- Revised, tweaked and improved March 24 2009.
- I have also written a Guide to Haiku and three follow up guides, Iambic Variants, an examination of Shakespeare’s Iambic Pentameter Sonnet 116, the soliloquy To be or not to be, his Iambic Tetrameter 145, and his furious 129, the meter of Emily Dickinson, and Thomas Middleton’s Blank Verse (this last post examining some outlying Iambic Pentameter variants). The opposite of an Iambic Meter, by the way, is a Trochaic Meter – I’ve looked at an example by Burns and, more successfully, Millay.
- February 22, 2009 – If you enjoy Frost, you might like reading Birches along with a color coded scansion of Birches included in my post on Frost’s Mending Wall. To find all the posts I’ve written on Robert Frost, click here.
- After you’ve read up on Iambic Pentameter, take a look at some of my poetry. I’m not half-bad. One of the reasons I write these posts is so that a few readers, interested in meter and rhyme, might want to try out my poetry. Check out Spider, Spider or, if you want modern Iambic Pentameter, try My Bridge is like a Rainbow or Come Out! Take a copy to class if you need an example of Modern Iambic Pentameter. Pass it around if you have friends or relatives interested in this kind of poetry.
- November 14th 2015 Another blogger has taken up the effort to write some introductory posts on Iambic Pentameter. He takes a different tact than I do, choosing to recognize larger patterns (repeating patterns) in multiple feet: the 4th paeon, the 1rst epitrite, the 3rd epitrite, the Spondee-paeon, the Paeon-Spondee, the choriamb, the minor ionic, and minor ioncis with deferred closures, etc.. His blog is called versemeter and his first introductory posts are broken into three parts: Iambic Pentameter Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. I encourage you to take a look, see what you think, and comment. Let him know what you think. At minimum, it demonstrates that there are different approaches to meter. Use the one that works for you.
First Appearance
Iambic Pentameter is the meter of Blank Verse, most Sonnets, and a variety of verse forms starting in the14th and continuing through the 21rst Century.
Iambic Pentameter is closely associated with Blank Verse, which some websites credit as having first been written by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. The assertion is incorrect. Chaucer was, in fact, the first poet to write Iambic Pentameter and examples can be found with the prologue of the Canterbury Tales.
Whan that aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of march hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
Tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the ram his halve cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye
(so priketh hem nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke.
Although, at first glance, this may not appear to be Iambic Pentameter, it is. We’ll get back to it in another post.
What is Iambic and Pentameter?
All of Elizabethan, Jacobean and Restoration Drama, written in verse, is written using Iambic Pentameter (Blank Verse) – this includes all of Shakespeare’s Plays and Sonnets. Milton’s Paradise Lost is written in Iambic Pentameter. Keats’ Sonnets & Hyperion, along with most of his major poems, are written in Iambic Pentameter. Almost every major poet , prior to the 20th Century, wrote Iambic Pentameter when writing their best known poetry. Exceptions would be poets like Walt Whitman (free verse), Robert Burns (who wrote a variety of metrical lines – mostly iambic), and Emily Dickinson (whose meter is derived from hymn tunes, which is why so many of her poems can be sung to Yellow Rose of Texas).
Iambic is an adjective. Iamb is the noun and is short for Iambus. Iambus is from the Greek and refers to two. Therefore, Iamb refers to any two syllable “unit”, referred to as a foot by metrists, consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable (or ictus).
What is a Foot?
A foot is defined as a group of syllables (unspecified in number) comprising a metrical unit. In the case of an Iamb, the metrical foot contains two syllables.
In the following example, I’ve bolded and italicized the stressed syllables.
To be or not to be
The bolded and italicized words receive greater stress, when speaking, than the words which have not been bolded or italicized.
Now, if we break this line into feet, we end up with following:
To be | or not | to be | that is | the question.
Except for the last foot, each foot consists of two syllables. The last foot is a variant called an amphibrach (in that it varies from the first four iambic feet). The amphibrach is a foot (a metrical unit) consisting of an unstressed, stressed, and unstressed syllable.
A strictly iambic line would be:
Of hand, | of foot, | of lip, | of eye, | of brow (Shakespeare: Sonnet 106: Line 6)
What is Pentameter
The Greek prefix Pent- or Penta-, means five. Pentameter therefore means a line of verse consisting of five metrical feet. Remember, a metrical foot contains an unspecified number of syllables until it is modified by an adjective like Iambic.
What is Iambic Pentameter
The adjective, Iambic, modifies Pentameter to mean, a line of verse consisting of five Iambic metrical feet [feet containing an unstressed and stressed syllable].
