1. Solving the puzzle of Shakespeare’s language
Or… just how in the world did he write a play in lines that sound like poetry?

2. How he wrote his plays
Shakespeare wrote many of his plays using poetic-like lines. That means his lines have rhythm.
Rhythm the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line.

3. Syllables
Syllables can be accented or unaccented. (stressed or unstressed)
A poetic foot is a unit of accented and unaccented syllables that is repeated or used in sequence with others to form the meter.

4. Meter
Meter – the number of ‘feet’ in a line of poetry or in this case, in a line from a Shakespeare play
monometer   one foot
dimeter   two feet 
trimeter   three feet 
tetrameter  four feet         
pentameter   five feet
hexameter   six feet
heptameter   seven feet
octameter   eight feet

5. More about Feet/foot
Foot- A metrical unit composed of stressed and unstressed syllables. For example, an iamb or iambic foot is represented by ˘', that is, an unaccented syllable followed by an accented one. Frost's line "Whose woods/ these are/ I think/ I know" contains four iambs, and is thus an iambic foot.

6. Scansion
Scansion – Describing and labeling the rhythms of poetry by dividing the lines into feet, marking the locations of stressed and unstressed syllables, and counting the syllables.

7. Types of ‘feet’ - Iambic
^ / ^ / ^ / ^ /
The falling out of faithful friends,
^ / ^ / ^ /
renewing is of love

8. Trochee
Trochee (/^)        
/ ^ / ^ / ^ / ^     
Double , double toil and trouble 

9. Anapest
Anapest (^^/)        
^ ^ / ^ ^ / ^ ^ /   
I am monarch of all I survey

10. Dactyl
Dactyl (/^^)        
/ ^ ^ / ^ ^      
Take her up tenderly

11. Shakespeare wrote in iamb’s
An iamb is a metrical unit made up of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable.
An example of an iamb would be good BYE.
A line of iambic pentameter flows like this:
baBOOM / baBOOM / baBOOM / baBOOM / baBOOM.

12. Try it!
Can you scan this poem excerpt? The morns are meeker than they were, The nuts are getting brown; The berry’s cheek is plumper, The rose is out of town. --Emily Dickinson

13. Answers The Emily Dickenson poem is iambic.
The meter in line one is tetrameter.
Line two is trimeter.
Line three has seven syllables.
Line four is trimeter.

14. Try another!
Bats have webby wings that fold up; Bats from ceilings hang down rolled up; Bats when flying undismayed are; Bats are careful; bats use radar; --Frank Jacobs, “The Bat”

15. The answers "The Bat" is trochaic tetrameter.
That means each line has three feet.
Each foot is written in trochee. This is one stressed syllable followed by one unstressed syllable. ( / ^ )

16. Sources
Holman, C. Hugh and William Harmon. A Handbook to Literature. Macmillan Publishing Company, Kennedy, X.J. Literature. Scott, Foresman, and Company, 1987.