II. THE VERSE.

To memostfatal, me most it concerns.

Par. Reg. iv. 205: Todd's 4th edit.

Here, again, the true reading isso; yet, asmostmakes good sense, if the error had been in the original edition it would in all probability never have been detected. Opening by chance Bloomfield's pretty poem of The Farmer's Boy (ed. 1857), I met with

Till when up-hill the destinedhillhe gains.

Winter, 173.

We may find in Chaucer—

What ladies fairest ben or bestdauncing,Or which of hem candauncebest or sing.

What ladies fairest ben or bestdauncing,

Or which of hem candauncebest or sing.

Knt's Tale.

Here fordauncingwe should probably readloking.

Of hisgladnessehegladedher anone.

Tr. and Cr. i.

The poet probably wrotegoodnesse.

For though a manforbidedrunkenesse,He notforbidesthat every creatureBe drunkeles for alway, as I gesse.

For though a manforbidedrunkenesse,

He notforbidesthat every creature

Be drunkeles for alway, as I gesse.

Ib. ii.

We should readcommaundesin the second line.

Witness the daily libelsalmostballadsIn every place,almostin every province,Are made upon your lust.

Witness the daily libelsalmostballads

In every place,almostin every province,

Are made upon your lust.

Thierry and Theodoret, i. 1.

We should for the firstalmost, which must be wrong, probably readand the. Mr. Dyce seems never to have seen this; for he had no conception of this source of error: yet I wonder common sense did not suggest that something must be wrong.

The things that grievous were to do or bearThem to renew, I wote, breeds no delight;Best music breedsdelightin loathing ear.

The things that grievous were to do or bear

Them to renew, I wote, breeds no delight;

Best music breedsdelightin loathing ear.

F. Q. i. 8. 44.

Fordelightin the last line we might readdislike, but I think we should rather readannoy; for in these cases, as we may see, no resemblance in form or sound is to be sought. I therefore in Othel. iii. 3, reject the emendation of Pope and 4to 1630 offeelsforkeeps, because it was evidently suggested by the slight similarity of form, and does not perfectly suit the context. The reader will find an excellent instance in As You Like It, ii. 3.

My news shall be thenewsto that great feast.

Ham. ii. 2.

So the folio reads; the 4to has more correctlyfruit.

Surely Shakespeare never wrote

To seek thyhelp, by beneficialhelp.

Com. of Err. i. 1.

He that they cannothelphim,They that they cannothelp.

He that they cannothelphim,

They that they cannothelp.

All's Well, i. 3.

As this errorneveroccurs in Jonson and Massinger, and only, I believe, in the instance given above in Beaumont and Fletcher, and has no æsthetic advantage or beauty to recommend it, it seems quite absurd to suppose that Shakespeare, whose vocabulary was the largest of all, and whose ear was so fine and correct, should have found pleasure in it. Surely a just critic will sooner lay the blame on the printer and the careless editors, very different in this respect from those of Beaumont and Fletcher, who seem never to have hesitated to correct an error when they discovered it.

The resemblance in form above alluded to is of great importance, under the name ofductus literarum, in the eyes of Mr. Dyce, and it should always be attended to; for it is usually caused by the attempt of the printer to make out illegible writing. The following are striking instances:—

In Peele's Edward I. these lines occur.

To calm, to qualify, and to compound,Thank England'sstrife of Scotland's climbing peers.

To calm, to qualify, and to compound,

Thank England'sstrife of Scotland's climbing peers.

That the last line is nonsense was clear to every one; but no critic ever could emend it. The true reading, however, is doubtlessThe enkindled, which flashed suddenly on my mind one time when I was considering the passage. It was probably the resemblance of sound chiefly that misled the printer.

At the end of Marston's Insatiate Countess we meet the following unmeaning line,

LikeMissermischeating of thebrack,

which Steevens corrected most happily thus—

LikeMycerinuscheating of theoracle,

having discerned the allusion to Herod. ii. 133.