There are also examples of poems written in trochaic pentameter. In this case, the term would mean a line of verse consisting of five trochaic [metrical feet [feet containing an stressed and unstressed syllable]. (Note: The stressed and unstressed syllables, in comparison to Iambic, are reversed.) It would also be possible to have amphibrachic pentameter. To my knowledge, no poems have been written in this meter. If any reader knows of one, let me know!
The line:
Of hand, | of foot, | of lip, | of eye, | of brow
is strictly Iambic Pentameter because each foot is strictly an Iamb and there are strictly five feet.
The line:
To be | or not | to be | that is | the question.
or
To be | or not | to be | that is | the question.
is not, strictly speaking, an Iambic Pentameter line, because the final foot is amphibrachic and the fourth foot may be read as being trochaic. However, it is considered an acceptable variant of the Iambic Pentameter line. In the second scansion of the line above, putting the emphasis on is might sound awkward, but imagine an actor speaking the line. The second scansion gives the line a different emphasis. It all depends on where the is is.
Perfect Iambic Pentameter?
After having written this, I’ve noticed various websites who (not to put too fine a point on the matter) get it wrong. Frostfriends.org, for example, writes the following about the closing line of Frost’s poem Birches:
Birches: “It’s when I’m weary of considerations.” This line is perfect iambic pentameter, with an extra metrical (feminine) ending.
Their statement is incorrect. This line is not perfect iambic pentameter (and this is more than just splitting hairs). A perfectly iambic pentameter line would not have a feminine ending (an amphibrach) in the final foot. The correct thing to say would have been – this is a perfectly acceptable variant within an iambic pentameter pattern.
More on this poem, and its scansion, can be found at my post on Frost’s Birches.
Symbols used in scanning Metrical Poetry
Lastly, the symbols used to denote stress in a line of verse are as follows:
This symbol denotes a weak stress.
This symbol denotes an intermediate stress.
This symbol denotes a strong stress.
This symbol denotes the division of a metrical foot.
So, the line above would appear as follows:
Note: I’ve scanned that as receiving the stress although I believe that the word is should receive it. For more on this opinion and why, visit my post on To Be or Not To Be.
And consider the following scansion:
In the scansion above, notice that the word sweet receives an intermediate stress. This means that most readers would probably put less stress on sweet (saying it less loudly) than on the syllable si– of silent. Try it out. Also, importantly, notice that the feet divide the words. An iambic metrical foot consists of two syllables, not necessarily two words. Thus, count two syllables and mark off a foot, count two more syllables and mark off a foot, etc… Mark off every two syllables regardless of the words. If the lines contains more than 10 syllables, as in the scansion of “To be or not be”, one of your metrical feet will not be iambic.
A Ten Syllable Line is not the same as an Iambic Pentameter Line
It’s also possible that just because a line has ten syllables, it might not have 5 feet. It might have four feet with two anapestic feet. And this is where science becomes art. There is an art to scansion, but it is not hard to learn. While metrical feet may divide words, the placement of metrical feet is not insensitive to phrasing. In other words, sometimes it may make more sense to recognize a phrase as being anapestic or, as with feminine endings, amphibrachic.
(My next post answers what to do when considering such variants.) In the example above, the last foot was not iambic. In other examples, the first, second, third or fourth foot might not be iambic. When I write my next post, on variant lines, we’ll figure out how to tell which foot gets the extra syllable.
Two More Symbols: Elision
There are two more commonly used symbol to consider. One is the symbol for elision. Elision means that instead of pronouncing a word as having, say, two syllables, it is pronounced as having one. Likewise, a word that appears to have three syllables, might be pronounced as two.
Consider the following line:
This example is taken from George T. Wright’s Shakespeare’s Metrical Art. Only the first foot is scanned. Notice that –lier of livelier may be pronounced with two syllables –li-er or one -lier. If the reader wishes to maintain the iambic rhythm of the line, the whole word livelier would be pronounced with two syllables. If the word were pronounced with three, then the line would be considered dactylic – a strong stress or syllable followed by two weak stresses or syllables.
Two More Symbols: The Missing Syllable
Finally, a less common but equally useful symbol designates a missing syllable.
It is useful when discussing variant lines, such as the following from my blank verse poem My Bridge is Like a Rainbow:
The symbol indicates a missing syllable in an otherwise fully Iambic line. The line itself is called a headless line, but more on that in my next post.
The next post will deal with sorting out variation in the Iambic Pentameter line – how they can be read, how to know, and if you can know.
