the examples above can be notated as follows:\n\n× /  ×   /     ×   /     ×   /     ×   / When I do count the clock that tells the time\n×  /     ×   /    ×     /     ×  / ×    / To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells\n\n## The iamb in classical and English verse\nThe term \"iamb\" originally applied to the [quantitative meter](https://bliptext.com/articles/quantitative-meter) of classical poetry.\nThe classical terms were adapted to describe the equivalent meters in English [accentual-syllabic verse](https://bliptext.com/articles/accentual-syllabic-verse).\nDifferent languages express rhythm in different ways.\nIn [Ancient Greek](https://bliptext.com/articles/ancient-greek) and [Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/latin), the rhythm was created through the alternation of [short and long](https://bliptext.com/articles/syllable-weight) syllables.\nIn [English](https://bliptext.com/articles/english-language), the rhythm is created through the use of [stress](https://bliptext.com/articles/stress-linguistics), alternating between un[stress](https://bliptext.com/articles/stress-linguistics)ed and [stress](https://bliptext.com/articles/stress-linguistics)ed syllables.\nAn English unstressed syllable is equivalent to a classical short syllable, while an English stressed syllable is equivalent to a classical long syllable.\nWhen a pair of syllables is arranged as a short followed by a long, or an unstressed followed by a stressed, pattern, that foot is said to be \"iambic\".\nThe English word \"[trapeze](https://bliptext.com/articles/trapeze)\" is an example of an iambic pair of syllables, since the word is made up of two syllables (\"tra—peze\") and is pronounced with the stress on the second syllable (\"tra—**PEZE**\", rather than \"**TRA**—peze\").\nA line of iambic pentameter is made up of five such pairs of short/long, or unstressed/stressed, syllables.\n\n## Rhythmic variation\nAlthough strictly speaking, iambic pentameter refers to five iambs in a row (as above), in practice, poets vary their iambic pentameter a great deal, while maintaining the iamb as the most common foot.\nHowever, there are some conventions to these variations.\nIambic pentameter must always contain only five feet, and the second foot is almost always an iamb.\nThe first foot, in contrast, often changes by the use of [inversion](https://bliptext.com/articles/inversion-prosody), which reverses the order of the syllables in the foot.\nThe following line from [Shakespeare](https://bliptext.com/articles/shakespeare)'s [Richard III](https://bliptext.com/articles/richard-iii-play) begins with an inversion:\n\n/ ×    ×  /  ×  /  ×    /  ×  / Now is the winter of our discontent\nBesides inversion, whereby a beat is pulled back, a beat can also be pushed forward to create an indivisible 4-syllable unit: x x / /.\nIn the following example, the 4th beat has been pushed forward:\n\nx /   x  /  x    /  x   x   /      /\nA mote it is to trouble the mind's eye\nAnother common departure from standard iambic pentameter is the addition of a final unstressed syllable, which creates a weak or [feminine ending](https://bliptext.com/articles/feminine-rhyme).\nOne of Shakespeare's most famous lines of iambic pentameter has a weak ending:\n\n× / ×   /   ×  /      /  ×    ×   / (×) To be or not to be, | that is the question\nThis line also has an inversion of the fourth foot, following the [caesura](https://bliptext.com/articles/caesura) (marked with \"|\").\nIn general a caesura acts in many ways like a line-end: inversions are common after it, and the extra unstressed syllable of the feminine ending may appear before it.\nShakespeare and [John Milton](https://bliptext.com/articles/john-milton) (in his work before [Paradise Lost](https://bliptext.com/articles/paradise-lost)) at times employed feminine endings before a caesura.\nHere is the first quatrain of a [sonnet](https://bliptext.com/articles/sonnet) by [John Donne](https://bliptext.com/articles/john-donne), which demonstrates how he uses a number of metrical variations strategically.\nThis scansion adds numbers to indicate how Donne uses a variety of stress levels to realize his beats and offbeats (1 = lightest stress, 4 = heaviest stress):\n\n4 1   1  4       3   4  1     4    1   2 /  ×   ×  /       ×   /  ×     /    ×   / Batter my heart three-personed God, for you\n1  3   2    4      3        4   1    4    1  4 ×   /   ×    /      ×        /   ×    /    ×  / As yet but knock, breathe, shine and seek to mend.\n1 2  1   4   1     4   2      4   1(1)   4  ×  /  ×   /   ×     /   ×      /   ×(×)   / That I may rise and stand o'erthrow me and bend\n1   4     1   4      3    4   1    4    1  4 ×    /     ×   /      ×    /   ×    /    ×  / Your force to break, blow, burn and make me new.\nDonne uses an inversion (DUM da instead of da DUM) in the first foot of the first line to stress the key verb, \"batter\", and then sets up a clear iambic pattern with the rest of the line (da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM).\nIn the second and fourth lines he uses strongly-stressed offbeats (which can be interpreted as [spondees](https://bliptext.com/articles/spondee)) in the third foot to slow down the rhythm as he lists monosyllabic verbs.\nThe parallel rhythm and grammar of these lines highlights the comparison Donne sets up between what God does to him \"as yet\" (\"knock, breathe, shine and seek to mend\"), and what he asks God to do (\"break, blow, burn and make me new\").\nDonne also uses [enjambment](https://bliptext.com/articles/enjambment) between lines three and four to speed up the flow as he builds to his desire to be made new.\nTo further the speed-up effect of the enjambment, Donne puts an extra syllable in the final foot of the line (this can be read as an [anapest](https://bliptext.com/articles/anapest) (dada DUM) or as an [elision](https://bliptext.com/articles/elision)).\n[Percy Bysshe Shelley](https://bliptext.com/articles/percy-bysshe-shelley) also used skilful variation of the metre in his \"[Ode to the West Wind](https://bliptext.com/articles/ode-to-the-west-wind)\":\n\n× /    ×    /   | ×     /    ×   / ×      /(×) O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,\n/    ×    ×   /  ×     / ×     ×    /     / Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead\n×   /       ×     /     /  ×  ×   /  ×    / (×) Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,\nAs the examples show, iambic pentameter need not consist entirely of iambs, nor need it have ten syllables.