The stanza, or strophe, is the largest unit of verse-measure ordinarily
recognized. It is based not so much on rhythmical divisions as on
periods either rhetorical or melodic; that is, a short stanza will
roughly correspond to the period of a sentence, and a long one to that
of a paragraph, while in lyrical verse the original idea was to conform
the stanza to the melody for which it was written. Thus Schipper
observes: "The word strophe properly signifies a _turning_, and
originally indicated the return of the song, as sung, to the melody with
which it began." Schipper defines a stanza as a group of verses of a
certain number, so combined that all the stanzas of the same poem will
be identical in the number, the length, and the metre of the
corresponding verses; in rimed verse, also, the arrangement of the rimes
will be identical. (See _Grundriss_, p. 268.)
The form of a stanza, then, is determined and described (the fundamental
metre being assumed) by the number of verses, the length of verses, and
the arrangement of rimes. The usual and convenient method of indicating
these conditions is to represent all the verses that rime together by
the same letter, while the number of feet in the verse is written like
an algebraic exponent. Thus a quatrain in "common metre" (four-stress
and three-stress lines), riming alternately, is represented by the
formula _a^{4}b^{3}a^{4}b^{3}_.
* * * * *
The appearance of the stanza in English verse is always the sign of
foreign influence. The West Germanic verse, as far back as we have
specimens of it, is uniformly _stichic_ (that is, marked by no periods
save those of the individual verse), not _stanzaic_.[8] On the other
hand, we find the stanza in the Old Norse verse. Sievers's view is that
originally the two sorts of verse existed side by side, the stanzaic
being preferred for chorus delivery, the stichic for individual
recitation; one form at length crowding out the other.
The great organizer of the stanza is, of course, the element of rime.
While unrimed stanzas are familiar in classical verse, the two
innovations, rime and stanza, were introduced together into English
verse, under both Latin and French influences, and have almost
invariably been associated. For notes on the history of the beginnings
of stanza-forms in English, see therefore under Rime, in the following
section.