It is very curious that the word substituted is often the very opposite of the right word. I myself once wrote—and so it is printed—diameterforcircumference. In Mrs. C. Clarke's most valuable Concordance we have "humorousplebeian" for "humorouspatrician." I have met withnextforlastandnoneforsome; so in The Mer. of Ven., ii. 2,where the folio has "Is sum ofnothing," the 4tos read "Is sum ofsomething." In Lear v. 3, the folio reads

The gods are just, and of our pleasantvicesMake instruments to plague us;

The gods are just, and of our pleasantvices

Make instruments to plague us;

while the 4tos have "pleasantvirtues."

In All's Well, iii. 2, and Taming of the Shrew, iii. 1, we haveoldfornew. In a proof-sheet which I lately saw there was a quotation of

The paths of glory lead but to the grave;

and the printer had substitutedlifefor "grave," though, as the entire stanza was given, he had the rime to guide him. Many instances of this practice will be found in Love's Labour's Lost. In La Giovanezza, a poem of the Italian poet Pindemonte, I have just met withbruttewhere the rime and the sense requirebelle.

It does not seem to have been observed that printers will actually insert words, for the sake of sense or metre, when they have made a mistake. In my Life of Milton, I had occasion to quote a passage from his prose works containing "with a conscience that wouldretch;" and of this the printer made "with a conscience thathewouldrelish;" and so, I am sorry to say, it is printed. See on Mer. of Ven. iv. 1.

And stones did cast, yet he for nought would swerve.

F. Q. v. 12. 43.

As the rimes aredeserved,preserved,observed, the poet must have writtene'er swervedornothing swerved.

In her right hand a fire-brand shedid toss.

F. Q. iii. 12, 17.

The rimes areembost,lost, so that Spenser must have writtentost, making, as usual, a dissyllable offire. That it was not the poet himself that made the mistake is clear; for in

Till Arthur all that reckoning defrayed (ii. 10, 49)

the edition of 1750 hasdid defray.

A contrary error to this is where the printer has made one word of two, caused either by sound or by illegible writing. For instances, see on Com. of Err. iii. 1, Tw.Night, i. 1, Mer. Wives, v. 5, Ant. and Cleop. iv. 9, Macb. iii. 4.

The fact of effacement in the manuscript, on which I have laid such stress in the section onOmission, has also been a cause of substitution; for, the original word having become nearly or totally illegible, the transcriber or compositor, in order to make sense, used to give some term of his own. Thus we haveyesforI will, Meas. for Meas. iii. 1,yeaforeven so, Rich. II. iii. 1,ayforI will, Ham. iv. 7, as is proved by the metre. These are all at the beginning of the line, and hence their liability to effacement. See also on All's Well, ii. 1, Twelfth Night, iv. 3, Rich. II. i. 3, and elsewhere.

Finally, substitutions are often quite capricious, making no sense whatever. For "he went circuit," where my manuscript was perfectly legible, I once got "the localcircuit;" so also "the merits" for "there an echo;" "establishment" for "established government." In Alison's Life of Lord Castlereagh, one of the pall-bearers at the funeral of the Duke of Wellington was Sir PeregrinePickle(Maitland); in all editions of Joseph Andrews we have in one place "SirJohn" for "Sir Thomas" Booby.

It is to be observed thatto unto,till until,on upon,though although,e'er ever, &c., were frequently confounded. It is therefore the merest printer-worship to hesitate at altering them when the metre requires it. A further observation is, that even down into the eighteenth century, it was the custom to writeyforthin monosyllables beginning with this last (þ, A. S.), as yethe, ynthen, ytthat, yuthou; yryour was another abridgment; and hence confusion has often arisen. In these plays we havethatforthenin four places (see on Tr. and Cr. i. 2); and in Paradise Regained (i. 137) we havethenforthou, and also, I think, in Tw. Night, v. 1.

Such, then, are the various sources of error in the original editions of Shakespeare's plays, the correction of which and restoration of the poet's real sense are,as I have said, the task of the genuine critic, and one in which, except in a very few instances, success is not to be by any means despaired of.

