The Shakespeare-Expositor. Thomas Keightley

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 of his for the genitive, I will only observe that the fact is that the preceding 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, is Kazi-ih-zo, literally "The Kazi, his brother."

II. THE VERSE.

       Table of Contents

      15.

      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 five ictus in 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 three Interludes, 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 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 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 СКАЧАТЬ