hello sir, your videos have helped me a lot in English literature which I am thankful for. I was wondering if you could do a video on the merchant of Venice context and an inspector calls context video
Hi there Malik, apologies for the late reply. I will put them on the list - may not be relevant to you anymore but hopefully those videos could help others!
Did Shakespeare have an intended sequence of iambs and trochees in mind when writing? Or is this subject to the artistic licence of the reader/actor? When reading Shakespeare (for instance, a sonnet), how do I know where the stresses fall? Thank you :)
It's a very good question. On the whole the idea that his plays or sonnets are written in iambic pentameter simply means that (in general) there will be five stressed syllables in a line and most of the time these stresses will fall on the 2nd, 4th, 6th, 8th and 10th syllables. But, if ALL lines were this regular they would soon become monotonous and so Shakespeare introduces trochees (which reverse the stress found in an iamb); spondees when two syllables are more more equally stressed, and Pyrrhic Feet when two syllables are very lightly stressed (in this latter case we skip lightly over the syllables). So we might say that the art of writing great poetry in iambic pentameter is the art of introducing small variations the the basic pattern to draw our attention to particular thoughts. In answer to your question about how to read it, let's take one line from Sonnet 18. The basic pattern (if we were strictly following that pattern) should be u x u x u x u x u x Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? The rule of thumb is then to read it using the normal stresses in English, so: x u / u x / u x /u x / u x Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? When I do this, most of the line seems to fit an iambic pattern but there is a question about the initial foot. I think he begins this line with a trochee because there is slightly more stress on the word 'SHALL' (making it a trochee). For me this fits with the sense of the sonnet - "is it appropriate if I compare you to a summer's day?" In contrast, if we put MORE STRESS on 'I' and LESS on 'shall' it would suggest that he's questioning his right - as an individual - to make the comparison. I don't think he's doing that when I read the sonnet. I hope this helps, but do send me another note if you have any other questions.
So great | and helpful | informative | video | you made! One question though: for the "why then" line in Othello, isn't "why then" also a trochee? cuz stressing on "then" seems a little weird...
That's a great question. The reality is that there are subtle shifts of stress in any particular line and there are several other variations that Shakespeare uses. I decided to focus on the differences between IAMBS and TROCHEES here to keep things as clear as possible. In fact, the initial foot could be read as something called a SPONDEE. In this construction you place an almost equal stress on both syllables - (WHY THEN). I plan to cover SPONDEES (and a fourth type, the PYRRHIC FOOT) in another video. Thanks again for your comment and if you have any further questions do get back in touch.
Good question. You are correct. You can think of the iamb as a pattern of sounds - an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable - and so as long as the sounds follow the pattern any combination of words can be used. For example: ‘my heart’, or ‘And strange’ or ‘is ours’.
