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Nicholas Udall wrote his comedy of Ralph Roister Doister—not printed till 1566—in which we have the earliest specimen of the verse afterwards chiefly used for comedy, namely, one of four feet, the foot of two, three, and even four syllables. It commences thus:—

      As long lyveth the mery man (they say)

      As doth the sory man, and longer by a day,

      Yet the Grassehopper for all his Sommer pipyng

      Sterveth in Winter wyth hungrie gripyng.

      This measure may be seen in Damon and Pitheas, New Custom, Gammer Gurton's Needle, and other plays, in which we shall find it admitting lines of five and even six and seven feet—ex. gr.,

      That state is most miserable. Thrise happy are we

      Whom true love hath joined in perfect amity.

      Which amity first sprung, without vaunting be it spoken that is true,

      Of likeliness of manners, took root by company, and now is conserved by virtue.—Damon and Pitheas.

      Contemporary with Bale and Udall, the illustrious Earl of Surrey had introduced into English a new species of verse—blank verse. This was a five-foot iambic measure without rime, and admitting of verses of six feet. His version of two books of the Æneis in this measure was printed in 1557; and five years later, Jan. 18, 1561–2, a play written in it and named Gordebuc, by Norton and Sackville, was performed before Queen Elizabeth at Whitehall, and it was given to the press in 1566. But more than twenty years elapsed before blank verse made its first appearance on the public stage in the Tamburlain of Marlow. From its inherent superiority, it at once became the established form for the drama, still mingled, however, with riming couplets and stanzas.

      16.

      I have already expressed my opinion that the earliest among the extant dramas of Shakespeare may have been The Comedy of Errors. This is in blank verse, in general strictly decasyllabic, mingled with the riming measures above noticed. His next play would seem to have been The Two Gentlemen of Verona, much of the same form, but differing from it, and from its immediate successors, by admitting in its blank verse trisyllabic feet, as in

      A virtuous gentlewoman, mild and beautiful.—iv. 4.

      It might seem as if the poet were hesitating about the adoption of a freer kind of verse such as came afterwards into use. Love's Labour's Lost, and the other plays in Meres' list—to which, as may be seen, The Taming of the Shrew is to be added—are all of the same kind. As he advanced in his career, he gradually discarded rime, and admitted the trisyllabic foot more frequently. He also learned to run his verses into each other, thus forming a system; the preposition, for instance, ending one line, and the word it governed beginning the next line.

      The blank verse of Surrey and of the authors of Gordebuc—admitting, as we have seen, verses of six feet—may be regarded as strictly decasyllabic. But when it became the standard verse of the theatres it gradually relaxed from its strictness, and admitted trisyllabic feet more and more as it advanced, so that in Fletcher we actually meet with lines containing fifteen syllables, though of no more than five feet. It is most strange that, with these facts staring them, as I may say, in the face, editors, almost without exception, seem to have been haunted by a spectre of five decasyllabic feet. "How often," says Gifford, "will it be necessary to observe that our old dramatists never counted their syllables on their fingers!" They also seem to be unaware of the existence of Alexandrines, or verses of six feet. The play of Othello, for instance, is as full of them as Dryden's riming couplet verse; and yet Mr. Dyce—whom I generally notice as being usually regarded as a leading critic—writes frequently as if such a line were not admissible in dramatic verse.

      Again, there are critics who regard a verse as good if it contains ten syllables, no matter how made or how arranged.

      Thus Malone gives as good verses,

      What wheels, racks, fires, flaying, boiling.—W. T. iii. 2.

      Curs'd be I that did so. All the chärms.—Temp. i. 2.

      Poürs into captains' wounds? banishment.—Timon, iii. 5.

      Mr. Collier regards as a good verse,

      To yond generation you shall find.—M. for M. iv. 3.

      "Doth comfort thee in thy sleep. Live and flourish" is the usual reading in Rich. III. v. 5; mine is at least more euphonious.

      It has never to my knowledge been sufficiently noticed that Shakespeare makes occasional use of the seven-foot verse of Golding's Ovid and Phaer's Virgil, works in which it is evident he was extremely well-read. Such are the following lines:—

      For often have you writ to her, and she in modesty,

      Or else for want of idle time, could not again reply;

      Or fearing else some messenger, that might her mind discover,

      Herself hath taught her love himself to write unto her lover.—Two Gent. ii. 1.

      A cherry-lip, a bonny eye, a passing-pleasing tongue.

      Rich. III. i. 1.

      

      My visor is Philemon's roof; within the house is Jove.—

      Why then your visor should be thatch'd.—

      Speak low, if you speak love.—Much Ado, ii. 1.

      Convey the wise it call: steal! foh! a fico for the phrase!—

      Well, sirs, I am almost out at heels.—

      Why, then, let kibes ensue.—Mer. Wives, i. 3.

      As many devils entertain, and To her, boy! say I.—Ib.

      Thou art the Mars of malcontents. I follow thee, troop on.

      Ib.

      Die men like dogs; give crowns like pins; have we not Hiren here?—2 Hen. IV. ii. 4.

      Rouse up Revenge from ebon den, with fell Alecto's snake.

      Ib. v. 5.

      A damned death! Let gallows gape for dogs, let man go free.—Hen. V. iii. 6.

      These last six, we may see, all belong to Ancient Pistol. We possibly might add:

      He's ta'en, and, hark! they shout for joy.—

      Come down, behold no more.—Jul. Cæs. v. 3.

      17.

      I will now make a few general observations on the dramatic verse of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. In the first place, as observed above, we may lay it down as a general rule that their verse—I may perhaps include even that of Marston—is never rugged or inharmonious, but that when it appears to be so it is owing to the copyist or the printer, or to the fact of the manuscript having been damaged, and not unfrequently to want of skill in the reader.

      An apparent cause of imperfection in lines is the reader's ignorance of the poet's mode of pronunciation. Thus it was then the custom—one not quite lost yet—in prose as well as in verse, if two words came together, one ending, the other beginning, with an accented syllable to throw back the former accent: hence Shakespeare said, for example, "the dívine Desdemona." If critics kept this fact in mind, they would not reject Tieck's excellent emendation of "the précise Angelo" for "the prenzic Angelo" in Measure for Measure, on account of the accent, when in the very same play we have "a cómplete bosom," i. 4; "O just, but sévere law!" ii. 2; "Will bélieve this," ib.; "Our cómpell'd sins," ib. 4, &c.; we have actually "précise villains," ii. 1. How would they read

      Might córrupt minds procure knaves as corrupt

      (Hen. VIII. v. 1)?

      In fine, it must be remembered that ion, ien, and other double vowels were pronounced dissyllabically, as oceän,

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