Alan Williamson: Iambic Pentameter (July 1998)

Exploring the blank verse of MacBeth and the sprung rhythms of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “The Windhover,” Alan Williamson investigates the relationship between energetic speech, musical feeling, and iambic pentameter. Williams discusses how Thomas Middleton’s Jacobean blank verse drama The Changeling influenced T.S. Eliot’s “Gerontion,” and goes on to consider how the ghost of iambic pentameter can invite the ear to seek musical patterns which create clarity.