Scansion: the rhythm and meter of a line or verse, or the act of analyzing the rhythm and meter of a line of verse.

*** By writing in verse – with rhythm and meter – the writer gives the language a “pulse that makes it easier to speak and hear” (Folger Shakespeare Library)

POETIC FEET

 Iamb

Unstressed-stressed

dee-DUM

de-TROIT

new YORK

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Trochee

Stressed-unstressed

DUM-dee

LON-don

BOS-ton

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Anapest

Unstressed-unstressed-stressed

dee-dee-DUM

ten-nes-SEE

new or-LEANS

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Dactyl

Stressed-unstressed-unstressed

DUM-dee-dee

I-o-wa

MICH-i-gan

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Amphibrach (AM-fi-brack)

dee-DUM-dee

chi-CA-go

al-AS-ka

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HOW MANY FEET?

Mono = 1         Di = 2              Tri = 3              Tetra = 4          Penta = 5

Hexa = 6          Hepta = 7         Octo = 8

i WANT  |   to GO  |   outSIDE  |   toDAY      (iambic tetrameter)

NEV-er  |   LET me  |  FOL-low       (trochaic trimeter)

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Shakespeare primarily used iambic pentameter. It matches the beat of a human heart. When iambic pentameter doesn’t rhyme, it’s called “blank verse.” He doesn’t always stick to it strictly.

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“Although strictly speaking, iambic pentameter refers to five iambs in a row, in practice, poets vary their iambic pentameter a great deal, while maintaining the iamb as the most common foot. However there are some conventions to these variations. Iambic pentameter must always contain only five feet, and the second foot is almost always an iamb. The first foot, on the other hand, is the most likely to change by the use of inversion, which reverses the order of unstress and stress in the foot.” –Folger Shakespeare Library

˘

/

˘

/

˘

\

/

˘

˘

/

˘

To

be

|

or

not

|

to

be,

|

that

is

|

the

ques-

tion

 

Elision: squeezing words to make them fit the scansion  

 O’er instead of over

Heav’n instead of Heaven

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The argument of the “To Be or Not to Be” speech:

To live or die; that’s what I’m wondering. Is it better to end life’s misery now, or to keep on fighting against it? Death: that would end all the pain and heartache. And how great the pain and heartache! But death, like sleep, might bring bad dreams. That’s a problem! Because who would accept all the agony of being alive (the pain of getting old, meanness and arrogance, love affairs gone wrong, official corruption, the humiliations good people choose to accept rather than eliminating them with one thrust of a knife) who would put up with it if not for the fact that we are all scared of dying? We don’t know what happens to us after we die, so we choose the miseries we know over the terrors we don’t. We’re cowards. We think too much. And when we do that, we paralyze ourselves until we can’t do anything at all. Hold on a second. Here comes Ophelia.