In iambic pentameter the rhythm goes ‘unstressed, stressed’. In each foot there is one stressed syllable.
Pentameter means that each line is divided up into five feet. This is a name for a certain pattern of beats called ‘feet’.
Shakespearean sonnets are written in iambic pentameter. Shakespeare didn’t invent the form, but he did help popularise it. A sonnet is a poem of 14 lines that follows a strict rhyming pattern.