\nMost poets who have a great facility for iambic pentameter frequently vary the rhythm of their poetry as Donne and Shakespeare do in the examples, both to create a more interesting overall rhythm and to highlight important thematic elements.\nIn fact, the skilful variation of iambic pentameter, rather than the consistent use of it, may well be what distinguishes the rhythmic artistry of Donne, Shakespeare, Milton, and the 20th century [sonneteer](https://bliptext.com/articles/sonnet) [Edna St. Vincent Millay](https://bliptext.com/articles/edna-st-vincent-millay).\nSeveral scholars have argued that iambic pentameter has been so important in the history of English poetry by contrasting it with the one other important meter ([tetrameter](https://bliptext.com/articles/tetrameter)), variously called \"four-beat,\" \"strong-stress,\" \"native meter,\" or \"four-by-four meter.\"\nFour-beat, with four beats to a line, is the meter of nursery rhymes, children's jump-rope and counting-out rhymes, folk songs and ballads, marching cadence calls, and a good deal of art poetry.\nIt has been described by Attridge as based on doubling: two beats to each half line, two half lines to a line, two pairs of lines to a stanza.\nThe metrical stresses alternate between light and heavy.\nIt is a heavily regular beat that produces something like a repeated tune in the performing voice, and is, indeed, close to song.\nBecause of its odd number of metrical beats, iambic pentameter, as Attridge says, does not impose itself on the natural rhythm of spoken language.\nThus iambic pentameter frees intonation from the repetitiveness of four-beat and allows instead the varied intonations of significant speech to be heard.\nPace can be varied in iambic pentameter, as it cannot in four-beat, as [Alexander Pope](https://bliptext.com/articles/alexander-pope) demonstrated in his \"[An Essay on Criticism](https://bliptext.com/articles/an-essay-on-criticism)\":\n\nWhen Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,\nThe line, too, labours and the words move slow.\nNot so when swift Camilla scours the plain,\nFlies o'er th'unbending corn, and skims along the main.\nIn the first couplet, in phrases like \"Ajax strives\", \"rock's vast weight\", \"words move slow\", the long vowels and accumulation of consonants make the syllables long and slow the reader down; whereas in the second couplet, in the word \"Camilla\" all the syllables are short, even the stressed one.\nThe last line is in fact an [alexandrine](https://bliptext.com/articles/alexandrine)—an iambic hexameter, which occurs occasionally in some iambic pentameter texts as a variant line, most commonly the final line of a passage or stanza, and has a tendency, as in this example, to break in the middle, producing a symmetry, with its even number of syllables split into two halves, that contrasts with the asymmetry of the 5-beat pentameter line.\nPope exemplifies \"swiftness\" partly through his use of contraction—two extra implied syllables squeezed into the metrical template between the first two ictuses:\n\n/   ×(×) (×)×  /  ×    /    ×     /   × /     ×  / Flies o'er th'unbending corn, and skims along the main.\nMoreover, iambic pentameter, instead of the steady alternation of lighter and heavier beats of four-beat, permits principal accents, that is, accents on the most significant words, to occur at various points in a line as long as they are on the even-numbered syllables, or on the first syllable, in the case of an initial trochaic inversion.\nIt is not the case, as is often alleged, that iambic pentameter is \"natural\" to English; rather it is that iambic pentameter allows the varied intonations and pace natural to significant speech to be heard along with the regular meter.\n\n# Theories of iambic pentameter\n\n## Halle–Keyser\nLinguists [Morris Halle](https://bliptext.com/articles/morris-halle) and [Samuel Jay Keyser](https://bliptext.com/articles/samuel-jay-keyser) developed the earliest theory of [generative metrics](https://bliptext.com/articles/generative-metrics) —a set of rules that define those variations that are permissible (in their view) in English iambic pentameter.\nEssentially, the Halle–Keyser rules state that only \"stress maximum\" syllables are important in determining the meter.\nA stress maximum syllable is a stressed syllable surrounded on both sides by weak syllables in the same syntactic phrase and in the same verse line.\nIn order to be a permissible line of iambic pentameter, no stress maximum can fall on a syllable that is designated as a weak syllable in the standard, unvaried iambic pentameter pattern.\nIn the Donne line, the word God is not a maximum.\nThat is because it is followed by a pause.\nSimilarly the words you, mend, and bend are not maxima since they are each at the end of a line (as required for the rhyming of mend/bend and you/new.) Rewriting the Donne quatrain showing the stress maxima (denoted with an \"M\") results in the following:\n\n/ ×   ×  M       ×   M  ×     /    ×   /\nBatter my heart three-personed God, for you\n×  M   ×    /      ×        /   ×    M    ×  /\nAs yet but knock, breathe, shine and seek to mend.\n× /  ×   M   ×     /   ×      /   ×(×)   /\nThat I may rise and stand o'erthrow me and bend\n×   M     ×   /      ×    /   ×    M    ×  /\nYour force to break, blow, burn and make me new.\nThe Halle–Keyser system has been criticized because it can identify passages of prose as iambic pentameter.\nOther scholars have revised Halle–Keyser, and they, along with Halle and Keyser, are known collectively as “generative metrists.”\nLater generative metrists pointed out that poets have often treated non-compound words of more than one syllable differently from monosyllables and compounds of monosyllables.\nAny normally weak syllable may be stressed as a variation if it is a monosyllable, but not if it is part of a polysyllable except at the beginning of a line or a phrase.