for the most commonplace and the most sublime utterances . . There is no harmony of sound, no dignity of movement, no swiftness, no subtlety of languid sweetness, no brevity, no force of emphasis, beyond its scope. Its melody is determined by the sense which it contains, and depends more upon proportion and harmony of sounds than upon recurrences and regularities of structure. . . Another point about blank verse is that it admits of no mediocrity; it must be either clay or gold. Hence, we find that blank verse has been the metre of genius, that it is only used successfully by undubitable poets and that it is no favourite in a mean, contracted, and unimaginative age. The freedom of the renaissance created it in England The freedom of our century has reproduced it. Blank verse is a type and symbol of our national literary spirit. uncontrolled by precedent or rule, inclined to extravagance, yet reaching perfection at intervals by an inner force and vivida vis of native inspiration."

§ 217. Shakespeare's Blank Verse.

In Gorboduc and in the work of Marlowe, Greene, and Peele blank verse has not reached its fullest development; its structure is similar to that of heroic verse. Enjambement and feminine endings are comparatively rare; cp. Marlowe's Tamburlaine, Part II, V, 3, 151 ff.:

And shall I die, and this unconquerèd?

Lo, here, my sons, are all the golden mines,
Inestimable drugs and precious stones,
More worth than Asia and the world beside;
And from th' Antarctic Pole eastward behold
As much more land, which never was descried,
Wherein are rocks of pearl that shine as bright
As all the lamps that beautify the sky!

And shall I die, and this unconquerèd?

Here, lovely boys; what death forbids my life, That let your lives command in spite of death. Shakespeare was the first to bring blank verse to a high development, but he did it only gradually; cp. Conrad's Introduction to his edition of Macbeth (Berlin 1907).

We are able to draw conclusions as to the date of those of Shakespeare's dramas, for which we have no other data, by observing his treatment of blank verse. Thus we can arrive at a relative chronology of Shakespeare's dramas. Reference may be made to the following works:

Hilgers, Der dramatische Vers Shakespeares, Aachen 1868/69. Fleay, Shakespeare-Manual, London 1876.

Furnivall, The Succession of Shakespeare's Works, London 1877. Ingram, Transactions of the New Shakspere Society, London 1874. Hertzberg, Metrisches, Grammatisches, Chronologisches zu Shakespeares Dramen (Shakespeare-Jahrbuch 13, 248 ff.). Goswin König, Der Vers in Shakespeares Dramen. Quellen und Forschungen 61, Strassburg 1888. van Dam and Stoffel, William Shakespeare. Prosody and Text, Leiden 1900. H. Conrad, Metrische Untersuchungen zur Feststellung der Abfassungszeit von Shakespeares Dramen (Shakespeare-Jahrbuch 31, 318-353). Shakespeare's Macbeth. Erklärt von H. Con

rad, Berlin 1907, S. XX-XXXVI.

The first of the metrical tests is the rime-test. In his early work Shakespeare often uses rimed couplets (a a b b etc.) or quatrains (a ba b), whilst in later work rime becomes rarer, and is used only at the end of acts or scenes. According to G.

König the percentage of rimed verses in Romeo and Juliet is 17-2, in Hamlet 2.4, in The Tempest 0-1 and in A Winter's Tale 0.

With the increase of unrimed lines the number of feminine endings increases (§ 216), e.g. RJ. 8.2%, H. 22.6%, T. 35.4%, and of run-on-lines, RJ. 14.2%, H. 23.1%, T. 41-5%. The end of a speech takes place within the verse with greater frequency (speech-ending-test); so, too, the number of broken verses increases (verses divided between

or more speakers), RJ. 14.9%, H. 51.6%, T. 84.5%. The chief weight must be given to run-on-lines and broken verses, for, as König (p.135) says, it is here that the poet can most easily follow his taste. Conrad (Macbeth, p. XXI), too, holds the 'number of broken verses and of run-on-lines' to be 'the surest tests'.

It has been observed that in the earlier dramas more frequently than in the later dramas unstressed inflexional endings, especially -ed, are used both in the unstressed and in the stressed positions (§ 208). This, however, is not a good test, since these endings are dependent on the character of the preceding consonants.

Further it has been noticed that in the later dramas the last stressed position of the verse is often occupied by unstressed or weakly stressed words (weak or light endings). To the weak endings belong the conjunctions and, as, but, for, if. nor, or, than, that, and the prepositions at, by,

for, from, in, of, on, to, with; to the light endings other more strongly stressed conjunctions and prepositions, also pronouns and auxiliary verbs; cp. Schipper, Grdr. p. 222 f. But in those cases where such a proclitic is the last beat of the verse, there is generally enjambement also, so that these cases are already considered in the examination of enjambement.

Amongst the regular verses of five feet we occasionally, especially at the end of speeches, find incomplete verses, and in the later dramas alexandrines are found. But it must be remembered that the text of Shakespeare's dramas is often corrupt, and that printers often paid more attention to pauses in sentences than to verseendings in their line-divisions. The number of lines which are too long or too short would be diminished if we had the text in its original form. Thus in F, Macbeth I, 3, 131 f. we find an alexandrine following a verse of four beats:

This supernatural soliciting

Cannot be ill, I cannot be good.

If ill, why hath | it given | me earnest of success,| we need not hesitate to read:

Cannot be ill, cannot be good; if ill,

Why hath it given me earnest of success.

In Macbeth II, 2, 1 ff. verses 2-7 seem partly too short and partly too irregular:

That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold;

What hath quench'd them hath given me fire.

Hark! Peace! It was the owl that shriek'd,

The fatal bellman, which gives the stern'st good-night.
He is about it: the doors are open;

And the surfeited grooms do mock their charge
With snores. I have drugged their possets,

That death and nature do contend about them,

Whether they live or die.

By merely altering the line-division we get correct verses of five feet:

That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold;
What hath quench'd them hath given me fire. Hark! Peace!
It was the owl that shriek'd, the fatal bellman,
Which gives the stern'st good-night. He is about it:
The doors are open; and the surfeited grooms

Do mock their charge with snores: I've drugg'd their possets etc.

Shakespeare's caesura can occupy different positions in the verse, be of various strength, or can be omitted like Chaucer's (§ 191). Shakespeare uses epic caesura (§ 191), especially in 'broken verses', e.g. Hamlet I, 1, 17:

-

Who hath relíev'd you? Bernárdo has my place. Shakespeare makes frequent use of the liberties discussed in § 206, especially in his later dramas. Two unstressed syllables, of which one often vanishes by elision or slurring, often come together, and the 'extension' of a word (§ 208) is frequent. G. König, Der Vers in S.'s Dramen, QF. 61, Strassburg 1888, has carefully examined Shakespeare's verse, so too Conrad in the introduction to his edition of Hamlet (Berlin 1905, pp. XXIX-XLII). The latter discusses in detail Hamlet's monologues 1, 2, 129 ff. and III, 1, 156 ff.