As a means of obtaining it, I would, as I have done, lay it down as a rule that no word or phrase should be employed in restoration which is not to be found in the poet's own works, or at least in those of his contemporaries. It is obvious that by so doing we shall greatly diminish the risk of failure. It is a curious fact, that not unfrequently two or even three corrections are so equally good, that it is exceedingly difficult to choose between them, and that the final choice thus becomes a matter of mere chance. In such cases I think the critic should select the one which is the most poetic and most worthy of the poet. The coincidence of two or more independent critics in a correction is, in general, a proof of its truth; yet even this is not infallible. See on Merry Wives, ii. 3.

For correction, then, the first requisite is a thorough knowledge of the poet's language, the acquisition of which is a work demanding both time and close attention. Shakespeare's vocabulary, as we have seen, is extremely copious, and from his not having had the advantage of a regular education his plays present more anomalies, and offer more difficulties to the modern reader than those of the contemporary dramatists.

In his early pieces there is an incessant play on words; and in his later the language is often very elliptical and the sentences greatly involved. These difficulties are enhanced by the ignorance of punctuation, or neglect of it, with which the editors are chargeable. Thus it is only in very plain cases that they notice the break in sense caused by the aposiopesis, the anacoluthon, or an interruption, of which the reader will find so many examples in my Edition and in the following pages, marked for the first time, and designated by the sign (...). I would particularly direct his attention to Temp. iii. 1, 2 Hen. IV. iv. 1, Ham. i. 2, i. 4.

In the dramas and other works of those days we may observe the following peculiarities.

The infinitive mood is used with or withouttodifferently from the present usage—prefixed where we omit, omitted where we prefix. It is also employed, like the Hebrew infinitive absolute, where we use the present participle active, sometimes with a preposition,ex. gr.,

Copious in words, and one that much time spentTo jest.

Copious in words, and one that much time spent

To jest.

Lydgate, Book of Troy.

Even in Cowley we meet with

The sun himself, although all eye he be,Can find in love more pleasure thanto see.

The sun himself, although all eye he be,

Can find in love more pleasure thanto see.

The Gazers.

Here it is plain we should use the participlein seeing.

In "He is grown too proud to be so valiant," Cor. i. l, "to be" seems to bei. q.being;toobeing apparently used in the sense oftrop, Fr.,i.e.excessively.

The passive participle was continually used in the place of the present or past participle active or of the future. Chapman, for instance, is profuse in his use of it in his Homer. Of this, as of the former, we have some remains among us still, but few indeed compared with what our forefathers had. The perfect was also frequently used as a part. past, and of this also we have still some remains.

In imitation of the Latin and French, the writers of the sixteenth century—for we do not meet with it in Chaucer or Gower—used the verb as a noun, asdisposefordisposal,suspectforsuspicion.

A further peculiarity was the use of what grammarians call collectives,i.e., the singular noun used for the plural. We still retain this insheep,swine,fowl, and partially inyear,day; but in our older writers we meet with it inhorse(Much Ado, i. 1, Hen. V. iv. 1, and in Chapman's Homer continually),pearl(Macb.ad fin.),tree,corpse,witness,business,subject,princess(Temp. i. 2), and other words.

Writers of those days—and Shakespeare more than any—were fond of using verbs in a causative sense, asfallfor cause to fall, let fall,fearfor make fear. In these plays we meet, in a causative sense, withcease,linger,neglect,silence,faint,perish, &c. Thuslearnbecameteach,take give. It is only thus that "smileshis cheek in years" (L. L. L. v. 2) becomes sense.

There was a peculiarity of the grammar of those days which is now confined to the vulgar, namely, that of joining a plural nominative with a singular verb,ex. gr.,

That in this spleen ridiculousappears,To check their folly, passions solemntears.

That in this spleen ridiculousappears,

To check their folly, passions solemntears.

L. L. L. v. 2.

The rimes here and in several other places prove that this is no printer's error; and this construction is actually most frequent in Peele, Marston, and Fletcher—all University men! Editors, Mr. Dyce for example, are in the habit of taking the most unwarrantable liberty of altering this construction, except where restrained by the rimes. This practice is highly reprehensible and should be avoided; for we should give the text as it came from the poet's pen.

The origin of this structure is very simple. In the Anglo-Saxon the verbs made their plural inth, not inn, as afterwards became the usage. This plural of the verb occurs continually in the Vision of Piers Ploughman, and we find it not unfrequently even in the State Papers of the early Tudor period, in its later form; for, as in the singular, thethwas gradually changed tos.

