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Iambic pentameter is a commonly used type of metrical line in traditional English poetry and verse drama. The term describes the rhythm that the words establish in that line, which is measured in small groups of syllables called "feet". The word "iambic" refers to the type of foot that is used, known as the iamb, which in English is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. The word "pentameter" indicates that a line has five of these "feet". These terms originally applied to the quantitative meter of classical poetry. They were adopted to describe the equivalent meters in English accentual-syllabic verse. Different languages express rhythm in different ways. In Ancient Greek and Latin, the rhythm was created through the alternation of short and long syllables. In English, the rhythm is created through the use of stress, alternating between unstressed and stressed syllables. An English unstressed syllable is equivalent to a classical short syllable, while an English stressed syllable is equivalent to a classical long syllable. When 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". The English word "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"). A line of iambic pentameter is made up of five such pairs of short/long, or unstressed/stressed, syllables. Iambic rhythms come relatively naturally in English. Iambic pentameter is the most common meter in English poetry; it is used in many of the major English poetic forms, including blank verse, the heroic couplet, and some of the traditional rhymed stanza forms. William Shakespeare used iambic pentameter in his plays and sonnets. == Simple example == An iambic foot is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. The rhythm can be written as:
The da-DUM of a human heartbeat is the most common example of this rhythm. A standard line of iambic pentameter is five iambic feet in a row:
The tick-TOCK rhythm of iambic pentameter can be heard in the opening line of Shakespeare's Sonnet 12: :When I do count the clock that tells the time It is possible to notate this with a "/" marking ictic syllables (experienced as beats) and a "×" marking nonictic syllables (experienced as offbeats).〔For a more detailed discussion see the article on systems of scansion〕 In this notation a standard line of iambic pentameter would look like this:
The following line from John Keats' ''To Autumn'' is a straightforward example:〔This line (line 7 of "To Autumn") is used by Timothy Steele as an example of an unvaried line of iambic pentameter, see 〕 :To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells The scansion of this can be notated as follows:
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