WEBVTT - How Does Iambic Pentameter Work? 0:00:01.920 --> 0:00:04.320 Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio, 0:00:06.360 --> 0:00:11.000 Hey brain Stuff. Lauren Vogelbaum here. If you've ever studied Shakespeare, 0:00:11.160 --> 0:00:14.159 you're probably familiar with or have at least heard of, 0:00:14.360 --> 0:00:19.160 iambic pentameter. While the term may sound intimidating, it's just 0:00:19.320 --> 0:00:22.440 a rhythm and length of speech that comes pretty naturally 0:00:22.480 --> 0:00:26.480 in the English language. Shakespeare used iambic pentameter because that 0:00:26.600 --> 0:00:30.680 natural rhythm replicates how we speak every day, with those 0:00:30.680 --> 0:00:34.600 singsong quality. That also makes it easier to memorize and perform, 0:00:34.760 --> 0:00:38.440 especially when it rhymes a little. To begin to understand 0:00:38.479 --> 0:00:42.640 iambic pentameter, first consider that there are two basic types 0:00:42.680 --> 0:00:47.840 of writing, poetry and prose. Before the article. This episode 0:00:47.920 --> 0:00:50.400 is based on how Stuff Work. Spoke with Paul Voss, 0:00:50.640 --> 0:00:54.600 associate professor at Georgia State University in Atlanta, who specializes 0:00:54.640 --> 0:00:58.320 in Renaissance literature and Shakespeare, and to explain the difference. 0:00:58.400 --> 0:01:02.280 He said, simply, rows is the language of everyday speech. 0:01:03.240 --> 0:01:06.200 By contrast, poetry often has a type of rhythm or 0:01:06.280 --> 0:01:11.280 beat like a song. This rhythm is called meter. Poems 0:01:11.360 --> 0:01:15.160 also have verses, which are lines or other groupings of 0:01:15.160 --> 0:01:18.800 words in a poem, Definitions for the subtypes of verses 0:01:19.080 --> 0:01:23.759 depend on whether they rhyme and have meter. Rhymed versus 0:01:23.880 --> 0:01:27.240 both rhyme and have a meter, blank versus don't have 0:01:27.280 --> 0:01:30.360 a rhyme but do have a meter, and free verses 0:01:30.440 --> 0:01:34.840 have neither rhyme nor meter. Metered verse is made up 0:01:34.840 --> 0:01:39.760 of units called feet. Each foot will consist of stressed 0:01:39.800 --> 0:01:43.880 and unstressed syllables, not stressed as in oh, I have 0:01:43.920 --> 0:01:46.680 a deadline and I'm running behind, but stressed as in 0:01:46.959 --> 0:01:52.480 verbally emphasized or accented. Different types of feet include, for example, 0:01:52.640 --> 0:01:56.560 the trophy, which consists of one accented syllable followed by 0:01:56.640 --> 0:02:00.360 one unaccented syllable. You can hear this in ed Girl, Impose, 0:02:00.440 --> 0:02:05.080 the raven, and the silken sad uncertain rustling of each 0:02:05.120 --> 0:02:09.000 purple curtain. Another type is the dactyl, which is one 0:02:09.080 --> 0:02:14.240 accented syllable followed by two unaccented ones. Meanwhile, as spondi 0:02:14.400 --> 0:02:18.280 has two accented syllables, and an I am has one 0:02:18.440 --> 0:02:22.880 unaccented syllable followed by an accented one. But when you 0:02:22.919 --> 0:02:25.959 write a poem in metered verse, you use mostly one 0:02:25.960 --> 0:02:30.079 type of foot throughout to create a rhythm. This might 0:02:30.160 --> 0:02:34.440 all sound complicated, but languages like English, how these stresses 0:02:34.480 --> 0:02:38.760 built in. Think of how the word is languages not languages. 