How many times does a iamb repeat in a single prologue?

Answer 1

It all depends on the length of the prologue and the regularity of the metre. The prologue to Romeo and Juliet is fourteen lines long, and each line contains approximately five iambs, making a total of seventy in the whole prologue. That's more or less, since lines like "From ancient grudge break to new mutiny", it can be argued, contain only four iambs and one trochee. Romeo and Juliet is not the only one of Shakespeare's plays which has a prologue, however. Henry V has a particularly famous one which is 34 lines long, which would contain one hundred and seventy iambs if it were regular. (It isn't though. The first line "O for a muse of fire that would ascend" contains only 4 iambs and starts with a trochee) The Prologue to Henry IV Part II has 40 lines (200 iambs more or less) and the Prologue to Pericles has 42 lines of iambic tetrameter with 4 iambs to the regular line, a total of 168, more or less.

Answer 2

An iamb is a metrical pattern in poetry that consists of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable (da-DUM). In a single prologue, the repetition of iambs will depend on the length and structure of the prologue itself. There is no fixed number of times an iamb must repeat in a prologue.