In the more artistic compositions of Chaucer and Gower, however, it is very rare. The following line in Chaucer,

Asflakès fallèsin grete snowes,

House of Fame.

shows that even in his time thethhad been converted intos. The present practice, then, we may see is merely a change of fashion, and our ancestors' mode of forming the plural was perfectly correct and grammatical, with one exception—of which we still meet instances—that of usingisandwasas a plural. In my Edition of our poet's plays, I have therefore very generally preserved this structure; for we may alter orthography and punctuation, but not grammar.

On the other hand, I must maintain, in opposition to Mr. Dyce, that the union of a single noun with a plural verb wasnevera rule of the language, butalwaysan error of the copyist, or a slip of the writer. Of this I can give positive instances.

I one day met in my own History of England the following words, "Thebloodof Catesby and two others alonewereshed;" and on looking at the first edition I found of course that my word had beenwas. In Mr. Lloyd's Critical Remarks on Measure for Measure, in Singer's Shakespeare, we may read "the fiveactsof the first part of Promos and Cassandraconcludesthe iniquity of the deputy." Nor is this confined to English; in the Gerusalemme Liberata, and unnoticed by any editor, we find

Non si conviene a te, cui fattoil corsoDelle cose e de' tempihansi prudente.—x. 41.

Non si conviene a te, cui fattoil corso

Delle cose e de' tempihansi prudente.—x. 41.

In all cases it will be found to be the consequence of a noun of a different number having intervened between the nominative and the verb. Mr. Dyce, however, tries to make a rule of it by saying that "our early writers" did it when a genitive plural intervened; but that will not apply to passages like these—

Whoseyouth, like wanton boys through bonfires,Haveskipt thy flame.—Two Noble Kinsmen, v. 1.

Whoseyouth, like wanton boys through bonfires,

Haveskipt thy flame.—Two Noble Kinsmen, v. 1.

The sea,With his proud mountain-waters envying heaven,When I say 'still!'runinto crystal mirrors.

The sea,

With his proud mountain-waters envying heaven,

When I say 'still!'runinto crystal mirrors.

Valentinian, iv. 1.

Of others' voices, that my adder'ssense,To critic and to flatterer stoppedare.

Of others' voices, that my adder'ssense,

To critic and to flatterer stoppedare.

Shakespeare, Son. cxii.

This last is the error of the poet, who probably hadearsin his mind; yetsensemay be a collective: all the others are perhaps to be ascribed to the original printers.

The intensive particlebewas prefixed to verbs much more frequently than at present. There was also a frequent ellipsis of the first personal pronoun before such verbs ascry,beseech,beshrew, &c.; and finally the habit—still retained by the vulgar—of cutting away the first syllable of a word prevailed to some extent.

The pronunciation of Shakespeare's time of course differed in many points from that of the present day. Thusaspectand many other words were accented, and properly, on the last syllable; we also haveobdúrate,árchbishop,cónfessor, &c. In words such ascase,pace,lace, the French sound of theaseems to have been partially retained—Chaucer writes these wordscas,caas,paas,laas—along with the ordinary English sound. Chaucer also writes 'made'maad, Raleigh 'safe'sauf; and as the Master of the Revels wrote Shakespeare's nameShaxberd, we may suppose thatshakeand terms of a similar form were pronouncedshak, &c. If we do not pronouncelac'daslastin "lac'd mutton" (Two Gent. i. 2), we lose the humour of the passage. When Spenser therefore makesprepar'd, for example, rime withhard, he was probably doing nothing very unusual; for these double sounds—as we may see by the example ofshew show,shrew shrow,lese lose—were by no means uncommon. I suspect thatseamay have been one of these, and that besides riming withsee, as indeed Chaucer always writes it, it retained the sound of the Anglo-Saxon ɼæ; for F. Beaumont in his Poems almost invariably makes it rime with such words asday,lay,ray. Waller, followed by Pope, Gay, and other poets, most improperly madeearimewithai,ay, asteawithobey, &c. Ashaste,chaste,waist, &c., constantly rime withfast,last, &c., they were probably, I think certainly, pronounced as they were written, like them; or they may have had a double pronunciation like the words just quoted. As the more usual orthography waschaunge,raunge, &c., these words would seem to have been pronounced as in French, and as we still pronouncedaunt,haunt,avaunt. In words chiefly from the French, terminating inci,si,tifollowed by a vowel, as innation,fashion,passion, &c.—to which we may addocean—the usual sound wass, notshas at present. On the whole, the language seems to have been more euphonious than that of the present day.