0:02:39.560 --> 0:02:43.880 The word itself three syllables, one accented and two unaccented, 0:02:44.400 --> 0:02:48.960 is a dactyl. The word carrot, for example, is a tropy, 0:02:49.880 --> 0:02:54.320 and the word describe is an i am a single 0:02:54.360 --> 0:02:57.360 syllable words can fill in for either a stressed or 0:02:57.480 --> 0:03:01.600 unstressed part of a foot, depending on the con text. Okay, 0:03:01.639 --> 0:03:05.720 so iambic verse is metered verse made up of feet 0:03:05.840 --> 0:03:10.280 that are unaccented than accented. But what about the pentameter part. 0:03:10.919 --> 0:03:15.720 The prefect's penta is Greek for five, so pentameter means 0:03:15.880 --> 0:03:18.600 five meter, which means there are going to be five 0:03:18.600 --> 0:03:22.800 ft to this meter before the pattern repeats. So a 0:03:22.919 --> 0:03:26.520 line of iambic pentameter has five ft made up of 0:03:26.639 --> 0:03:30.800 two syllable sequences that follow an unaccented than accented pattern 0:03:31.120 --> 0:03:34.600 for a total of ten syllables in each line. A 0:03:34.720 --> 0:03:38.320 meter can come in different lengths. U trimeter has three 0:03:38.320 --> 0:03:42.280 ft per line, haptometer has seven, and the different lengths 0:03:42.320 --> 0:03:45.960 can have different effects. In poetry, Voss pointed out that 0:03:46.040 --> 0:03:48.680 the lower the number of feet, the more sing songing. 0:03:48.800 --> 0:03:52.480 A poem will usually sound higher numbers of feet more 0:03:52.520 --> 0:03:56.640 closely mimic colloquial English language speech. I think of Jack 0:03:56.640 --> 0:03:59.880 and Jill, which is in trimitter, versus say, Annabelle Lee, 0:04:00.040 --> 0:04:03.560 which is in heptameter. To identify a type of verse, 0:04:03.760 --> 0:04:06.240 you can count the syllables and look or listen for 0:04:06.280 --> 0:04:09.320 where the accents fall, Just to be careful that you 0:04:09.320 --> 0:04:12.080 pronounced the words as the writer intended. In the case 0:04:12.120 --> 0:04:15.640 of Shakespeare, that might mean speaking differently than we do today, 0:04:15.760 --> 0:04:18.599 or even just from region to region. I think British 0:04:18.680 --> 0:04:23.679 versus American English, and sometimes the writer sort of cheats by, say, 0:04:23.760 --> 0:04:28.279 combining two syllables into one. I think of over versus 0:04:28.480 --> 0:04:31.280 or in that way, it can be a bit of 0:04:31.320 --> 0:04:33.599 a puzzle, but it can also help you find what 0:04:33.720 --> 0:04:37.920 words a poet meant to emphasize. So Shakespeare did write 0:04:38.120 --> 0:04:44.640 overwhelmingly in iambic pentameter. Take famous Sonnet eighteen, Shall I 0:04:44.760 --> 0:04:47.720 compare thee to a summer's day? Though are more lovely 0:04:47.800 --> 0:04:51.080 and we're temperate? Ref wins do shake the darling buds 0:04:51.080 --> 0:04:54.560 of May? And summer's lease hath all too short a date. 0:04:56.440 --> 0:04:59.240 Back in the late thirt hundreds, Jeffrey Chaucer wrote the 0:04:59.240 --> 0:05:03.039 Cannabury Tale in iambic pentameter, and he's sometimes credited with 0:05:03.080 --> 0:05:07.560 inventing it, but it was English playwright and poet Christopher Marlowe, 0:05:07.760 --> 0:05:11.000 a contemporary of Shakespeare in the late fifteen hundreds, who 0:05:11.040 --> 0:05:15.120 first brought iambic pentameter and blank that is, unrhymed first 0:05:15.360 --> 0:05:19.360 to the stage. According to Voss, thanks to Marlowe, iambic 0:05:19.360 --> 0:05:23.400 pentameter became the go to rhythm for both tragedy and comedy, 0:05:23.720 --> 0:05:28.039 and Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists are known for it, and 0:05:28.120 --> 0:05:32.120 probably based on Marlowe's influence, Shakespeare chose to have characters 0:05:32.240 --> 0:05:35.920 speak in iambic pentameter, but not all of his characters did. 0:05:36.760 --> 0:05:41.360 Remember that iambic pentameter is more formal sounding, so when 0:05:41.400 --> 0:05:45.240 Shakespeare wanted to show a less educated character or give 0:05:45.279 --> 0:05:49.839 the impression of buffoonery, he included limericks and prose as dialogue. 