\nThus Shakespeare wrote in [The Merchant of Venice](https://bliptext.com/articles/the-merchant-of-venice), Act I, Scene 1:\n\n×   ×  /    /      ×  /    ×  /(×)×  / For the four winds blow in from every coast\nbut wrote \"vanishingly few\" lines of the form of \"As gazelles leap a never-resting brook\".\nThe stress patterns are the same, and in particular, the normally weak third syllable is stressed in both lines; the difference is that in Shakespeare's line the stressed third syllable is a one-syllable word, \"four\", whereas in the un-Shakespearean line it is part of a two-syllable word, \"gazelles\".\n(The definitions and exceptions are more technical than stated here.) Pope followed such a rule strictly, Shakespeare fairly strictly, Milton much less, and Donne not at all—which may be why [Ben Jonson](https://bliptext.com/articles/ben-jonson) said Donne deserved hanging for \"not keeping of accent\".\nDerek Attridge has pointed out the limits of the generative approach; it has “not brought us any closer to understanding why particular metrical forms are common in English, why certain variations interrupt the metre and others do not, or why metre functions so powerfully as a literary device.” Generative metrists also fail to recognize that a normally weak syllable in a strong position will be pronounced differently, i.e. “promoted” and so no longer \"weak.\"\n\n# History\n\n## Possible Latin origin\nNobody knows for certain where this metre came from.\nHowever, in the 19th century, the Swiss scholar [Rudolf Thurneysen](https://bliptext.com/articles/rudolf-thurneysen) suggested that it had developed from the Latin hexameter, for there is a common type of hexameter which has two stresses in the first half and three in the second, for example:\nor\nThe 3rd-century Christian African writer [Commodian](https://bliptext.com/articles/commodian), who wrote irregular hexameters in a popular style, favoured this kind with five word-accents.\nThurneysen quotes:\nWhen the pronunciation of the Latin changed to French, the number of syllables in many words was reduced.\nFor example, illa venit currens \"she came running\" changed in the vernacular pronunciation to la vint corant, and audite, seniores \"listen, sirs\" with seven syllables changed to oez seignurs with four.\nFinal syllables in French were particularly subject to being lost, unlike in Spanish and Italian.\nAnother feature the accentual Latin hexameter has in common with iambic pentameter is that the position of the 1st and 3rd accents is not fixed; for example, the first accent can come either at the beginning of the verse or in second place, as in the pentameter.\n\n## Early French and Provençal writers\nPossibly the earliest example of iambic pentameter verse is the poem [Boecis](https://bliptext.com/articles/boecis) (\"[Boethius](https://bliptext.com/articles/boethius)\"), written in the [Occitan dialect](https://bliptext.com/articles/occitan-dialect) of the [Limousin](https://bliptext.com/articles/limousin) region in southern France about 1000 AD. An example is the following extract:\nIn this metre, every line has two halves: the first half of the line has four syllables, but sometimes after the 4th syllable an extra unaccented syllable is added, as in lines 1 and 3 above; the second half has six syllables.\nThis optional extra syllable in the middle of the line, as well as an extra unaccented syllable at the end of the line, are also seen in the 11th-century French poem, La Vie de Saint Alexis, of which an extract is as follows (see [fr:Vie de saint Alexis](https://bliptext.com/articles/fr-vie-de-saint-alexis)):\nAlso composed in iambic pentameter were the earliest of the [Old French](https://bliptext.com/articles/old-french) [chansons de geste](https://bliptext.com/articles/chanson-de-geste) of the 11th to 13th centuries.\nLike the examples above, the poems usually had a caesura after the fourth syllable.\nOne of the oldest is [The Song of Roland](https://bliptext.com/articles/the-song-of-roland), which begins as follows:\nIn this version of the metre as in the poems above, each line has two halves: the first half has four syllables (sometimes 5), while the second half has seven (sometimes 6); in the first half there are two stresses and in the second half three.\nIn some places the final weak vowel -e is ignored, e.g. nostr(e) emperere.\n\n## Troubadors and Italians\nThis line was adopted with more flexibility by the [troubadours](https://bliptext.com/articles/troubadour) of [Provence](https://bliptext.com/articles/provence) in the 12th century, notably [Cercamon](https://bliptext.com/articles/cercamon), [Bernart de Ventadorn](https://bliptext.com/articles/bernart-de-ventadorn), and [Bertran de Born](https://bliptext.com/articles/bertran-de-born).\nIn both Old French and Old [Provençal](https://bliptext.com/articles/proven-al-dialect), the tenth syllable of the line was accented and feminine endings were common, in which case the line had eleven syllables.\n[Italian poets](https://bliptext.com/articles/italian-poetry) such as [Giacomo da Lentini](https://bliptext.com/articles/giacomo-da-lentini), [Boccaccio](https://bliptext.com/articles/boccaccio), [Petrarch](https://bliptext.com/articles/petrarch), and [Dante](https://bliptext.com/articles/dante) adopted this line, generally using the eleven-syllable form ([endecasillabo](https://bliptext.com/articles/hendecasyllable)) because most [Italian](https://bliptext.com/articles/italian-language) words have feminine endings.\nThey often used a pattern where the fourth syllable (normally accented) and the fifth (normally unaccented) were part of the same word, the opposite of the Old French line with its required pause after the fourth syllable.\nThis pattern came to be considered typically Italian.\n[Dante's](https://bliptext.com/articles/dante-alighieri) [Divine Comedy](https://bliptext.com/articles/divine-comedy), completed in 1320, begins as follows:\nThere is now often no syntactic pause after the fourth syllable, and every line has eleven syllables.\nAnother innovation common in Italian is [synaloepha](https://bliptext.com/articles/synalepha) where a final and an initial vowel merge into one syllable, as in selva_oscura or via_era above.