Corrections of metre are avoided even more carefully than those of
grammar. For the rules of prosody have undergone perhaps greater change
than those of grammar. There is no doubt that a system of versification
has taken root among us very different from that which was in use in the
earlier days of our poetry. The influence of classical prosody has
worked in a manner that could hardly have been expected. Quantity in the
sense in which the Greeks and Romans understood it, is altogether
foreign to our speech; and our poets, willing to imitate the verse
regulated by laws of quantity, have partially adopted those laws,
substituting for long syllables those that bear a stress of accent or
emphasis.
In Greek and Latin accent was essentially distinct from quantity, and
verse was regulated entirely by the latter. In the modern imitation of
classical metres, for want of appreciation of quantity, we go entirely
by accent or emphasis, and make precisely such verses as classical taste
eschewed. Thus we have learned to scan lines by iambuses, or rather by
their accentual imitations, and a perfect line would consist of ten
syllables, of which the alternate ones bore a rhythmical stress. These
iambuses may, under certain restrictions, be changed for 'trochees,' and
out of these two 'feet,' or their representatives, a metre, certainly
very beautiful, has grown up gradually, which attained perhaps its
greatest perfection in the verse of Pope. But the poets of this metre,
like renaissance architects, lost all perception of the laws of the
original artists, and set themselves, whenever it was possible, to
convert the original verses into such as their own system would have
produced. We see the beginnings of this practice even in the first
Folio, when there exist Quartos to exhibit it. In each successive Folio
the process has been continued. Rowe's few changes of F4 are almost all
in the same direction, and the work may be said to have been completed
by Hanmer. It is to be feared that a result of two centuries of such a
practice has been to bring about an idea of Shakespearian versification
very different from Shakespeare's. But we feel a hope that the number of
Shakespeare's students who can appreciate the true nature of the English
versification in our elder poets is increasing, and will increase more
as the opportunity is furnished them of studying Shakespeare himself.
Of course we do not mean to give here an essay on Shakespearian
versification. Those who would study it may best be referred to Capell,
in spite of the erroneous taste of his day, to Sidney Walker, and
especially, if they are earnest students, to Dr Guest's _History of
English Rhythms_.
We will only state some of the differences between Shakespearian
versification and that which has now become our normal prosody; namely,
such as have excited an ambition of correcting in later editors. There
is a large number of verses which a modern ear pronounces to want their
first unaccented syllable. The following we quote as they appear in F1,
in the opening of the _Two Gentlemen of Verona_:
No, I will not, for it boots thee not. I. 1. 28.
Fire that's closest kept burns most of all. I. 2. 30.
Is't near dinner-time? I would it were. I. 2. 67.
These lines are all corrected by editors; and it is evident that there
would be little trouble in altering all such lines wherever they occur:
or they may be explained away, as for instance in the second cited,
'fire' doubtless is sometimes pronounced as a dissyllable. Yet to
attempt correction or explanation wherever such lines occur would be
ill-spent labour. A very impressive line in the _Tempest_ is similarly
scanned:
Twelve year since, Miranda, twelve year since. I. 2. 53.
Where we are rightly told that 'year' may be a dissyllable. Yet that one
word should bear two pronunciations in one line is far more improbable
than that the unaccented syllable before 'twelve' is purposely omitted
by the poet; and few readers will not acknowledge the solemn effect of
such a verse. As another example with a contrary effect, of impulsive
abruptness, we may take a line in _Measure for Measure_:
Quick, dispatch, and send the head to Angelo. IV. 3. 88.
This last example is also an instance of another practice, by modern
judgement a license, viz. making a line end with two unaccented
'extrametrical' syllables.
Two very effective lines together, commencing similarly to the last, are
in the same Play:
Take him hence; to the rack with him! We'll touse you
Joint by joint, but we will know his purpose. V. 1. 309, 310.
Another irregularity is a single strong syllable commencing a line
complete without it. This might often be printed in a line by itself.
For example:
Ay,
And we're betrothed: nay more, our marriage-hour--
_Two Gentlemen of Verona_, II. 4, 175.
Another irregularity is the insertion of syllables in the middle of
lines. The dramatic verse is doubtless descended from the Old English
decasyllables of Chaucer, and that his verse was divided actually into
two sections is evinced by the punctuation of some MSS. The _licenses_
accorded to the beginnings and endings of the whole verse were also
allowed, with some modification, to the end and beginnings of these
_sections_, and accordingly, in early poetry, many verses will appear to
a modern reader to have a syllable too many or too few in the part where
his ear teaches him to place a cæsura. Exactly similarly, but more
sparingly, syllables are omitted or inserted at the central pause of
Shakespeare's verse, especially when this pause is not merely metrical,
but is in the place of a stop of greater or less duration; and most
freely when the line in question is broken by the dialogue.
The following examples of a superfluous syllable at the middle pause are
taken out of the beginning of the _Tempest_:
Obey, and be attentive. Canst thou remember? I. 2. 38.
But blessedly help hither. O, my heart bleeds. I. 2. 63.
Without a parallel; those being all my study. I. 2. 74.
With all prerogative:--hence his ambition growing. I. 2. 105.
The extra syllables may be at the commencement of the second section:
He was indeed the Duke; out o' the substitution. I. 2. 103.
And the following are defective of a syllable:
Dashes the fire out. O, I have suffered. I. 2. 5.
Make the prize light. One word more; I charge thee. I. 2. 452.
To these 'licenses' we may add verses sometimes with one and sometimes
with two additional feet, and many half verses, and some a foot too
short. When these inequalities are allowed, the reader will perceive
much simpler and more general methods of scanning some lines supposed to
be unmetrical than the Procrustean means adopted by Sidney Walker for
reducing or multiplying the number of syllables in words.