Teaching Shakespeare | Introducing Iambic Pentameter | Royal Shakespeare Company

This video 'Introducing Iambic Pentameter' is a sample of the resources available as part of Teaching Shakespeare, a ground-breaking education partnership between the Royal Shakespeare Company and the University of Warwick.
At the heart of this professional development programme is a unique online learning platform which introduces the core principles and practice of an active approach to teaching Shakespeare.
Find out more at:
www.teachingshakespeare.ac.uk

[@marytolhurst5165]

Don't forget, Shakespeare was working at a time when most people didn't read - including many of his actors. The iambic pentameter was also a way of helping an actor to memorise long speeches.

[@mysticmouse7261]

I am a poet and this lesson is critical. It implies a total excoriation of Denzel's performance in the recent movie The Tragedy of Macbeth.

[@ZERO_0306]

my english teacher brought me here😂

[@danielflint1758]

same hahahahaha

[@defnecolak1389]

Same 👑🧚🏼‍♀️ ✨💫💝💞

[@ricardoblanko]

same xD

[@bastianelfenkamper2976]

Same here, i wanna die

[@hauke.munzel]

Same yo

[@miciarokiri5182]

Thank you so much for making this available. I am teaching a Shakespeare class for home school kids and I have ALWAYS struggled with IP, this has helped me get it more and is helping me prepare my lesson on it for this week. I think this is going to really help!

[@stevebailey5591]

I'm exactly the same. I've gone through my whole English education, through H.E and teacher training and work as a teacher without ever really 'hearing' it. How's it different from just saying there are 10 syllables a line? How can you tell from reading which are stressed or unstressed?

[@charlescampisi6668]

Shakespeare remains for all time the undisputed master genius of language and literature.

[@thomaskember4628]

I’ve often heard that in ordinary English speech people speak in iambic pentameters. I have studied linguistics for years, even at university, and I never come across a study on whether this is true. Such a study would be difficult but I think very worthwhile.

[@SouthernerUpNorth1967]

I remember a group of us were taught something like this, when we as a group, were doing something like this at the Grand Theatre workshop sessions awhile back this year. 😊👍

[@laurenwhite2644]

Thanks for this video, RSC. I fully understand the term and concept of this. Much appreciated!

[@janetwolfman7100]

Studied with Cicely Berry years ago

[@LiamWearneFisher]

This was very helpful thank you! :)

[@idekbruh1887]

I would like to thank my english teacher for bringing me here 😪

[@RussMcClay]

This is an excellent introduction to iambic pentameter! Thank you.

[@anndeakin1508]

Thanks for explaining the speaking lessons that actors need to express so that words com to life for actors and viewers.Thanks RST tutors.

[@uranusgemini3388]

Hello. Can anyone tell us something about the speech of Lawrence Washington posted below?

[@luna07430]

Well, Genius!

[@hughfurber7006]

Excellent. The late Sir Peter Hall was always stressing the importance of observing the iambic.pentameter in getting across the meaning of the lines to an audience. It is a pity that in recent productions this golden rule has not been observed by a number of actors who either think they know better or don’t understand its importance.

[@Julia_99]

You can tell those kids don't wanna be there

[@chs2385]

But are they learning? Yes. Students will not always have fun, but if they remember what you taught years later you did it

[@mikefelix3150]

While iambic pentameter is fascinating it's a lot less interesting than what's actually going on in the plays. Teachers who focus too much on this aspect of the language can totally kill students love of Shakespeare.

[@ZombieKilla2008]

The meter is interesting because of the words that fall on certain beats within the rhythm. That's what makes Shakespeare so incredible.

[@Efelblumfever]

Trying to act Shakespeare without understanding the verse, is like trying to play just the melody of a song an not the rhythm. Do normal high schoolers need it? Probably not. But Kids at the RSC know what they are in for.

[@Munchskin21]

If you don't get imabic pentameter's wealth, you really don't get what it is that makes Shakespeare great.

[@burghman8000]

Hearing and reading Shakespeare in modern English kind of doesn't do iambic pentameter justice. In order to really hear the beat and the puns and anything else it needs to be read and taught in op or middle English. When you hear it like that then you learn to appreciate the bards genius. That is for AP classes I would think. Translating the plays into modern English is the teachers job. It's really a beautiful thing to hear it spoken in Shakespeare's language. It's like hearing Beowulf in olde english. It's very hard to understand but if it's read thenTranslated and explained it is absolutely beautiful.

[@vehement-critic_q8957]

Iambic pentameter is used by Shakespeare not as a mere addition as a musicality, but Shakespeare characterises his characters with such technique and sometimes when other characters experience a tension they either lose the iambic pentameter or shifts to it out of the dramatic moment of the scene and grasp more attention. I am a non-native English speaker by the way, but I find iambic pentameter really worths although it is for me challenging to spot it somehow.

