“All’s well that ends well, in comprising /
Five acts and a plot galvanizing./
The world’s for the staging, /
With narratives paging /
Through dramas’ iambic feet, rising.”
The 23 April 2025 Bluesky limerick, like many NaPoWriMo April 23 celebrations before it, was a poem in honor of William Shakespeare’s birthday; Shakespeare lived from 1564-1616.
“All’s well that ends well, in comprising /
Five acts and a plot galvanizing..”
Shakespeare’s dramas famously depend on a five-act structure, and his plots are among the most well-known in history. I borrowed one of his titles, All’s Well That Ends Well, to introduce this year’s limerick.
I had not realized this until drafting this essay, but “galvanizing” aligns well with a chemistry-themed post, since it can apply to a specific chemical process, of coating iron with zinc to avoid deterioration. I had initially used the descriptor while thinking of its more common meaning (of stimulating or motivating). Both definitions trace their derivations to the work of Italian scientist Luigi Galvani (1737-1798). I suppose both senses of the word apply reasonably well here, as Shakespeare’s plots are both inspiring and long-lived!
“The world’s for the staging, /
With narratives paging /
Through dramas’ iambic feet, rising.”
The latter part of the limerick alludes to another play, borrowing Jaques’s famous line, “All the world’s a stage,” from As You Like It, and the final line notes that the narratives of Shakespeare’s plays are told through iambic pentameter.
I had initially aimed for a pun with “foot-falling” at the close, but as I read more about the meter, I learned that the iamb was classified as “rising,” due to the way the stressed syllable follows the unstressed syllable (e.g., be-FORE). This worked as well, in structuring the five lines of the poem to aim for a more accurate closing.
Chemphasis 