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Iambic pentameter (/ aɪ ˌ æ m b ɪ k p ɛ n ˈ t æ m ɪ t ər / eye-AM-bik pen-TAM-it-ər) is a type of metric line used in traditional English poetry and verse drama.The term describes the rhythm, or meter, established by the words in each line.
Lines of poetry made up predominantly of iambs are referred to as iambics or as iambic verse, which is by far the most commonly used metrical verse in English. Its most important form is the 10-syllable iambic pentameter, either rhymed (as in heroic couplets and sonnets) or unrhymed (in blank verse). [35] iambic pentameter idiom idyll imagery ...
Fourteener (iambic heptameter): line consisting of 7 iambic feet (14 syllables) Galliambic verse; Iambic pentameter: line consisting of 5 iambic feet (10 syllables) Iambic tetrameter: line consisting of 4 iambic feet (8 syllables) Trochaic meter: any meter based on the trochee as its primary rhythmic unit. Trochaic tetrameter; Trochaic octameter
Another important metre in English is the common metre, also called the "ballad metre", which is a four-line stanza, with two pairs of a line of iambic tetrameter followed by a line of iambic trimeter; the rhymes usually fall on the lines of trimeter, although in many instances the tetrameter also rhymes. This is the metre of most of the Border ...
Milton's most notable works, including Paradise Lost, are written in blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter. He was not the first to use blank verse, which had been a mainstay of English drama since the 1561 play Gorboduc.
The most famous and widely used line of verse in English prosody is the iambic pentameter, [7] while one of the most common of traditional lines in surviving classical Latin and Greek prosody was the hexameter. [8] In modern Greek poetry hexameter was replaced by line of fifteen syllables. In French poetry alexandrine [9] is the most typical ...
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In English, iambic pentameter is by far the most frequently employed meter. Among the many exemplary works of blank verse in English are Milton's Paradise Lost and most of the verse passages from Shakespeare's plays, such as this portion of a famous soliloquy from Hamlet: To be, or not to be—that is the question.