\n[Giovanni Boccaccio](https://bliptext.com/articles/giovanni-boccaccio)'s [Filostrato](https://bliptext.com/articles/filostrato) of the 1330s, imitated by Chaucer in his [Troilus and Criseyde](https://bliptext.com/articles/troilus-and-criseyde), has a similar rhythm.\nIt begins as follows:\n\n## Chaucer\nThe first to write iambic pentameter verse in English was [Geoffrey Chaucer](https://bliptext.com/articles/geoffrey-chaucer), who not only knew French, but also Italian, even having visited Italy two or three times.\nHis [Troilus and Criseyde](https://bliptext.com/articles/troilus-and-criseyde), written in the 1380s, begins as follows, using lines sometimes of 11, and sometimes of 10 syllables.\nQuite often (but not in every line) there is a syntactic break after the fourth syllable, as in the French poems quoted above:\nChaucer's friend [John Gower](https://bliptext.com/articles/john-gower) used a similar meter in his poem \"In Praise of Peace.\"\nThis was written after [Henry IV](https://bliptext.com/articles/henry-iv-of-england)'s coronation in 1399.\nChaucer's meter depended on the pronunciation of final e's that even by his time were probably silent.\nIt was soon forgotten that they were ever pronounced, so later readers could not recognize his meter and found his lines rough.\nHis [Scottish](https://bliptext.com/articles/scottish-literature) followers of the century from 1420 to 1520—[King James I](https://bliptext.com/articles/james-i-of-scotland), [Robert Henryson](https://bliptext.com/articles/robert-henryson), [William Dunbar](https://bliptext.com/articles/william-dunbar), and [Gavin Douglas](https://bliptext.com/articles/gavin-douglas)—seem to have understood his meter (though final e had long been silent in [Scots](https://bliptext.com/articles/scottish-english)) and came close to it.\nDunbar, in particular, wrote poems in true iambic pentameter.\n\n## Later English poets\nIn England, the poems of the 15th and early 16th centuries are in a wide variety of meters.\n[Thomas Wyatt](https://bliptext.com/articles/thomas-wyatt-poet), for example, often mixed iambic pentameters with other lines of similar length but different rhythm.\n[Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey](https://bliptext.com/articles/henry-howard-earl-of-surrey), on the other hand, used a strict ten-syllable line that was similar to the Old French line, with its pause after the fourth syllable, but typically had a regular iambic pattern, and had many of the modern types of variation.\n[Thomas Sackville](https://bliptext.com/articles/thomas-sackville-1st-earl-of-dorset), in his two poems in the [Mirror for Magistrates](https://bliptext.com/articles/mirror-for-magistrates), used a similar line but with few caesuras.\nThe result was essentially the normal iambic pentameter except for the avoidance of the \"Italian\" line.\nIt was [Philip Sidney](https://bliptext.com/articles/philip-sidney), apparently influenced by Italian poetry, who used large numbers of \"Italian\" lines and thus is often considered to have reinvented iambic pentameter in its final form.\nHe was also more adept than his predecessors in working polysyllabic words into the meter.\nHowever, Sidney avoided feminine endings.\nThey appear more often in the work of such masters of iambic pentameter as [Edmund Spenser](https://bliptext.com/articles/edmund-spenser) and Shakespeare.\nIambic pentameter became the prevalent meter in English.\nIt was estimated in 1971 that at least three-quarters of all English poetry since Chaucer has been written in this meter.\n\n# Reading in drama\nThere is some debate over whether works such as Shakespeare's were originally performed with the rhythm prominent, or whether the rhythm was embedded in the patterns of contemporary speech.\nIn either case, when read aloud, such verse naturally follows an iambic beat.\nScholars have explained that there are few stage directions in Shakespeare \"because the verse serves that purpose. The dramatic action of the lines is related to the physical action required.\"\nThe rhythm of iambic pentameter was emphasised in [Kenneth Branagh](https://bliptext.com/articles/kenneth-branagh)'s [2000 production](https://bliptext.com/articles/love-s-labour-s-lost-2000-film) of [Love's Labour's Lost](https://bliptext.com/articles/love-s-labour-s-lost), in a scene where the protagonists [tap-dance](https://bliptext.com/articles/tap-dance) to the \"Have at you now, affection's men-at-arms\" speech.\nIn this case, each iamb is underscored with a flap step.","current_revision":null,"created_by":"kACnuQmH5k9Nr5VNVEpVeg7XpvUmMctD","created_at":"2025-01-25T21:21:54.267Z","updated_at":"2025-01-25T21:21:54.267Z","search_vector":"'iambic':1 'pentamet':2","search_content":" \n \n\n# \n**Iambic pentameter** is a type of [metric line](https://bliptext.com/articles/line-[poetry](https://bliptext.com/articles/poetry)) used in traditional English [poetry](https://bliptext.com/articles/poetry) and [verse drama](https://bliptext.com/articles/verse-drama).\nThe term describes the rhythm, or [meter](https://bliptext.com/articles/metre-poetry), established by the words in each line.\nRhythm is measured in small groups of syllables called \"[feet](https://bliptext.com/articles/foot-poetry)\".\n\"Iambic\" indicates that the type of foot used is the [iamb](https://bliptext.com/articles/iamb-poetry), which in English is an [un[stressed syllable](https://bliptext.com/articles/stressed-syllable)](https://bliptext.com/articles/unstressed-syllable) followed by a [stressed syllable](https://bliptext.com/articles/stressed-syllable) (as in a-BOVE).\n\"[Pentameter](https://bliptext.com/articles/pentameter)\" indicates that each line has five \"feet\".\nIambic pentameter is the most common meter in [English poetry](https://bliptext.com/articles/english-poetry).\nIt was first introduced into English by [Chaucer](https://bliptext.com/articles/geoffrey-chaucer) in the 14th century on the basis of French and Italian models.\nIt is used in several major English [poetic forms](https://bliptext.com/articles/poetic-form), including [blank verse](https://bliptext.com/articles/blank-verse), the [heroic couplet](https://bliptext.com/articles/heroic-couplet), and some of the traditionally rhymed [stanza forms](https://bliptext.com/articles/stanza).