While on the subject of euphony, I must direct attention to one point. Our ancestors probably pronouncedmy,thy(mín, þín, A.-S.),mee,thee, with a short sound also, when not emphatic, as inby,to, &c. Owing to its falling out of familiar use, and its employment in the Bible and Liturgy,thyhas long—except by the Quakers and the peasantry—been pronounced so as to rime withfly,try; butmyretained its proper sound till within the last few years; Walker, for instance, knew nothing of a change. But now our ears are constantly dinned with an egotisticmylikethy. I mention this because this new-fangled pronunciation is ruinous to both euphony and humour in our elder writers.

I shall conclude with some remarks uponits, a word of which Shakespeare may almost be regarded as the originator; though Spenser, no doubt, had used itonce(F. Q. vi. 11. 34) before him. Singer says it "occurs but twice or thrice" in Shakespeare; and Archbishop Trench and others say "three or four times;" while the fact is that its occurstwelve, andit, as a genitive, no less thanfifteentimes. We meetitsonly nine times in the numerous plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, and but half a dozen times in those of Jonson or Massinger.

The Chinese language makes the genitive by merely prefixing the substantive; thushoue jin(houekingdom) is "man of the kingdom." The same is the structure of the Teutonic and Scandinavian languages, ex. gr.,day light, &c.; but while all the others make the two substantives form one word, the English sometimes keeps them separate, sometimes unites them by a hyphen, and at other times makes them into one word. Hence we may observe, by the way, that it is needless, as well as cacophonous, to add an 'sto a substantive ending in that letter; even the simple turned comma is superfluous, the position alone indicating its genitive sense.

It appears that not only nouns but pronouns were so employed. In the first page of the Canterbury Tales we have—

And bathed every veyne in swich licour,Ofwhichvertue engendred is the flour.

And bathed every veyne in swich licour,

Ofwhichvertue engendred is the flour.

Herewhichis a genitive, for which we should now usewhose(the genitive ofwho), a pronoun that our forefathers used of things as well as persons.

In like manner, thoughhiswas the usual genitive ofitas well as ofhe, it was not uncommon to make the genitive by simply prefixingit, as in

Lord, how it could so prettily have prated withittongue!

Romeus and Juliet, 1562.

and other passages. I do not think it ever occurs in Chaucer, Gower, or Piers Ploughman.

I am therefore of opinion that Shakespeare may be regarded as the chief agent in introducingitsinto the language. It is to be noticed that it never occurs in the Bible, only thrice, or rather only twice, in Milton, and but once in Waller. Chatterton used it twice in the very first page of his Poems of Rowley; yet the critics of the time did not discern this plain proof of forgery!

On the disputed question of the use ofhisfor the genitive, I will only observe that the fact is that thepreceding noun is used absolutely. Thus, as we have "The king, he is hunting the deer," so we have "the king, his palace." The same structure precisely is to be met with in Dutch and German—we meet with it, for instance, in Schiller's Wallenstein; and Captain Burton informs us that in the Kariri language of Eastern Africa, "The Kazi's brother," for example, isKazi-ih-zo, literally "The Kazi, his brother."

Chaucer introduced into English poetry the iambic verse of five feet, formed by the Provençals in imitation of the Classic Phaleucian and Sapphic hendecasyllables, and adopted from them by the Italian poets. These last, however, though they held the principle of admitting but fiveictusin a line, did not limit themselves to eleven syllables, as the following examples will show:—

Che passa i monti, e rompe i muri e l'armi.

Dante, Inf. xvii. 2.

L'oro, e le perle, e i fior vermigli, e i bianchi.

Petr. Son. xxxi.

Non danno i colpi, or finti, or pieni, or scarsi.