Other Symbols, Other Systems
It’s worth noting that there are other systems and symbols used to denote stress patterns in English Language Poetry. The one that I’ve presented here is the most universally used and recognized. There may be slight differences. For instance, Lewis Turco, in his book The Book of Forms, doesn’t use the intermediate symbol that I provided above – he uses a dot instead.
Symbol used for Intermediate Stress in Lewis Turco’s The Book of Forms.
Besides the difference in this one symbol, however, Turco uses the same basic system I have been describing. You may run across other symbols or, if you are researching this as a part of a class, you may have an instructor that prefers one symbol over another. All that matters is that you understand the basic ideas that these symbols represent. The symbols themselves are secondary.
Beyond this point, the fights between metrists can get ugly. There is no end to the precision to which some metrists aspire. Some detest the basic system of scansion described above. Some dispense with the symbols altogether and opt to typographically move individual words up or down (in relation to each other) according to how much stress they believe each word should receive. My own view is that these systems of scansion lose sight of their original purpose. They reflect a sort of obsessiveness that has more to do with linquistics than with poetry.
- Note: There are critics & poets who deny that meter “exists”. I tend to group them with flat-earthers and moon landing denialists. Dan Schneider, of Cosmoetica, is one of them. If you’re curious to read my response to some of his writing, read Critiquing the Critic: Is Meter Real.
(This is the short form, for a slightly more detailed description, try Wikipedia.)
Feel free to comment if you have questions or suggestions.
this is a very informational artical
THANK YOU
LikeLike
Thanks Allen,
It’s nice to hear from a reader.
LikeLike
You have done such a thorough job of explaining the basics. Thanks. The phrase Iambic Pentameter is, itself, nicely poetic.
LikeLike
Quite a patient and lucid presentation. Top shelf!
I’ll keep returning for articles such these.
LikeLike
Thanks Joseph.
Comments like yours make the effort worthwhile.
LikeLike
This is very helpful. I am a student and really struggling with this form of poetry. Thanks for the help – I hope I can figure it out!
Móna
LikeLike
Mona,
If there’s any information that confuses you or that you would like to see added, please let me know. The best improvements I can make are those suggested by my readers. :-)
Patrick
LikeLike
This explains everything thoroughly.I’m absolutely sure that if I, as an eighth grader, can get it anyone can. Thanks!
LikeLike
I’m glad to hear that! As always, your comment makes writing these worthwhile.
LikeLike
Thank you for such a well written explanation of iambic pentameter. I read somewhere that the iambic pentameter is also called the ‘divine’ meter. Do you have any info on that? Please share with us if you do. Thanks.
LikeLike
Pingback: WB Yeats ❧ Sailing to Byzantium « PoemShape
Pingback: One Stop Poetry Form – Triolet by guest host Shan Hendry | One Stop Poetry – Where Poets, Writers & Artists Meet…
Pingback: A Musical Triolet « Words Asunder
Do you know how you recognise it when its written down? Because surely it’s down to interperatation which words you stress and don’t, so how do you know that your not just using Iambic pentameter to something that was not meant to contain it? or is it up to the read or actor to decide whether ot not to add the use of Iambic pentameter-or is it that it was simply sound odd if you added Iambic pentmeter to everything?
LikeLike
//Do you know how you recognise it when its written down? Because surely it’s down to interperatation…//
No, it’s absolutely not a matter of interpretation. English, like other European languages, is an accentual language (unlike, say, Chinese). This means that, as part of the way our language is spoken and communicated, we choose to emphasize some syllables more and some less. If you’re curious, I’ve had this argument with Dan Schneider and you can read the results here. You will find, if you research the subject, that linguistics during the past century, has “shown convincingly that many aspects of poetic form are merely extensions of natural processes already at work in language itself” – this from the Princeton Ecyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. This is not to say that certain words might shift their ictus over the centuries, but they are the exception to the rule. I can’t think of any poetic passage which could be (or ever was) misidentified as Iambic Pentameter. In fact, there are some passages in Shakespeare which were wrongly written as prose, when they were obviously intended to be verse. Lastly, it’s not up to the reader or actor to decide if the given verse is Iambic Pentameter. That was decided by the poet when he or she wrote it. What is an interpretation matter are instances when one word could be emphasized rather than another, as in the line “To be or not to be, that is the question.” Does one emphasize ‘that’ or ‘is’?
LikeLike
Pingback: Quick Read ❧ Sidney’s Sonnet 64 « PoemShape
An excellent article!
