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...ask your children why they think Shakespeare doesn't write all his iambic pentameter in regular form. Why does he vary it?.......

First, if you had to hear one regular iambic pentameter line after another for an entire play, it would put you to sleep. It is the variation in the lines that keeps the experience alive and interesting.

...Second, Shakespeare uses the variation in the rhythem to create the tensions and the release, the smoothness and staccatos, the bombast and sweetness that tell his story. The great Shakespeare director I mentioned in chapter 4, Sir Peter Hall, likens Shakespeare's manipulation of iambic pentameter to the way a great musician plays jazz. Fist the musician creates a recurring rythm to set up the beat. Then he starts riffing, and he brings his art to bear through all the variations that make his interpretation so interesting.