Iambic pentameters
Iambic pentameters
•• Shakespeare often used the rhythm of the iambic pentameter in his
plays. This is ten syllables, or two beats, repeated five times.
‘Sha-boom’ is a good way to illustrate the rhythm of two beats.
•• As a whole group repeat ‘Sha-boom’ five times and clap on the
syllables.
•• Repeat the activity. This time replace ‘Sha-boom’ with the first two
lines spoken by Macbeth on page 37. Some lines don’t fit – they
are longer or shorter.
Macbeth: Worksheet 11: Iambic pentameters
•• Draw three parallel lines on a sheet of paper. Read and clap
through Macbeth’s soliloquy (lines 41–69). For each line mark an
X on the middle line if it has ten beats, on the higher line if it has
more, and on the lower if it has less. Join up your marks.
1 What does this chart tell us about Macbeth’s feelings?
2 What might Shakespeare be asking his actors to do when there are
fewer than ten syllables?
Globe Education Shakespeare: Macbeth
COPYRIGHT © 2011 THE SHAKESPEARE GLOBE TRUST
Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? Or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressèd brain?
I see thee yet, in form as palpable
As this which now I draw.
[Drawing his dagger.]
Thou marshall’st me the way that I was going,
And such an instrument I was to use.
Mine eyes are made the fools o’ th’ other senses,
Or else worth all the rest. I see thee still;
And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood,
Which was not so before. There’s no such thing.
It is the bloody business which informs
Thus to mine eyes. Now o’er the one-half world
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtained sleep. Witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecate’s offerings: and withered murder,
Alarumed by his sentinel, the wolf,
Whose howl’s his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,
With Tarquin’s ravishing strides, towards his design
Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth,
Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
Thy very stones prate of my whereabout,
And take the present horror from the time,
Which now suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives:
Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.
45
50
55
60
65
70
1
more than
10 beats
Macbeth: Worksheet 11: Iambic pentameters
10 beats
less than
10 beats
41
42
43
44
45
Globe Education Shakespeare: Macbeth
46
COPYRIGHT © 2011 THE SHAKESPEARE GLOBE TRUST
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
2