How may syllables in William?

Answer 1

4 syllables.

William=2 syllables

Shakespeare=2 syllables

I asked my teacher the same question so I could do a haiku poem about him. He responded 4.

William may sound like 3 syllables but truly it is a 2 syllables.

Will-(iam) not will-li-am.

Then shake-(Speare)

Answer 2

Shakespeare was famous for writing in iambic pentameter, a rhyme scheme consisting of five pairs of short/long or unstressed/stressed syllables. Therefore, each line contained ten syllables. However he wrote a great many which have more or less than that. For example, his most famous line, "To be or not to be? That is the question." has eleven syllables.

Prose lines can contain an awful lot of syllables: Kent in King Lear says in response to Oswald asking what Kent thinks of him, "A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking knave; a whoreson, glass-gazing, super-serviceable, finical rogue; one-trunk inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd, in way of good service and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch; one whom I will beat into clamorous whining if thou deniest the least syllable of thy addition." One hundred and thirty-one syllables, all in the same sentence.

Compare this line from King John: "Death". One syllable.

However, the very large number of lines which are written in blank verse, have a standard number of syllables: ten. However even then, not all blank verse lines are regular.

Answer 3

Each play has a different amount of syllables as the plays vary in length.

A Sonnet, however, is 14 lines with 10 syllables in each line.

Answer 4

All of them.

Answer 5

Two