Tasso, Ger. Lib. xii. 55.

So the Greeks in their dramatic iambics admitted trisyllabic feet, Æschylus admitting one foot, Sophocles two, Euripides three; while the comic poets, both Greek and Latin, used these feet still more freely, not, however, exceeding the limit of three.

Chaucer did not allow himself the same licence as his masters. He sometimes admits one such foot, rarely two, and three, I believe, only once. He also uses at times the Alexandrine or verse of six feet.

The first who used this verse for the drama in England was Bishop Bale, who in 1538 published threeInterludes, as he termed them, or dramatic pieces on Scriptural subjects. Here are a few lines from the one named God's Promises:—

In the begynnynge, before the heavens were create,In me and of me was my sonne sempyternall,With the Holy Ghost, in one degre or estateOf the hygh godhed, to make the Father coequall,And thys my Sonne was with me one God essencyall,Without separacyon at any tyme from me,True God he is of equall dignytè.

In the begynnynge, before the heavens were create,

In me and of me was my sonne sempyternall,

With the Holy Ghost, in one degre or estate

Of the hygh godhed, to make the Father coequall,

And thys my Sonne was with me one God essencyall,

Without separacyon at any tyme from me,

True God he is of equall dignytè.

The feet, it will be seen, are here of two or three syllables indifferently; and the same is the case in the couplets which occur also in these plays.

About the same time 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 pipyngSterveth in Winter wyth hungrie gripyng.

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 weWhom 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.

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.

I have already expressed my opinion that the earliest among the extant dramas of Shakespearemayhave 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 Fletcherwe 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.

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 inthysleep. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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 theaccent, 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 thation,ien, and other double vowels were pronounced dissyllabically, asoceän, &c.

Again, neither editors nor readers are in general aware that poets like Shakespeare, who were born in those parts of England where therat the end of words or syllables has the light sound peculiar to the English language, frequently pronounce as dissyllables those monosyllables, such asfire,hour,more,where, &c., ending inrafter a long vowel or diphthong, as in

I know a bank, where the wild thyme blows.—M. N. D. ii. 1.

Here "where" is to be pronounced nearlywheaa; for so the English really do pronounce it, though they may fancy such not to be the case. Malone, as being an Irishman, seems to have been the first to notice it. Of these monosyllables there are upwards of thirty in Shakespeare, and as many in Fletcher; while in the learned Jonson we only meet withfire,hour,our,your,wear. In my Edition, and in this work, I have marked them with a diæresis, aswhëre,heär, &c. It is rather remarkable that it is almost solely to his higher characters, such as Hamlet and Coriolanus, that Shakespeare gives this pronunciation. We also find this dissyllabic pronunciation in such words asborn,morn,horn, &c.

As in French poetry thee muetin words forms a distinct syllable,ennemi, for example, being read as a trisyllable; so we findangry,entrance,children,mistress(often writtenmisteris),country,witness,juggler,wondrous, &c., forming three,remembrancefour syllables.Captainwas sometimescapitain, as in French. Many of these cases, we may observe, are mere solutions of contractions,angry, for example, being simplyangerycontracted.

In opposition to the commonly received theory, I will venture to lay it down as a fixed principle that the dramatic poets rarely, if ever, used short lines, except in speeches of a single line, or in the first or the last line of a speech. This will be apparent to any one who examines the pages of Jonson and Massinger, who printed their plays themselves, or those plays of Shakespeare, Fletcher, and others which are the most correctly printed. Wherever a line of less than five feet occurs, it will be found to have been produced by omission of words or by malarrangement of the text. In plays such as Timon, Troilus and Cressida, or Fletcher's Sea Voyage, of which the original copy was in bad condition, lines of this kind are of course most numerous. I may here observe that in this last-named play, the metre of which Mr. Dyce has pronounced to be "incurablydefective," I have, by simple rearrangement of the text, rendered it as correct as in any other of Fletcher's plays.

Even in this also Shakespeare took liberties in which his brethren did not venture to indulge.Hebegan and ended not only speeches, but paragraphs of speeches, with short lines. Nay, he even made the concluding short line of one paragraph and the incipient short line of the next form a single line, thus—

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