What exactly is iambic pentameter?

Question

It's a truism that it doesn't necessarily have to stick to a regular tee tum tee tum rythm of unstressed and stressed syllables, so what does it have to stick to? To put it another way is there such a thing as a line of ten syllables that is definitely not iambic pentameter? If so, how would you tell?

Answer 1

Yes it does have to stick to a particular rhythm to be exact iambic pentameter. Most of Shakespeares sonnets adhere to it strictly. But in character work, having strict adherence is dull at best. Throughout his development Bill finds new and different and effective ways of irregulating the ten syllable line to fit the mood, passion, situation and assuredness of his characters. Increasingly he turns to blank (unrymed) verse, and then to prose. As a for instance look at the development in both Midsummer and Much Ado. In the first he sticks to a rigid aimbic form to begin with, but as the play develops and his characters become increasingly uninhibited their verse becomes equally free, until it culminates in Bottoms wonderful dream speech when he wakes.
Then, at the end of the play we get the mechanicals playing in very stilted rhyme and rhythm, just to show us what a bad play consists of. And yet well played there are moments even in the Pyramus and Thisbe doggerel that can (and I believe should) move the audience.

Much Ado is almost completely prose. But then at moments of hieghtened emotion the characters break into verse, almost as if it were a musical, and this is the only means in which the character can convey their emotional depth.

And Yes, there is such a thing as a non iambic line, though useually not in ten syllables, and most often not in English since most non-iambic rhythms sound forced in this language.

Though!

"The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold,
His chariots all gleaming in crimson and gold."

does have a lovely gallop to it.

So why iambic pentameter. Because it is the most natural rhythm of daily English speech.

As a final example here's a line from Mary-Anne McDonald's Shakespeare inspired play Good Night Desdemona, Good Morning Juliet, and it is strict iambic pentameter spoken by the college professor heroine,

"Perhaps some vengeful student spiked my beer."

Answer 2

I believe that "iambic" refers to the way in which the syllables are pronounced; short-long or unstressed-stressed so that, technically you could force any line of ten syllables into being iambic pentameter, but it might not 'sound' natural. Most multisyllable words already have expected stressed syllables. For example: "delay" has a long second syllable so if I were to start a line of my iambic pentameter with: "I delay" it would sound quite bad because the "de" would be stressed and the break would occur in the middle of the word.
So the line: "I delay finding out the solid truth." would be virtually impossible to read as iambic pentameter.
Pronounce the line with the stress on every second syllable:
I-de lay-find ing-out the-sol id-truth
I don't think that could be considered iambic pentameter by any stretch of the term.

Answer 3

Wikipedia: Iambic pentameter
Iambic pentameter is a meter in poetry. It refers to a line consisting of five iambic feet. ... of an unvaried line of iambic pentameter, see page 5 of All the ...
Quick Links: Simple example - Rhythmic variation - History in English
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iambic_pentameter - 34k - Cached - More from this site
Fun with Iambic Pentameter
Iambic pentameter is used in rime royal, Chaucerian couplets, blank verse (one ... Neoclassical poets used iambic pentameter in heroic couplets, and later poets ...www.sp.uconn.edu/~mwh95001/iambic.html -

Answer 4

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No. Your 'beat' is wrong. The PLOUGHman HOMEward WENDS his WEARy WAY And LEAVES the WORLD to DARKness AND to ME. (With the stress being on the words in capitals) .