Double amphibrach
# Double amphibrach

The double amphibrach is a variation of the double dactyl, similar to the McWhirtle but with stricter formal requirements. Meter and lineation are consistently amphibrachic (da DA da) rather than dactylic (DA da da), and the shortened fourth and eighth lines rhyme. In narrative sequences, the requirements that the first line be nonsense syllables and second line be a proper name are sometimes waived, but the sixth line requires a single diamphibrachic word (e.g. discriminatory, hallucinogenic, personification).

Jan D. Hodge in The Bard Double-Dactyled and Other Odd Pieces includes several pieces in this stanza form. His version of “Humpty Dumpty” begins:

    As Humpty was sitting
    upon a partition,
    he misplaced his balance
    and suffered a fall.
    A sodden, unsightly
    reorganization
    of yolk and albumen
    appeared by the wall.

Here is the seventh stanza of his rendering of Hamlet:

    Laertes returns to
    avenge his dead father
    and finds his dear sister
    half out of her mind,
    her life in all senses
    deteriorating:
    her father’s been killed and
    her lover’s unkind.

and his Taming of the Shrew concludes:

    The husbands’ last wager
    provides us a further
    and fitting reversal
    confirming this view;
    the contest makes clear the
    identification
    we’d always suspected—
    Bianca’s the shrew.