0:05:51.240 --> 0:05:54.240 But there are many other examples of iambic pentameter from 0:05:54.279 --> 0:05:57.840 that era. A Pureitan poet and Brad Street used it 0:05:57.920 --> 0:06:01.360 in to My dear and Loving Husband, published in sixteen 0:06:01.360 --> 0:06:04.480 seventy eight. If every two were one, then Shirley we 0:06:05.240 --> 0:06:08.320 If ever man were loved by wife, then the if 0:06:08.320 --> 0:06:11.160 ever wife was happy in a man, Compare with me, 0:06:11.360 --> 0:06:14.800 you women, if you can. But you don't need to 0:06:14.800 --> 0:06:17.799 return to the fifteen and sixteen hundreds to find examples 0:06:17.839 --> 0:06:22.119 of iambic pentameter. Owed to Autumn by John Keats, written 0:06:22.120 --> 0:06:25.760 in eighteen nineteen, also used this type of verse. To 0:06:25.880 --> 0:06:28.760 swell the gourd and plump the hazel shells with a 0:06:28.880 --> 0:06:32.920 sweet kernel to set budding more and still more later 0:06:33.040 --> 0:06:36.160 flowers for the bees until they think warm days will 0:06:36.160 --> 0:06:40.080 never cease for summer has or brimmed their clammy cells. 0:06:41.560 --> 0:06:44.880 Poets a whole century later used it too, like Robert 0:06:44.880 --> 0:06:48.080 Frost and his poem After apple Picking from nineteen fourteen, 0:06:48.640 --> 0:06:51.279 though he mixes pentameter with a few lines of other 0:06:51.360 --> 0:06:55.320 lengths for a more natural speech sound or for emphasis 0:06:55.480 --> 0:06:59.000 or well, you'd have to ask him. Here's an excerpt. 0:06:59.720 --> 0:07:02.679 My instep arch not only keeps the ache, it keeps 0:07:02.720 --> 0:07:06.000 the pressure of a ladder round. I feel the ladders sway, 0:07:06.160 --> 0:07:08.640 is the bows bend, and I keep hearing from the 0:07:08.680 --> 0:07:12.800 cellar bin, the rumbling sound of load onload of apples 0:07:12.800 --> 0:07:18.600 coming in. But iambic pentameter has largely fallen out of 0:07:18.680 --> 0:07:22.600 use today. The majority of today's fiction is written in prose, 0:07:22.800 --> 0:07:26.800 not verse, and even poetry is often written in prose. 0:07:27.880 --> 0:07:31.440 Vus said, the novel has obliterated almost every other type 0:07:31.440 --> 0:07:34.920 of writing. If you are using iambic pentameter today, it's 0:07:34.960 --> 0:07:38.720 almost like using a fountain pen. To be fair, I 0:07:38.800 --> 0:07:41.840 know both publishing poets and people who use fountain pens, 0:07:42.360 --> 0:07:46.200 but the major exception for iambic pentameter seems to be 0:07:46.240 --> 0:07:50.120 in popular music. You can find iambic pentameter in songs 0:07:50.200 --> 0:07:59.840 from the likes of One Direction and Taylor Swift. The 0:08:00.040 --> 0:08:02.520 day's episode is based on the article Shakespeare wrote an 0:08:02.560 --> 0:08:05.440 iambic contameter, But what is that? On how stuff Works 0:08:05.480 --> 0:08:08.520 dot Com written by Carry Whitney. Brainstuffs production of I 0:08:08.560 --> 0:08:10.800 Heart Radio and partnership with how stuff Works dot Com, 0:08:10.880 --> 0:08:13.960 and it's produced by Tyler Clang. For more podcasts my 0:08:14.000 --> 0:08:17.040 heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, 0:08:17.120 --> 0:08:19.000 or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.