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2 examples of iambic pentameter [In Shakespeare's Hamlet]?

Would this work as one example or is it wrong? "O, that this too, too sullied flesh would melt.”

I need help, thanks!

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  • 9 years ago
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    ALL if Hamlet is in iambic pentameter. An iamb is a 'foot', it's like one stress of a line. dah-DAH. Iambic pentameter is just five of these. da DA da Da da DA da DA da DA. Every line of Hamlet is in this meter, but Shakespeare takes some liberties with it.

    O, THAT this TOO too SULLied FLESH would MELT.

    The English language has something called a 'stress time feature'. When you read a line with stresses, the stresses are all the same distance apart in time, no matter how many unstressed syllables are between them. So occasionally The Bard will put two syllables between a stressed syllable, or an extra unstressed syllable at the beginning or the end. But every line has five stressed syllables that are the same 'distance' apart.

    to BE or NOT to BE, that IS the QUEStion.

    Shakespeare lived in a 'neoclassical' period, when playwrights and composers and writers tried to emulate the art forms of ancient Greece and Rome. In the Renaissance Europeans rediscovered Greek plays, and they noticed they were all written in verse. They thought they must have been sung, so they tried to write plays that were sung, with the same 'tragic' subject matter, and that resulted in -opera-. The ancient Greek plays were written in iambic pentameter! So Shakespeare (who came later, after the Renaissance) also wrote his plays in that meter.

  • Anonymous
    5 years ago

    Iambic pentameter is a line of verse consisting of 5 metric feet, each consisting of two syllables with alternating stresses, short-long, short-long, short-long, short-long, short-long. The line in your example isn't stressed in the order you have it. Since it's actually 11 syllables, two of them are kinda slurred together into one to maintain meter. Using your symbols, it's actually still stressed -/ - / -/ -/ -/, with question being squeezed into one syllable.

  • 6 years ago

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    2 examples of iambic pentameter [In Shakespeare's Hamlet]?

    Would this work as one example or is it wrong? "O, that this too, too sullied flesh would melt.”

    I need help, thanks!

    Source(s): 2 examples iambic pentameter shakespeare 39 hamlet: https://tinyurl.im/hIsPr
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