 You may have heard your teacher make reference to Iron Bit Pentameter. You may even have come across this word used in lots of different poems and different settings and even in lots of Shakespeare's work. However, maybe it still alludes you as to what does Iron Bit Pentameter really mean? Now, it sounds like a really fancy phrase, but it's actually very, very easy to spot it and figure out what Iron Bit Pentameter means. So in this video, what I really wanted to do was just really demystify this very intimidating phrase to really show you that firstly. Iron Bit Pentameter, you can find it in a lot of verse. Shakespeare loves using it when it comes to his more upper class characters such as Dukes and Royal Blood. However, it's actually very easy to spot and if you do spot it, especially when it comes to analysis, things like Iron Bit Pentameter does draw in the higher marks. So as you can see behind me, essentially, what I did was really just show you a quick summary of Iron Bit Pentameter. However, also what I wanted to do is give you three key examples taken from Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar. These are three of Shakespeare's most famous plays. I will show you three separate quotations which use Iron Bit Pentameter and show you how you can easily spot it. Now, let's first start off with what Iron Bit Pentameter really means. Now, really simply put, Iron Bit Pentameter is firstly one line of writing. It's made up of 10 syllables, okay? Bear in mind, syllables is basically how many claps it takes you to say a word. So for example, my name is Barbara. It's therefore to say the word Barbara, it would be Barbara. That's three syllables because it takes me three times to clap my name out, okay? So going back to this, it's one line of writing made up of 10 syllables, so Barbara times three plus one extra syllable and the first syllable, so there's a particular order, okay? So the first syllable in this line is what we call unstressed. In other words, it just takes just a little bit shorter to pronounce. Then the second syllable that follows afterwards is stressed. It takes just a longer point to pronounce. My name is also a really interesting example of this pattern, okay? So unstressed, a syllable that takes just a little bit shorter to pronounce and then stressed being a syllable that takes just a little bit longer to pronounce. Think about the name Barbara. Bar, ber, rah. Bar is much quicker, so we could argue that it's unstressed, ber, which is the second syllable, is stressed, it takes just a little bit longer and then the last part of my name, rah, is unstressed. That final syllable, the third syllable in my name, takes just a little bit shorter to pronounce. Now, as I mentioned, you will have one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable and this happens five times in a sentence or a line of verse. In other words, you have one unstressed syllable, then a second stressed syllable, then a third unstressed syllable, then a fourth stressed syllable, then a fifth unstressed syllable, then a sixth stressed syllable, seventh unstressed syllable, eighth unstressed syllable, ninth unstressed syllable, 10th unstressed syllable, okay? So therefore, there's 10 syllables in one line and the first is unstressed, second is stressed, third unstressed, fourth unstressed and so on, okay? Now, as I mentioned, this pairing, so unstressed plus stress happens five times. Now bear in mind, an unstressed syllable coupled and paired with a stressed syllable is what we call a metrical foot, okay? So again, just bear in mind that a stressed syllable bar and then an unstressed syllable bar, right? So taking just the first two syllables of my name, both of them going together is what we would call a metrical foot. Therefore, in I Am Bit Pentameter, there are five metrical feet. The first is a pair, second is a pair, third is a pair, fourth is a pair and fifth is a pair. If you do five times two, that is 10 syllables in a line of writing. Hopefully, having confused you, hopefully as I mentioned, please just make sure you just remember, number one, one line of writing, number two, it makes up 10 syllables. So if you count the different syllables, how many times it takes you to clap that sentence, you clap 10 times, that's 10 syllables. The first syllable is unstressed, the second is stressed and this happens 10 or rather, this happens five times. So unstressed, stressed, unstressed, stressed and so on. Now, as I mentioned, I have come up with three examples taken from three separate Shakespeare plays, all of which are written in I Am Bit Pentameter and I will walk you through it just to show you how you can spot I Am Bit Pentameter really easily. The first is a quotation taken from what Macbeth says. Now, Macbeth, he states, so foul and fair a day I have not seen. Now, this phrase is I Am Bit Pentameter. As you can see here, it starts with an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, so foul. However, if you think about it when I say so foul, it takes just a little bit shorter to pronounce whilst foul takes a little bit longer, okay? So as you can see here, it's so foul, so unstressed, stressed and fair, unstressed, stressed, a day I have not seen. If you count all of them, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, that's 10 syllables in total, which makes it a perfect set of I Am Bit Pentameter. And as I mentioned, so foul go together as a metrical foot, okay? Then and fair, that's a metrical foot together, okay? So when you pair unstressed and stressed, that's one metrical foot. So if you remember the pairing of one, two, three, four, five, that is five metrical foot in this quotation. Now, the second quote let's look at with I Am Bit Pentameter is from the prologue in Romeo and Juliet, the prologue which is in the opening part of the play. And it states, two households both alike in dignity. Now here, this is I Am Bit Pentameter again, because you've got the unstressed syllable starting two. Now you can see here households has two syllables itself, so two households, that's three syllables so far, right? So house, two and house, house takes a little bit longer to pronounce than two, okay? So two households, right? So hopefully you can hear that there's a little bit more of a stress in house versus two and holds, okay? So as I mentioned, unstressed syllable, it takes a little bit shorter to pronounce whilst the stressed syllable takes just a little bit longer to pronounce, okay? So as I mentioned here, two households both, which is a bit longer. Ah, now as you can see here, alike is actually two syllables, even if it's just five letters. Ah, which is an unstressed syllable, like, which is the stressed syllables. In, which is the unstressed syllable, dignity. There's three syllables in dignity. You've got dig, which is stressed syllable, knee, which is an unstressed syllable, and then tea, which is a stressed syllable. And what I would like to suggest is maybe Google all of these phrases and just count for yourself and actually apply this technique. I'm gonna give you a final third quotation and this is taken from Julius Caesar and this is what Mark Antony says in his very famous Friends, Romans, Countrymen speech, okay? Now, he says, Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears. Now again here, this is perfect Iambic pentameter. You can clap as you're reading, Friends, Friends, Romans, Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears. That's 10, perfect Iambic pentameter because there's 10 syllables. I'll show you the stress and unstressed. So Friends is unstressed, Ro, takes a bit longer than Friends to pronounce, therefore it's stressed. Mons is unstressed, Khan, which is stressed. Shri, unstressed, men, stressed, lend, unstressed, me, stressed, your, unstressed, is stressed. Hopefully I haven't stressed you out with that explanation and you now kind of understand Iambic pentameter and what I would suggest is literally, Shakespeare loved using Iambic pentameter. As I mentioned, the professor used upper class characters because he usually used Iambic pentameter to indicate the class and the superiority of the person who was speaking. Whilst maybe lower class characters tended to either speak in prose or blank verse. So maybe you can look at key plays, very famous plays such as Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Julia Caesar, but also you can look at other plays such as Twelfth Night, for instance, look at what do you call Ceno says at the beginning of the play in Act One, Scene One. Then you can just kind of use different exercises and test yourself in terms of spotting and counting the different syllables and then seeing whether that's Iambic pentameter or not. So hopefully this helps in understanding Iambic pentameter.