Iambic Pentameter Explained for Beginner Actors + 1 tip for getting better at verse speaking FAST! 

no just quit acting and work for the unpaid workers association and you can be my personal assistant😛🤨🤤🤤😏

Woohoo! Well I’ll be doing lots of videos on verse speaking in the coming weeks so let me know if you have questions. If you have time, I recommend watching this video as well, it’s a good one for preparing for drama school - the big mistakes people make in auditions (with their Shakespeare monologues) and how to avoid them: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-deIBFfwQUIw.html

Great question. Let me see if I can articulate my thoughts on this. It is sort of in-built, but it does require the actor to understand and work with it. To extend the musical analogy, it’s like the music is on the page for you, but you do actually need to look at it and work with what’s there - you can’t just keep the notes and ignore the rhythm, so to speak. You have to really do your best to figure out what’s there and bring it out in your delivery. Unfortunately what we’re working with (to take the analogy even further) is music from centuries ago that’s hard to read and has been edited and adapted by a bunch of different people all claiming to understand it best. So everyone disagrees on how it should sound. In my opinion, a general audience isn’t going to really ‘hear’ the metre and recognise it the way you would if you heard a limerick or a haiku; probably only directors, actors and educators will hear it (or super keen Shakespeare buffs!). I guess going with the musical analogy again, if you have musical training then you might listen to a song and recognise what time signature it’s in, but the average person isn’t going to be thinking about that. Also in my opinion, it is actually supposed to sound like everyday speech, albeit incredibly beautiful and poetic! So in that sense it’s in built - it isn’t meant to be spelled out for the audience like “here is the end of the line”, and a slower pace is totally fine. The metre is there because it feels really satisfying, plus Shakespeare uses it to give the actors clues about what’s going on and how to say things. Hope that makes sense.

@@ShakespearewithSarah I appreciate you taking the time and putting that much thought into your response. Following what you described I put more of a focus on pronunciation and it distinctly brings that rhythm out that you were describing. That's a sobering consideration you bring up, that there is no real 'true' version and what we have left, although much, is just a largely agreed upon structure. That's not even considering accents or how pronunciation must have changed over time! I find the lines of 10 syllables to be of great help when it comes to memorization. Your suggestion to put more emphasis on the last line is a great idea as it would always end on the stressed syllable, it must be so much harder to do for the other 4 in each line. It's funny on another note because I've heard that when actors are trying to figure out what a monologue might be saying, they study the last words in a line as well to give them direction on what it's about when first introduced to them. It's funny when you describe it like that, the way you describe it as the audience may understand it subconsciously (as it's claimed to be styled after a part of average day to day speech) but only when you pay close attention does it knowingly reveal itself. Thank you again, it's a bit to think about.

Yes, that’s exactly it. I think of verse speaking as essentially “what should I stress, and how do I stress it?” with the goal being the audience’s comprehension and connection. I believe that when audiences see Shakespeare and they don’t know what’s going on or they don’t feel connected to the characters in anyway, the actors and directors have failed. That’s a generalisation of course - sometimes people just aren’t interested or don’t want to be there etc, but there are just too many examples out there where the actors haven’t done the work or haven’t been given the right help, and therefore don’t give the audience the best chance of connecting. Shakespeare has given us a LOT of clues in the text that can help us connect as actors, and our job is to find the clues and act on them. Unfortunately many actors don’t know how to find the clues! Which is exactly why I’m making these videos.

Mark, would you mind if I shared some screenshots of this conversation on my Instagram? I think they’re good questions that other people could benefit from.

@@ShakespearewithSarah Thank you for that input. It both puts you more into and takes you out of a performance when you give attention to the manner the actors perform their lines and the degree an audience is valid in their feedback (was the play poor or was only its execution as such?). That type of analysis seems daunting and I imagine it would take several viewings of the same performance to gage how a good crowd normally perceives certain scenes well or without interest. Please feel free to share this, I have no objection.

Almost everywhere! The Nurse is often in prose, and the servant/page characters like Sampson, Gregory, Peter, etc

@@ShakespearewithSarah thank you

Two things: 1) think ahead and 2) pitch. I need to do a short video on this to demo it but as as a starting point, make sure you're clear about the new idea that's coming in at the mid-line, and give yourself energy to move toward it. When you get to the new sentence in the middle of the line, raise your pitch to indicate a new sentence has started(which we often do naturally at the start of a sentence), but just don't breathe - save the breath for the end of the line.

@@ShakespearewithSarah Thank you so much for replying! I will keep this advice in mind

Possibly! I'm not much of a metalhead so I can't speak to that terribly well. For me, I think of jazz music, because the light-heavy stress is basically a "swung" rhythm, if you're familiar with the musical term.

There's a number of punk bands I've listened to that use Iambic Pentameter. The metal bands I've heard don't typically use such things I've noticed. It seems to be used more by punk bands or the Beatles (Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band) I've heard Three Days Grace employs the use of such lyrics too but I've never listened to them so I don't know if that's even true or not.

Are you doing a particular monologue? I could do a breakdown video for you if that helps.

@@ShakespearewithSarah YES! That would really be helpful. Thank you so much. "With too much blood and too little brain..."

👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻 can do. It might take a few weeks though because I’ve had lots of requests lately! Hope that’s ok for your timeline.

Hey! It’s up now. Sorry it took so long. Crazy time of year! Hope it helps. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ioIpPhEzVwU.html

There are always contextual things that might make a difference, but what I encourage actors to do is experiment with what happens if they emphasise the last word (sometimes two or three words), regardless of context or other techniques or rules. Come at it with a curiosity mindset and notice what happens to your phrasing and what you naturally stress in the rest of the line in the lead up to that last important word.