WEBVTT

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To someone first encountering
the works of William Shakespeare,

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the language may seem strange.

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But, there is a secret to appreciating it.

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Although he was famous for his plays,
Shakespeare was first and foremost a poet.

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One of the most important things 
in Shakespeare's language

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is his use of stress.

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Not that kind of stress,

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but the way we emphasise certain 
syllables in words more than others.

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We're so used to doing this
that we may not notice it at first.

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But, if you say the word slowly,
you can easily identify them.

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Playwright, computer, telephone.

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Poets are very aware of these stresses,

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having long experimented with the number


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and order of stressed 
and unstressed syllables,

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and combined them in different ways
to create rhythm in their poems.

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Like songwriters,

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poets often express their ideas through 
a recognizable repetition of these rhythms

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or poetic meter.

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And like music,

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poetry has its own set of terms 
for describing this.

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In a line of verse,

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a foot is a certain number 
of stressed and unstressed syllables

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forming a distinct unit,

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just as a musical measure
consists of a certain number of beats.

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One line of verse is usually made
up of serveral feet.

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For example, a Dactyl is a metrical 
foot of three syllables

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with the first stressed, and the second
and third unstressed.

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Dactyls can create lines
that move swiftly and gather force,

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as in Robert Browning's poem, 
The Lost Leader.

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"Just for a handful of silver he left us.
Just for a rib and to stick in his coat."

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Another kind of foot 
is the two-syllable long Trochee,

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a stressed syllable 
followed by an unstressed one.

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The Trochees in these lines 
from Shakespeare's Macbeth

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lend an ominous and spooky tone
to the witches' chant.

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"Double, double, toil and trouble;
fire burn and cauldron bubble."

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But with Shakespeare,
it's all about the Iamb.

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This two-syllable foot 
is like a reverse Trochee,

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so the first syllable is unstressed
and the second is stressed, as in,

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"To be, or not to be."

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Shakespeare's favorite meter, 
in particular, was Iambic Pentameter,

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where each line of verse
is made up of five two-syllable Iambs,

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for a total of ten syllables.

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And it's used for many 
of Shakespeare's most famous lines:

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"Shall I compare thee
to a summer's day?"

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"A rise fair sun, 
and kill the envious moon."

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Notice how the Iambs cut across
both punctuation and word separation.

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Meter is all about sound, not spelling.

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Iambic Pentameter may sound technical,

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but there's an easy way 
to remember what it means.

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The word "Iamb" is pronounced
just like the phrase, "I am."

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Now, let's expand that to a sentence

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that just happens 
to be in Iambic Pentameter.

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"I am a pirate with a wooden leg."

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The pirate can only walk in Iambs,

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a living reminder 
of Shakespeare's favorite meter.

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Iambic Pentameter 
is when he takes ten steps.

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Our pirate friend can even help us 
remember how to properly mark it

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if we image the footprints he leaves
walking along a deserted island beach:

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A curve for unstressed syllables,
and a shoe outline for stressed ones.

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"If music be the food of love, play on."

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Of course, most lines 
of Shakespeare's plays

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are written in regular prose.

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But if you read carefully,

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you'll notice that Shakespeare's 
characters turn to poetry,

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and Iambic Pentameter in particular,

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for many of the same reasons 
that we look to poetry in our own lives.

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Feeling passionate, introspective,
or momentous.

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Whether it's Hamlet pondering 
his existence,

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or Romeo professing his love,

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the characters switch to Iambic Pentameter
when speaking about their emotions

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and their place in the world.

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Which leaves just one last question.

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Why did Shakespeare choose 
Iambic Pentameter for these moments,

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rather than, say, Trochaic Hexameter,
or Dactylic Tetrameter?

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It's been said that Iambic Pentameter 
was easy for his actors to memorize

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and for the audience to understand

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because it's naturally suited 
to the English language.

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But there might be another reason.

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The next time you're in a heightened 
emotional situation,

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like the ones that make 
Shakespeare's characters burst into verse,

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put your hand over 
the left side of your chest.

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What do you feel?

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That's your heart beating in Iambs.

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Da duhm, da duhm, 
da duhm, da duhm, da duhm.

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Shakespeare's most poetic lines don't just
talk about matters of the heart.

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They follow its rhythm.