\n[William Shakespeare](https://bliptext.com/articles/william-shakespeare) famously used iambic pentameter in his [plays](https://bliptext.com/articles/shakespeare-s-plays) and [sonnets](https://bliptext.com/articles/shakespeare-s-sonnet), [John Milton](https://bliptext.com/articles/john-milton) in his [Paradise Lost](https://bliptext.com/articles/paradise-lost), and [William Wordsworth](https://bliptext.com/articles/william-wordsworth) in [The Prelude](https://bliptext.com/articles/the-prelude).\nAs lines in iambic pentameter usually contain ten syllables, it is considered a form of [decasyllabic verse](https://bliptext.com/articles/decasyllable).\n\n# Meter\n\n## Example\nAn iambic foot is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.\nThe rhythm can be written as:\n \nda DUM\nA standard line of iambic pentameter is five iambic feet in a row:\n \nda DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM\nStraightforward examples of this rhythm can be heard in the opening line of [William Shakespeare](https://bliptext.com/articles/william-shakespeare)'s [Sonnet 12](https://bliptext.com/articles/sonnet-12):\nand in [John Keats](https://bliptext.com/articles/john-keats)'s ode [To Autumn](https://bliptext.com/articles/to-autumn):\nIt is possible to notate this with a \"/\" marking [ictic syllables](https://bliptext.com/articles/systems-of-scansion) (experienced as beats) and a \"×\" marking non[ictic syllables](https://bliptext.com/articles/systems-of-scansion) (experienced as offbeats).\nIn this notation a standard line of iambic pentameter would look like this:\n \n×  /   ×   /   ×   /   ×   /   ×   /\nThe [scansion](https://bliptext.com/articles/scansion) of the examples above can be notated as follows:\n \n× /  ×   /     ×   /     ×   /     ×   / When I do count the clock that tells the time\n×  /     ×   /    ×     /     ×  / ×    / To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells\n\n## The iamb in classical and English verse\nThe term \"iamb\" originally applied to the [quantitative meter](https://bliptext.com/articles/quantitative-meter) of classical poetry.\nThe classical terms were adapted to describe the equivalent meters in English [accentual-syllabic verse](https://bliptext.com/articles/accentual-syllabic-verse).\nDifferent languages express rhythm in different ways.\nIn [Ancient Greek](https://bliptext.com/articles/ancient-greek) and [Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/latin), the rhythm was created through the alternation of [short and long](https://bliptext.com/articles/syllable-weight) syllables.\nIn [English](https://bliptext.com/articles/english-language), the rhythm is created through the use of [stress](https://bliptext.com/articles/stress-linguistics), alternating between un[stress](https://bliptext.com/articles/stress-linguistics)ed and [stress](https://bliptext.com/articles/stress-linguistics)ed syllables.\nAn English unstressed syllable is equivalent to a classical short syllable, while an English stressed syllable is equivalent to a classical long syllable.\nWhen a pair of syllables is arranged as a short followed by a long, or an unstressed followed by a stressed, pattern, that foot is said to be \"iambic\".\nThe English word \"[trapeze](https://bliptext.com/articles/trapeze)\" is an example of an iambic pair of syllables, since the word is made up of two syllables (\"tra—peze\") and is pronounced with the stress on the second syllable (\"tra—**PEZE**\", rather than \"**TRA**—peze\").\nA line of iambic pentameter is made up of five such pairs of short/long, or unstressed/stressed, syllables.\n\n## Rhythmic variation\nAlthough strictly speaking, iambic pentameter refers to five iambs in a row (as above), in practice, poets vary their iambic pentameter a great deal, while maintaining the iamb as the most common foot.\nHowever, there are some conventions to these variations.\nIambic pentameter must always contain only five feet, and the second foot is almost always an iamb.\nThe first foot, in contrast, often changes by the use of [inversion](https://bliptext.com/articles/inversion-prosody), which reverses the order of the syllables in the foot.\nThe following line from [Shakespeare](https://bliptext.com/articles/shakespeare)'s [Richard III](https://bliptext.com/articles/richard-iii-play) begins with an inversion:\n \n/ ×    ×  /  ×  /  ×    /  ×  / Now is the winter of our discontent\nBesides inversion, whereby a beat is pulled back, a beat can also be pushed forward to create an indivisible 4-syllable unit: x x / /.\nIn the following example, the 4th beat has been pushed forward:\n \nx /   x  /  x    /  x   x   /      /\nA mote it is to trouble the mind's eye\nAnother common departure from standard iambic pentameter is the addition of a final unstressed syllable, which creates a weak or [feminine ending](https://bliptext.com/articles/feminine-rhyme).\nOne of Shakespeare's most famous lines of iambic pentameter has a weak ending:\n \n× / ×   /   ×  /      /  ×    ×   / (×) To be or not to be, | that is the question\nThis line also has an inversion of the fourth foot, following the [caesura](https://bliptext.com/articles/caesura) (marked with \"|\").\nIn general a caesura acts in many ways like a line-end: inversions are common after it, and the extra unstressed syllable of the feminine ending may appear before it.\nShakespeare and [John Milton](https://bliptext.com/articles/john-milton) (in his work before [Paradise Lost](https://bliptext.com/articles/paradise-lost)) at times employed feminine endings before a caesura.\nHere is the first quatrain of a [sonnet](https://bliptext.com/articles/sonnet) by [John Donne](https://bliptext.com/articles/john-donne), which demonstrates how he uses a number of metrical variations strategically.\nThis scansion adds numbers to indicate how Donne uses a variety of stress levels to realize his beats and offbeats (1 = lightest stress, 4 = heaviest stress):\n \n4 1   1  4       3   4  1     4    1   2 /  ×   ×  /       ×   /  ×     /    ×   / Batter my heart three-personed God, for you\n1  3   2    4      3        4   1    4    1  4 ×   /   ×    /      ×        /   ×    /    ×  / As yet but knock, breathe, shine and seek to mend.