[@Terrakinetic]

I didn't get meter until I contrasted the near undetectable Iambic Pentameter with Poe's Troachaic Octameter. 3:10 This kind of stuff? No, that's not natural. When you go back to the reading, the exaggeration simply isn't there. And physically we're different, the nuance of speaking not translating the same way in the body. All this talk about heartbeats, but- I don't know about other people- however, stress causes an arrhythmia in myself. Is the iamb broken? Did I miscount? Is my heart skipping a beat? And in that frustration a quarter of your students are either faking it or have given up. Both teaching and learning meter is an overall difficult process.

[@timothyharris4708]

Yes, that mystifying stuff about heartbeats is not really very helpful, nor is the idea that rhythms in ordinary conversation are naturally iambic; though what is said about the energy created by, among other things metre, syntax & phrasing, is good; there is certainly a physicality in all rhythmic language. It is useful for an actor to be able to rattle off lines keeping a strict iambic metre, but no good actor will deliver lines that way. (Pace Vidalia Soleil & Creosote above, understanding metre does in fact help actors speak directly and conversationally - I have heard amateur actors on more than one occasion speaking Shakespeare without having been taught anything about speaking verse, and the results have been incomprehensible.)The metre & the actual rhythm of particular lines differ. Try to speak 'Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang' in a strictly iambic way and it sounds very unnatural. There are of course regular pentameters in Shakespeare, but there are very few that are simply ti-tum ti-tum ti-tum ti-tum ti-tum, and there are many that depart quite far from the metrical norm for reasons that are expressive.

[@timothyharris4708]

Also, of course, no, that exaggerated emphasis in the metre is not a natural way of speaking Romeo's line. It is not meant to be, and of course nobody is going to speak the line like that on stage.. The exercise is meant to make actors aware of where the beats fall, and that awareness is extremely important. When actors, such as the amateurs I have spoken of, do not understand rhythm and phrasing, what they produce is simply incomprehensible. The point is that the metre is there, irrespective of differences between people, one needs to be aware of it.

[@amelie_thingz4471]

😶

[@marymcmullen5150]

When I started to learn Shakespeare at Secondary School I heard the iambic pentameters which helped to me to understand iambic in other Poets. I enjoyed my visit to Stratford upon Avon and to visit the Shakespearian theater. Since then I have studied Shakespeare's way of working. Today I think Shakespeare was an idiot, a Mesogynist who plucked the fruit of expression from ordinary people,. You can make Shakespear personal which shows the power and inevitably the weakness of Shakespeare.

[@mindyourownbusinessfatty]

Shakespeare used to walk into bars in Shoreditch and Southwark and employ jobbing untrained actors for walk on parts in his daily productions. Now a middleclass non descript lovey, has to train for seven years in a bullshit academy, gain a drama diploma by over analyses of every word, then brag about their esoteric in depth understanding of minutiae, before they can walk on and deliver the word 'bollox'. TIME TO BRING SHAKESPEARE BACK TO THE PEOPLE.

[@sitting_nut]

Mr .Creosote learning rhythm is not 'analyzing every word' or an 'esoteric' 'minutiae', it is a basic and necessary actor's skill. and actors in shakespeare's time were skilled in it , after all most of them just memorized their separate lines with cues, instead of studying play as a whole ( which was never given to anyone in full to prevent copying by rivals ) and rhythm helps memory.

[@mindyourownbusinessfatty]

sitting nut Roses are red violets are blue Rhythm is stupid And so are you. It took me six years at Poetry college to write that 'lovey', te tum te tum te tum te tum.

[@FlightofCrows]

+Mr .Creosote What are you talking about? I'm a producer and director for a shakespeare festival in California, and we take people who have never been on a stage before all the time. There are another 31 shakespeare festivals in my state alone. There are thousands all over the world, and even more of Shakespeare's plays are being produced by companies that don't even specialize in Shakespeare. If you want shakespeare, go out and see it. Audition. Or better yet, produce it yourself; it's not difficult. No one is forcing you to watch anything performed by those that are professionally trained. Let them do what they want to do. I, however, find that understanding iambic pentameter is key to understanding a lot of what you are saying, when you should keep to the meter, and when you should just ignore it.

[@mdebailes-OK]

I suspect that even if shakespeare was brought back to you, assuming you to be one of the people referred to, you'd still find something inane to say! That's good - you represent the idiotic side of opinion which can be used as a relative stand point allowing others to find a balanced point of view - dontcha think?

[@vidaliasoleil2714]

I agree. I love Shakespeare done well. But this is Shakespeare overthought and beaten to death. Actors too often deliver lines from Shakespeare like lines from a speech or read from a book, instead of like conversation. They forget what they are actually saying and why they are saying it and get caught up in "technique".

[@hasanmammadov4574]

Englisch Gruni-Kurs was geht

[@NostalgiNorden]

So this is why Shakespearian actors are so unnatuaral????

[@PrisonMichaelPorterJr]

Iambic Pentameter isn't cool at all lmao

[@jackhoho1846]

okay boomer