Doctor Faustus

Playwriting flourished during the Elizabethan era. Marlowe and Shakespeare are the most famous of the late-1500s playwrights. In a tradition going back hundreds of years, characters—especially the high-born—often spoke in verse rather than prose. Lines typically contained 8, 10, or 12 syllables bunched together in twos or threes, with stresses on the first, second, or third syllable of every bunch. However, Marlowe employed a then-innovative approach: blank verse iambic pentameter, or lines with five two-syllable beats and no rhyme scheme.

Iambs contain two syllables, with stress placed on the second syllable, as in tah-DUM. Pentameter, meaning five measures, contains five sets of iambs per line. For example, early in the play, Faustus says:

Wouldst thou make men to live eternally,

Or, being dead, raise them to life again? (3).

The first line would be stressed: “Wouldst THOU make MEN to LIVE e-TERN-al-LY.” (Note that actors don’t push hard on the stressed syllables but instead let the rhythm form naturally as they speak.) The lines don’t rhyme; hence, the verse is “blank.” This format proved popular; Shakespeare quickly adopted it and made further innovations, and today iambic pentameter is best known from his works.