Freshmen students should know that Shakespeare wrote his plays predominantly in a meter called iambic pentameter. A line of poetry is composed of feet or units of rhythm in verse. An iambic foot is composed of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable. Pentameter is a poetic line made up of five feet. I write examples of iambic pentameter on the board. The capitalized words are emphasized, and the slash indicates the end of each foot:

My GRAVE / is LIKE / to BE / my WED/ ding DAY

Is THERE /no PI / ty SIT / ting IN / the CLOUDS

 It’s helpful if students write out other lines and scan them in order to understand iambic pentameter rhythm. It is this meter that gives Shakespeare’s poetry its stately cadence.

In order to further appreciate Shakespeare’s poetry, young people should be familiar with end-stopped and run-on lines. An end-stopped line is punctuated at the end of the line; a run-on line is not. Here’s an example of both:

end-stopped lines: Rebellious subjects, enemies to peace,

Will they not hear? What, ho! You men, you beasts,

. . . hear the sentence of your movèd prince.

run-on lines:              On pain of torture, from those bloody hands

Throw your mistempered weapons to the ground

And hear. . ..

Students should memorize one soliloquy of approximately twenty-five lines that they write out in class and submit for a grade. (Twenty-five lines? All of them?) This is an excellent assignment when students read any Shakespearean drama. Give them these suggestions about memorization:

• Look through the speech to be sure you know what it means. It’s difficult to memorize what you don’t understand.
• Memorize the first two lines, thoroughly.
• Move on through the speech a few lines at a time always memorizing from the beginning.
• Repeat the whole speech aloud to someone who will correct you. Twice. Now they are ready to write it down.

Students should be given two weeks to memorize their speeches. As they come to class, they hand in a copy of the speech they have memorized, write out the speech, and submit it for grading. This procedure obviates the teacher’s having to thumb through the play to find the passages they’ve memorized.