LikeLike
Thanks John, just happened to be sitting here when your comment showed up. :-)
LikeLike
Pingback: Mother’s Day, Father’s Day…and Disciplining Your Poems | Hearth Bard
Thanks for sending me some of your work. Unfortunately, I’m not your best audience.
The Bible bores me to tears. There are some beautiful passages in the King James translation, but it’s solely the language that compels me. In all honesty, I think those days are long past. What you propose to do isn’t all that different from the thousands of medieval mystery (or miracle plays) written prior to morality plays and the later Elizabethans. They were all plays drawn from passages in the Bible. You’re at least some 600 years late.
You might get some small recognition in some small circles.
The larger problem is that you simply can’t write like this. It’s dated. You throw in a few dusty touches here and there – the auxiliary do-form, the inverted grammar (even Miltonic inversions), the thee’s and thou’s — but it’s like trying to animate the dead. The culture and language from which this kind of poetry and language sprang is long gone. You’re not even writing blank verse, but a free verse affectation.
If you really want to compete with the Elizabethan poets and playwrights, you don’t do it by imitating their language but by imitating their ambition. The Elizabethans didn’t go about trying to imitate the drama of the Middle Ages or the verse forms of the 12th or 13th century (or the Angle Saxons for that matter). The days of mystery plays, cantatas and Biblical epics are behind us. Learn to elevate the language that is spoken today. Write about lives and characters that are — to us today — what the characters of the Bible were to the people of the Middle Ages.
Lastly, study the difference between writing poetically and writing poetry. Your verse is full of tired adjectives, adverbs and mannerisms. For example: “Cannot devise or move like common beast…” “Common” is a tired adjective we might expect from an Elizabethan writer sleep-walking his way through a given passage. It’s an antiquated commonplace — hackneyed. Your writing is full of similar mannerisms.
My advice is this: whether you decide to write free verse or blank verse, learn to work within a modern vernacular. You’re not living in the 16th century.
All that said, you clearly have tremendous talent and drive. Not everybody can write a pastiche like yours. There’s something there, you just have to pour it into the right bottle.
LikeLike
Dear Patrick:
I would like to express my sincere gratitude for this article. I’m a journalist writting to you from Spain. I’ve always been passionate about English language and culture. This year I started to study English Philology (now called here “English Studies”) in the university of distance education in my country. I signed up for just a few subjects (to see how I manage studying by myself) this first academic year and one of them is Medieval and Renaissance English Literature. I was feeling overwhelmed with all the syllabus, the works I must read and specially with the meter. The manual is not that good explaining this and I was feeling a bit lost. Until I found your page while studying Chaucer I googled “iambic pentameter”! I thank you so much for your perfectly comprehensible and complete explanations. You saved my life!
Best wishes,
Zulema (θulemɑ)
LikeLike
You’re so welcome Zulema. I wish I had seen your comment sooner. :-)
LikeLike
Very descriptive of the basics, thank you.
I need to imitate shakespeare’s style in Titus Andronicus, and I’m wondering if most lines with 10 syllables will work
LikeLike
//I’m wondering if most lines with 10 syllables will work…//
No. That would just be writing a syllabic line. The lines need to be accentual-syllabic, meaning that unstressed/stress syllables (hence the name iambic) alternate.
LikeLike
Thank you so much. I am now going to read some examples of the meter in the poetry you’ve written. :)
LikeLike
Nice introduction for those unfamiliar with meter!!! I am a lyric poet often very concerned with meter, I am a HUGE Swinburne and Longfellow fan… . My study of their works prompted me to learn about it in the first place… . I am self studied in the matter, it’s dawning upon me was like discovering the Davinci Code.. . A wonderful experience!!! I am from Eastern Kentucky in an area with an ancient and distinct dialect, which causes me all kinds of syllabic distress.. . It feels, however, such a noble endeavor to “look in mine heart, and write”…. Enjoyed your article.. .
-Jeremiah
LikeLike
Thanks Jeremiah. My childhood was spent in southern Ohio, not too far from Eastern Kentucky. Self-study is the best kind of study — and if you can put that Kentucky dialect into meter, all the better. :-)
LikeLike
Pingback: ►Greek Mythology: “Zeus and Leda”/ Poetry: “Leda and the Swan” by W. B. Yeats.- | La Audacia de Aquiles
I love poetry
LikeLike
Hi, thanks so much, this is great!
I also have a question: so is iambic pentameter the same as blank verse, or is black verse just a variant of iambic pentameter?
This confuses me a little.. thanks!!
