Week Sixteen Part 1: Shakespeare

The Iambic Pentameter

13th January 2014

Today's lesson began as usual with a couple of warm up exercises.  Just like last week we started with a warm up that focused mainly on our body, to get up prepared for the physical side of the lesson.  Next came a vocal warm up exercise.  The purpose of this lesson was to focus on our speech pattern for when it came to the pernounciation of Shakespearean language.  Using short phrases we were to look at many different ways in which we could pronounce it; such as a calm voice that is confortable for the speaker, then a stage voice which would be loud and understandable, as well as a deep voice to focus on the deeper and darker characteristics.  As a result of these warm up exercises we were all prepared to the physical and verbal halves of the lesson.

     Once we had started the lesson, we came straight into the main topic of the lesson, the Iambic Pentameter.  The Iambic Pentameter is a method which focuses on the speed and pronouciation of an actors speech.  A key part of learning this is using a phrase with similar sounds towards a heart beat, (de dum de dum de dum de dum de dum).  The method is to pronouce words in the same pattern with the same amount of words to have a similarity; a ten word sentence, where every other word is spoken louder (so the 'de' is quiet, and the 'dum' is louder.  An exeample of this would be in the sentence 'the more my prayer, the lesser is my grace'.  So the 'the' would be the first 'de' and the 'more' would be pronounced in a louder tone, as being the first 'dum'.  The 'de' and 'dum' would be a repeating pattern, repeated five times over a ten word sentence.  Although if the sentence has nine words, like the example above, then the Iambic Pentameter would be split into one word, depending on how many verbs there are in the word.  So in the example above the word 'lesser' has two verbs, therefore the 'less' would be a 'dum', because the word before was a 'de', and the 'er' would be a 'de', to repeat the pattern.  So the end result would be the speech to be louder on the 'less' and return to be quieter on the 'er'.

     After getting a decent idea of how the Iambic Pentameter works our teacher gave us a task.  Our teacher placed us into groups of two and gave each of us a senareo, where we would have to create a script and then later add the Iambic Pentameter.  For my script I had to keep each characters lines to have at least ten words in each line.  In the end I thought that this was an intersting task as it allowed us to demonstarte our understanding of a new and even more interesting method of acting.

     I also thought that the Iambic Pentameter was a useful method which I think would come in handy with any acting performances.  Because if you were writing a script and you wished to use the Iambic Pentameter then it would allow you to focus on your writting, in the sense of writting in a short and detailed fashion.  As well as the method assisting in the actors speech pattern, because it can help highlight the important words in a short and detailed speech.  A pronouciation using the Iambic Pentameter could also be useful in a singers performance because it also focuses on the tone os voice, which assists in making the speech sound clearer and detailed.