\n1 2  1   4   1     4   2      4   1(1)   4  ×  /  ×   /   ×     /   ×      /   ×(×)   / That I may rise and stand o'erthrow me and bend\n1   4     1   4      3    4   1    4    1  4 ×    /     ×   /      ×    /   ×    /    ×  / Your force to break, blow, burn and make me new.\nDonne uses an inversion (DUM da instead of da DUM) in the first foot of the first line to stress the key verb, \"batter\", and then sets up a clear iambic pattern with the rest of the line (da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM).\nIn the second and fourth lines he uses strongly-stressed offbeats (which can be interpreted as [spondees](https://bliptext.com/articles/spondee)) in the third foot to slow down the rhythm as he lists monosyllabic verbs.\nThe parallel rhythm and grammar of these lines highlights the comparison Donne sets up between what God does to him \"as yet\" (\"knock, breathe, shine and seek to mend\"), and what he asks God to do (\"break, blow, burn and make me new\").\nDonne also uses [enjambment](https://bliptext.com/articles/enjambment) between lines three and four to speed up the flow as he builds to his desire to be made new.\nTo further the speed-up effect of the enjambment, Donne puts an extra syllable in the final foot of the line (this can be read as an [anapest](https://bliptext.com/articles/anapest) (dada DUM) or as an [elision](https://bliptext.com/articles/elision)).\n[Percy Bysshe Shelley](https://bliptext.com/articles/percy-bysshe-shelley) also used skilful variation of the metre in his \"[Ode to the West Wind](https://bliptext.com/articles/ode-to-the-west-wind)\":\n \n× /    ×    /   | ×     /    ×   / ×      /(×) O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,\n/    ×    ×   /  ×     / ×     ×    /     / Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead\n×   /       ×     /     /  ×  ×   /  ×    / (×) Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,\nAs the examples show, iambic pentameter need not consist entirely of iambs, nor need it have ten syllables.\nMost poets who have a great facility for iambic pentameter frequently vary the rhythm of their poetry as Donne and Shakespeare do in the examples, both to create a more interesting overall rhythm and to highlight important thematic elements.\nIn fact, the skilful variation of iambic pentameter, rather than the consistent use of it, may well be what distinguishes the rhythmic artistry of Donne, Shakespeare, Milton, and the 20th century [sonneteer](https://bliptext.com/articles/sonnet) [Edna St. Vincent Millay](https://bliptext.com/articles/edna-st-vincent-millay).\nSeveral scholars have argued that iambic pentameter has been so important in the history of English poetry by contrasting it with the one other important meter ([tetrameter](https://bliptext.com/articles/tetrameter)), variously called \"four-beat,\" \"strong-stress,\" \"native meter,\" or \"four-by-four meter.\"\nFour-beat, with four beats to a line, is the meter of nursery rhymes, children's jump-rope and counting-out rhymes, folk songs and ballads, marching cadence calls, and a good deal of art poetry.\nIt has been described by Attridge as based on doubling: two beats to each half line, two half lines to a line, two pairs of lines to a stanza.\nThe metrical stresses alternate between light and heavy.\nIt is a heavily regular beat that produces something like a repeated tune in the performing voice, and is, indeed, close to song.\nBecause of its odd number of metrical beats, iambic pentameter, as Attridge says, does not impose itself on the natural rhythm of spoken language.\nThus iambic pentameter frees intonation from the repetitiveness of four-beat and allows instead the varied intonations of significant speech to be heard.\nPace can be varied in iambic pentameter, as it cannot in four-beat, as [Alexander Pope](https://bliptext.com/articles/alexander-pope) demonstrated in his \"[An Essay on Criticism](https://bliptext.com/articles/an-essay-on-criticism)\":\n \nWhen Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,\nThe line, too, labours and the words move slow.\nNot so when swift Camilla scours the plain,\nFlies o'er th'unbending corn, and skims along the main.\nIn the first couplet, in phrases like \"Ajax strives\", \"rock's vast weight\", \"words move slow\", the long vowels and accumulation of consonants make the syllables long and slow the reader down; whereas in the second couplet, in the word \"Camilla\" all the syllables are short, even the stressed one.\nThe last line is in fact an [alexandrine](https://bliptext.com/articles/alexandrine)—an iambic hexameter, which occurs occasionally in some iambic pentameter texts as a variant line, most commonly the final line of a passage or stanza, and has a tendency, as in this example, to break in the middle, producing a symmetry, with its even number of syllables split into two halves, that contrasts with the asymmetry of the 5-beat pentameter line.\nPope exemplifies \"swiftness\" partly through his use of contraction—two extra implied syllables squeezed into the metrical template between the first two ictuses:\n \n/   ×(×) (×)×  /  ×    /    ×     /   × /     ×  / Flies o'er th'unbending corn, and skims along the main.\nMoreover, iambic pentameter, instead of the steady alternation of lighter and heavier beats of four-beat, permits principal accents, that is, accents on the most significant words, to occur at various points in a line as long as they are on the even-numbered syllables, or on the first syllable, in the case of an initial trochaic inversion.\nIt is not the case, as is often alleged, that iambic pentameter is \"natural\" to English; rather it is that iambic pentameter allows the varied intonations and pace natural to significant speech to be heard along with the regular meter.\n\n# Theories of iambic pentameter\n\n## Halle–Keyser\nLinguists [Morris Halle](https://bliptext.com/articles/morris-halle) and [Samuel Jay Keyser](https://bliptext.com/articles/samuel-jay-keyser) developed the earliest theory of [generative metrics](https://bliptext.com/articles/generative-metrics) —a set of rules that define those variations that are permissible (in their view) in English iambic pentameter.\nEssentially, the Halle–Keyser rules state that only \"stress maximum\" syllables are important in determining the meter.