FIfty shades of Shakespeare | New Republic

In a new memoir, an obsession with the Bard and spanking transforms what it means to live a sensual life.

Put your head on your lover’s chest and you will hear ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump. It’s a heartbeat, but it’s also a very specific rhythm—it’s iambic pentameter, the metrical foot made famous by William Shakespeare. Even if you don’t know your trochee from your spondee, you know an iamb. You can’t not know it; iambs are the poetry of your lover’s blood, your mother’s blood, and of your own.