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To someone first encountering[br]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,[br]Shakespeare was first and foremost a poet.

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One of the most important things [br]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 emphasize certain [br]syllables in words more than others.

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

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But if you say the word slowly,[br]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[br]

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and order of stressed [br]and unstressed syllables,

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

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Like songwriters,

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poets often express their ideas through [br]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 [br]for describing this.

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In a line of verse,

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a foot is a certain number [br]of stressed and unstressed syllables

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forming a distinct unit,

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just as a musical measure[br]consists of a certain number of beats.

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One line of verse is usually made[br]up of several feet.

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For example, a dactyl is a metrical [br]foot of three syllables

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with the first stressed, and the second[br]and third unstressed.

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Dactyls can create lines[br]that move swiftly and gather force,

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as in Robert Browning's poem, [br]"The Lost Leader."

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

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Another kind of foot [br]is the two-syllable long trochee,

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a stressed syllable [br]followed by an unstressed one.

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The trochees in these lines [br]from Shakespeare's "Macbeth"

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

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

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But with Shakespeare,[br]it's all about the iamb.

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This two-syllable foot [br]is like a reverse trochee,

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so the first syllable is unstressed[br]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, [br]in particular, was iambic pentameter,

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where each line of verse[br]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 [br]of Shakespeare's most famous lines:

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

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"Arise fair sun, [br]and kill the envious moon."

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Notice how the iambs cut across[br]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 [br]to remember what it means.

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The word iamb is pronounced[br]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 [br]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 [br]of Shakespeare's favorite meter.

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Iambic pentameter [br]is when he takes ten steps.

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

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

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A curve for unstressed syllables,[br]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 [br]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 [br]characters turn to poetry,

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and iambic pentameter in particular,

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

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Feeling passionate, introspective,[br]or momentous.

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Whether it's Hamlet pondering [br]his existence,

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or Romeo professing his love,

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the characters switch to iambic pentameter[br]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 [br]iambic pentameter for these moments,

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rather than, say, trochaic hexameter[br]or dactylic tetrameter?

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It's been said that iambic pentameter [br]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 [br]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 [br]emotional situation,

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

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put your hand over [br]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, [br]da duhm, da duhm, da duhm.

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

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They follow its rhythm.