\nA stress maximum syllable is a stressed syllable surrounded on both sides by weak syllables in the same syntactic phrase and in the same verse line.\nIn order to be a permissible line of iambic pentameter, no stress maximum can fall on a syllable that is designated as a weak syllable in the standard, unvaried iambic pentameter pattern.\nIn the Donne line, the word God is not a maximum.\nThat is because it is followed by a pause.\nSimilarly the words you, mend, and bend are not maxima since they are each at the end of a line (as required for the rhyming of mend/bend and you/new.) Rewriting the Donne quatrain showing the stress maxima (denoted with an \"M\") results in the following:\n \n/ ×   ×  M       ×   M  ×     /    ×   /\nBatter my heart three-personed God, for you\n×  M   ×    /      ×        /   ×    M    ×  /\nAs yet but knock, breathe, shine and seek to mend.\n× /  ×   M   ×     /   ×      /   ×(×)   /\nThat I may rise and stand o'erthrow me and bend\n×   M     ×   /      ×    /   ×    M    ×  /\nYour force to break, blow, burn and make me new.\nThe Halle–Keyser system has been criticized because it can identify passages of prose as iambic pentameter.\nOther scholars have revised Halle–Keyser, and they, along with Halle and Keyser, are known collectively as “generative metrists.”\nLater generative metrists pointed out that poets have often treated non-compound words of more than one syllable differently from monosyllables and compounds of monosyllables.\nAny normally weak syllable may be stressed as a variation if it is a monosyllable, but not if it is part of a polysyllable except at the beginning of a line or a phrase.\nThus Shakespeare wrote in [The Merchant of Venice](https://bliptext.com/articles/the-merchant-of-venice), Act I, Scene 1:\n \n×   ×  /    /      ×  /    ×  /(×)×  / For the four winds blow in from every coast\nbut wrote \"vanishingly few\" lines of the form of \"As gazelles leap a never-resting brook\".\nThe stress patterns are the same, and in particular, the normally weak third syllable is stressed in both lines; the difference is that in Shakespeare's line the stressed third syllable is a one-syllable word, \"four\", whereas in the un-Shakespearean line it is part of a two-syllable word, \"gazelles\".\n(The definitions and exceptions are more technical than stated here.) Pope followed such a rule strictly, Shakespeare fairly strictly, Milton much less, and Donne not at all—which may be why [Ben Jonson](https://bliptext.com/articles/ben-jonson) said Donne deserved hanging for \"not keeping of accent\".\nDerek Attridge has pointed out the limits of the generative approach; it has “not brought us any closer to understanding why particular metrical forms are common in English, why certain variations interrupt the metre and others do not, or why metre functions so powerfully as a literary device.” Generative metrists also fail to recognize that a normally weak syllable in a strong position will be pronounced differently, i.e. “promoted” and so no longer \"weak.\"\n\n# History\n\n## Possible Latin origin\nNobody knows for certain where this metre came from.\nHowever, in the 19th century, the Swiss scholar [Rudolf Thurneysen](https://bliptext.com/articles/rudolf-thurneysen) suggested that it had developed from the Latin hexameter, for there is a common type of hexameter which has two stresses in the first half and three in the second, for example:\nor\nThe 3rd-century Christian African writer [Commodian](https://bliptext.com/articles/commodian), who wrote irregular hexameters in a popular style, favoured this kind with five word-accents.\nThurneysen quotes:\nWhen the pronunciation of the Latin changed to French, the number of syllables in many words was reduced.\nFor example, illa venit currens \"she came running\" changed in the vernacular pronunciation to la vint corant, and audite, seniores \"listen, sirs\" with seven syllables changed to oez seignurs with four.\nFinal syllables in French were particularly subject to being lost, unlike in Spanish and Italian.\nAnother feature the accentual Latin hexameter has in common with iambic pentameter is that the position of the 1st and 3rd accents is not fixed; for example, the first accent can come either at the beginning of the verse or in second place, as in the pentameter.\n\n## Early French and Provençal writers\nPossibly the earliest example of iambic pentameter verse is the poem [Boecis](https://bliptext.com/articles/boecis) (\"[Boethius](https://bliptext.com/articles/boethius)\"), written in the [Occitan dialect](https://bliptext.com/articles/occitan-dialect) of the [Limousin](https://bliptext.com/articles/limousin) region in southern France about 1000 AD. An example is the following extract:\nIn this metre, every line has two halves: the first half of the line has four syllables, but sometimes after the 4th syllable an extra unaccented syllable is added, as in lines 1 and 3 above; the second half has six syllables.\nThis optional extra syllable in the middle of the line, as well as an extra unaccented syllable at the end of the line, are also seen in the 11th-century French poem, La Vie de Saint Alexis, of which an extract is as follows (see [fr:Vie de saint Alexis](https://bliptext.com/articles/fr-vie-de-saint-alexis)):\nAlso composed in iambic pentameter were the earliest of the [Old French](https://bliptext.com/articles/old-french) [chansons de geste](https://bliptext.com/articles/chanson-de-geste) of the 11th to 13th centuries.\nLike the examples above, the poems usually had a caesura after the fourth syllable.\nOne of the oldest is [The Song of Roland](https://bliptext.com/articles/the-song-of-roland), which begins as follows:\nIn this version of the metre as in the poems above, each line has two halves: the first half has four syllables (sometimes 5), while the second half has seven (sometimes 6); in the first half there are two stresses and in the second half three.\nIn some places the final weak vowel -e is ignored, e.g. nostr(e) emperere.\n\n## Troubadors and Italians\nThis line was adopted with more flexibility by the [troubadours](https://bliptext.com/articles/troubadour) of [Provence](https://bliptext.com/articles/provence) in the 12th century, notably [Cercamon](https://bliptext.com/articles/cercamon), [Bernart de Ventadorn](https://bliptext.com/articles/bernart-de-ventadorn), and [Bertran de Born](https://bliptext.com/articles/bertran-de-born).