“Yet if you play not fair, above-board too,
I’ll tell you what—
I’ve a foolish engine here:—I say no more—
But if your Honour’s guts are not enchanted.”
Licentious as the comic metre of B. and F. is,—a far more lawless, and yet
far less happy, imitation of the rhythm of animated talk in real life than
Massinger’s—still it is made worse than it really is by ignorance of the
halves, thirds, and two-thirds of a line which B. and F. adopted from the
Italian and Spanish dramatists. Thus, in Rutilio’s speech:—
“Though I confess
Any man would desire to have her, and by any means,” &c.