Ямбический пентаметр: ритм и структура в английской поэзии.

Metric line consisting of five iambic feet
Iambic pentameter (/aɪ/,/æ//m//b//ɪ//k// //p//ɛ//n/'/t//æ//m//ɪ//t//ər/ eyeAMbik penTAMitər) is a type of metric line used in traditional English poetry and verse drama. The term describes the rhythm, or meter, established by the words in each line. Rhythm is measured in small groups of syllables called "feet". "Iambic" indicates that the type of foot used is the iamb, which in English is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable (as in a BOVE). "Pentameter" indicates that each line has five "feet". Iambic pentameter is the most common meter in English poetry. It was first introduced into English by Chaucer in the 14th century on the basis of French and Italian models. It is used in several major English poetic forms, including blank verse, the heroic couplet, and some of the traditionally rhymed stanza forms. William Shakespeare famously used iambic pentameter in his plays and sonnets, John Milton in his Paradise Lost, and William Wordsworth in The Prelude. As lines in iambic pentameter usually contain ten syllables, it is considered a form of decasyllabic verse.

The term "iamb" originally applied to the quantitative meter of classical poetry. The classical terms were adapted to describe the equivalent meters in English accentual syllabic verse. Different languages express rhythm in different ways. In Ancient Greek and Latin, the rhythm was created through the alternation of short and long syllables. In English, the rhythm is created through the use of stress, alternating between unstressed and stressed syllables. An English unstressed syllable is equivalent to a classical short syllable, while an English stressed syllable is equivalent to a classical long syllable. When a pair of syllables is arranged as a short followed by a long, or an unstressed followed by a stressed, pattern, that foot is said to be "iambic". The English word "trapeze" is an example of an iambic pair of syllables, since the word is made up of two syllables ("tra—peze") and is pronounced with the stress on the second syllable ("tra—PEZE", rather than "TRA—peze"). A line of iambic pentameter is made up of five such pairs of short/long, or unstressed/stressed, syllables.

The first to write iambic pentameter verse in English was Geoffrey Chaucer, who not only knew French, but also Italian, and he even visited Italy two or three times. His Scottish followers of the century from 1420 to 1520—King James I, Robert Henryson, William Dunbar, and Gavin Douglas—seem to have understood his meter (though final e had long been silent in Scots) and came close to it. Dunbar, in particular, wrote poems in true iambic pentameter.

There is some debate over whether works such as Shakespeare's were originally performed with the rhythm prominent, or whether the rhythm was embedded in the patterns of contemporary speech. In either case, when read aloud, such verse naturally follows an iambic beat. Scholars have explained that there are few stage directions in Shakespeare "because the verse serves that purpose. The dramatic action of the lines is related to the physical action required." The rhythm of iambic pentameter was emphasised in Kenneth Branagh's 2000 production of Love's Labour's Lost, in a scene where the protagonists tap dance to the "Have at you now, affection's men at arms" speech. In this case, each iamb is underscored with a flap step.