LikeLike
Iambic Pentameter refers to the number of feet and syllables in a line. Blank verse simply refers to unrhymed but metrical verse. However, blank verse is almost always used in reference to unrhymed verse that is also Iambic Pentameter. In truth, I’ve never heard or read of blank verse that wasn’t Iambic Pentameter but, in principle, you’d think that blank verse could also be Alexandrines or Iambic Tetrameter.
LikeLike
I took a class from Terry Wolverton in the early 90’s I KNOW she wrote an amazing poem in this form it was “Some mythic figure (that I can’t remember)” falls from heaven. (?) Cannot find it. But maybe you can. It was remarkable.
Maybe you can ask her.. http://www.terrywolverton.com/
You wrote: There are also examples of poems written in trochaic pentameter. In this case, the term would mean a line of verse consisting of five trochaic [metrical feet [feet containing an stressed and unstressed syllable]. (Note: The stressed and unstressed syllables, in comparison to Iambic, are reversed.) To my knowledge, no poems have been written in this meter. If any reader knows of one, let me know!
LikeLike
Hi Fred,
I’ve been so busy. I used to know a poem off the top of my head. If I ever get a space to breathe, maybe I’ll think of it.
LikeLike
PS: Perhaps it was about Thor? (1990 was a Long time ago) but I think maybe Thor because the reversed stress was to make the rhythm sound like a hammer: BANG bang, BANG bang, BANG bang – very effective, and powerful.
LikeLike
I get it, but don’t get it. It may be that my mind is in a box. I’m so used to song lyrics (ex. Country genre) where very often the ending of the 2nd line is the same or very similar to the first. I desire to write somewhat mostly ambiguous and encrypted. I would like to understand poetry more, and have a better grasp on prose. I just don’t feel I can do complex. I can’t wrap my mind around it so that it makes sense…it painfur to attempt to count syllables! -=:-/ What I tend to do is start off with one or two really good lines and then I just start writing a book (i.e. the phrases get longer…and sometimes longer, and absolutely start to appear to be some sorta tangent). It takes me a long time to “digest” anything even simple. You have a very simple article that explains it well, but my brain just freezes, and is like, “Okay…how do I do that?” I guess I’ll hafta remain a maverick and blaze my own trails. Like peops tell me with guitar advice: “Play, ya know, what sounds good.” -=:-/
LikeLike
Hi Randall, my sense (or at least I think I’ve noticed) is that some people have a hard time hearing stress patterns in language, if at all; just as there are people who can’t hear rhythm, are tone deaf or have tin ears. I wonder if that’s the case with you? Some hear the stresses immediately, some can’t. Poetic talent (if you want to call it that) is probably a lot like any musical talent — to some the instrument comes naturally, others have to work hard for a little proficiency, and others can’t do it at all. I don’t know if any of this applies to you, but just a thought. Maybe you’ve got a tin ear for meter?
LikeLike
This is so much better than the quick lessons I got in high school on iambic pentameter—thanks for taking the time to do this! Off to write some poetry now ;)
LikeLike
Pingback: The basics of iambic pentameter | How my heart speaks
// If the reader wishes to maintain the iambic rhythm of the line, the whole word livelier would be pronounced with two syllables.
I am confused. You scanned the word livelier as trochaic if one pronounces it as a two syllable word. How does this then maintain the iambic rhythm? Or do you mean it doesn’t disturb the remaining feet if it is pronounced with two syllables? But then, even if we pronounce livelier as three syllables it would be scanned as dactylic and still not disturb the rhythm of the remaining feet.
LikeLike
Yeah, the way I phrased that is confusing. If you read livelier as dactylic (or trisyllabic), then the line has 11 syllables. This breaks the “imabic ryhthm” only in that sense. If you read livelier as trochaic (or disyllabic), then you have the 10 syllables of an iambic pentameter line with a variant first foot. There are plenty of 11 syllable lines in the Iambic Pentameter of the Elizabethans, but the extra syllable usually occurred mid-line (Epic Caesura) or at the end of the line (feminine ending). This appears to have been a sort of unstated rule. Because one never-to-my-knowlege(?) finds an Elizabethan line beginning with an indisputable dactyl, we can safely assume that Sidney meant us to read livelier as a trochee. It’s in this sense that the iambic rhythm (in the sense of a line having 5 disyllabic feet with one variant) is maintained.
LikeLike
Ah ok. Understood. I had forgotten about your rule of preserving the number of feet as well. Thanks.
LikeLike
Pingback: Helpful Websites – Ms. Ellis' Literature Lab
Here’s how I introduce my students to IP: https://gists.wordpress.com/2021/09/07/the-secrets-of-ip/
LikeLike