Take Shakespeare's Sonnet 12-'When I do count the clock that tells the time.' Say it out loud and hear the 'da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM.' Or how about Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18? 'Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?' Let's break it down together. In fact, they're probably the most accessible way to learn this technique. William Shakespeare famously used iambic pentameter in his plays and sonnets.

Iambic Pentameter Examples with William Shakespeare And the most famous English writer of all time used iambic pentameter almost exclusively.Ĭhaucer's Canterbury Tales Credit: London Museum It was easily malleable to poetic forms.Įnglish writer John Milton used iambic pentameter in Paradise Lost. It was first introduced into English by Chaucer in the 14th century on the basis of French and Italian models. Once it hit English, it became the most common style of meter in English poetry. After that, they moved from Old French to Italian, where poets also copied that style. These older Latin poems found their way to inspire 10 -syllable lines of old French chansons de geste. It's commonly accepted that since Latin poems all have 10 syllables each, iambic pentameter springs from there. It's all in the way you say it and feel it, unstressed and stressed syllables in a line of poetry. Take this line from Shakespeare's 12th Night-' If music be the food of love , play on'- da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM. These iambs are called the five heartbeats because they sound like 'da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM.' That's one unstressed, one stressed word. It is a rhythmic pattern comprising five iambs in each line. Iambic pentameter is a beat or foot that uses 10 syllables in every line. Iambic is a metrical foot in poetry, where an unstressed syllable is followed by a stressed syllable.

Shakespeare sonnet iambic pentameter