I like to think of iambic pentameter as something like a grid underlay. It's there to create organization, but it's not the focus of the presentation. If you ha

I like to think of iambic pentameter as something like a grid underlay. It's there to create organization, but it's not the focus of the presentation. If you hammer the rhythm, it's like blacking the lines of the grid and obscuring the text. Shakespeare was actually pretty good about matching the meter to fairly natural speech. Take the line quoted in the text, "Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all." You'll probably find that you naturally stress CON, COW and ALL, hitting three points of the "grid." That's sufficient. Forcing an accent on DOTH and OF is unnatural and unnecessary.