\nIn both Old French and Old [Provençal](https://bliptext.com/articles/proven-al-dialect), the tenth syllable of the line was accented and feminine endings were common, in which case the line had eleven syllables.\n[[Italian](https://bliptext.com/articles/italian-language) poets](https://bliptext.com/articles/italian-poetry) such as [Giacomo da Lentini](https://bliptext.com/articles/giacomo-da-lentini), [Boccaccio](https://bliptext.com/articles/boccaccio), [Petrarch](https://bliptext.com/articles/petrarch), and [Dante](https://bliptext.com/articles/dante) adopted this line, generally using the eleven-syllable form ([endecasillabo](https://bliptext.com/articles/hendecasyllable)) because most [Italian](https://bliptext.com/articles/italian-language) words have feminine endings.\nThey often used a pattern where the fourth syllable (normally accented) and the fifth (normally unaccented) were part of the same word, the opposite of the Old French line with its required pause after the fourth syllable.\nThis pattern came to be considered typically Italian.\n[Dante's](https://bliptext.com/articles/dante-alighieri) [Divine Comedy](https://bliptext.com/articles/divine-comedy), completed in 1320, begins as follows:\nThere is now often no syntactic pause after the fourth syllable, and every line has eleven syllables.\nAnother innovation common in Italian is [synaloepha](https://bliptext.com/articles/synalepha) where a final and an initial vowel merge into one syllable, as in selva_oscura or via_era above.\n[Giovanni Boccaccio](https://bliptext.com/articles/giovanni-boccaccio)'s [Filostrato](https://bliptext.com/articles/filostrato) of the 1330s, imitated by Chaucer in his [Troilus and Criseyde](https://bliptext.com/articles/troilus-and-criseyde), has a similar rhythm.\nIt begins as follows:\n\n## Chaucer\nThe first to write iambic pentameter verse in English was [Geoffrey Chaucer](https://bliptext.com/articles/geoffrey-chaucer), who not only knew French, but also Italian, even having visited Italy two or three times.\nHis [Troilus and Criseyde](https://bliptext.com/articles/troilus-and-criseyde), written in the 1380s, begins as follows, using lines sometimes of 11, and sometimes of 10 syllables.\nQuite often (but not in every line) there is a syntactic break after the fourth syllable, as in the French poems quoted above:\nChaucer's friend [John Gower](https://bliptext.com/articles/john-gower) used a similar meter in his poem \"In Praise of Peace.\"\nThis was written after [Henry IV](https://bliptext.com/articles/henry-iv-of-england)'s coronation in 1399.\nChaucer's meter depended on the pronunciation of final e's that even by his time were probably silent.\nIt was soon forgotten that they were ever pronounced, so later readers could not recognize his meter and found his lines rough.\nHis [Scottish](https://bliptext.com/articles/scottish-literature) followers of the century from 1420 to 1520—[King James I](https://bliptext.com/articles/james-i-of-scotland), [Robert Henryson](https://bliptext.com/articles/robert-henryson), [William Dunbar](https://bliptext.com/articles/william-dunbar), and [Gavin Douglas](https://bliptext.com/articles/gavin-douglas)—seem to have understood his meter (though final e had long been silent in [Scots](https://bliptext.com/articles/scottish-english)) and came close to it.\nDunbar, in particular, wrote poems in true iambic pentameter.\n\n## Later English poets\nIn England, the poems of the 15th and early 16th centuries are in a wide variety of meters.\n[Thomas Wyatt](https://bliptext.com/articles/thomas-wyatt-poet), for example, often mixed iambic pentameters with other lines of similar length but different rhythm.\n[Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey](https://bliptext.com/articles/henry-howard-earl-of-surrey), on the other hand, used a strict ten-syllable line that was similar to the Old French line, with its pause after the fourth syllable, but typically had a regular iambic pattern, and had many of the modern types of variation.\n[Thomas Sackville](https://bliptext.com/articles/thomas-sackville-1st-earl-of-dorset), in his two poems in the [Mirror for Magistrates](https://bliptext.com/articles/mirror-for-magistrates), used a similar line but with few caesuras.\nThe result was essentially the normal iambic pentameter except for the avoidance of the \"Italian\" line.\nIt was [Philip Sidney](https://bliptext.com/articles/philip-sidney), apparently influenced by Italian poetry, who used large numbers of \"Italian\" lines and thus is often considered to have reinvented iambic pentameter in its final form.\nHe was also more adept than his predecessors in working polysyllabic words into the meter.\nHowever, Sidney avoided feminine endings.\nThey appear more often in the work of such masters of iambic pentameter as [Edmund Spenser](https://bliptext.com/articles/edmund-spenser) and Shakespeare.\nIambic pentameter became the prevalent meter in English.\nIt was estimated in 1971 that at least three-quarters of all English poetry since Chaucer has been written in this meter.\n\n# Reading in drama\nThere is some debate over whether works such as Shakespeare's were originally performed with the rhythm prominent, or whether the rhythm was embedded in the patterns of contemporary speech.\nIn either case, when read aloud, such verse naturally follows an iambic beat.\nScholars have explained that there are few stage directions in Shakespeare \"because the verse serves that purpose. The dramatic action of the lines is related to the physical action required.\"\nThe rhythm of iambic pentameter was emphasised in [Kenneth Branagh](https://bliptext.com/articles/kenneth-branagh)'s [2000 production](https://bliptext.com/articles/love-s-labour-s-lost-2000-film) of [Love's Labour's Lost](https://bliptext.com/articles/love-s-labour-s-lost), in a scene where the protagonists [tap-dance](https://bliptext.com/articles/tap-dance) to the \"Have at you now, affection's men-at-arms\" speech.\nIn this case, each iamb is underscored with a flap step.","revisionCount":0},"hasMore":false,"nextCursor":null}