English Verse Part 33

(SACKVILLE and NORTON: _Gorboduc, or Ferrex and Porrex_, V. ii. 1-14.

1565.)

This tragedy, although Dryden curiously instanced it in defence of the use of rime on the stage, was the earliest English drama in blank verse.

The metre is decidedly more monotonous than Surrey's, and gives little hint of the possibilities of the measure for dramatic expression. In general, the early experiments in blank verse suggest--what they must often have seemed to their writers--the mere use of the decasyllabic couplet deprived of its rime. Nevertheless, as Mr. Symonds remarks of a pa.s.sage in _Gorboduc_, "we yet may trace variety and emphasis in the pauses of these lines beyond what would at that epoch have been possible in sequences of rhymed couplets." (_Blank Verse_, p. 20.)

For a specimen of the blank verse of Gascoigne's _Steel Gla.s.s_ (1576, the earliest didactic poem in English blank verse), see p. 18, above.

Paris, King Priam's son, thou art arraigned of partiality, Of sentence partial and unjust, for that without indifferency, Beyond desert or merit far, as thine accusers say, From them, to Lady Venus here, thou gavest the prize away: What is thine answer?

_Paris's oration to the Council of the G.o.ds:_

Sacred and just, thou great and dreadful Jove, And you thrice-reverend powers, whom love nor hate May wrest awry; if this, to me a man, This fortune fatal be, that I must plead For safe excusal of my guiltless thought, The honor more makes my mishap the less, That I a man must plead before the G.o.ds, Gracious forbearers of the world's amiss, For her, whose beauty how it hath enticed, This heavenly senate may with me aver.

(GEORGE PEELE: _The Arraignment of Paris_, IV. i. 61-75. 1584.)

This specimen shows the new measure introduced into the drama in connection with the earlier rimed septenary. Peele's verse in general is characterized by sweetness and fluency, but there is still no hint of the possibilities of the unrimed decasyllabics.

Schroer, in the article cited from _Anglia_, enumerates the following additional specimens of blank verse before the appearance of Marlowe's _Tamburlaine_; Grimald's _Death of Zoroas_ and _Death of Cicero_, in Tottel's _Songs and Sonnets_, 1557; _Jocasta_, by Gascoigne and Kinwelmarshe, 1566; Turberville's translation of Ovid's _Heroical Epistles_, 1567; Spenser's unrimed sonnets, in Van der Noodt's _Theatre for Worldlings_, 1569; Barnaby Rich's _Don Simonides_, 1584; parts of Lyly's _Woman in the Moon_, 1584; Greene's "Description of Silvestro's Lady," in _Morando_, 1587; _The Misfortunes of Arthur_, 1587;--the last two appearing probably in the same year with _Tamburlaine_, whether earlier or later is uncertain. Most of these specimens are short, and all are comparatively unimportant.

Now clear the triple region of the air, And let the Majesty of Heaven behold Their scourge and terror tread on emperors.

Smile stars, that reigned at my nativity, And dim the brightness of your neighbor lamps!

Disdain to borrow light of Cynthia!

For I, the chiefest lamp of all the earth, First rising in the East with mild aspect, But fixed now in the Meridian line, Will send up fire to your turning spheres, And cause the sun to borrow light of you.

My sword struck fire from his coat of steel Even in Bithynia, when I took this Turk; As when a fiery exhalation, Wrapt in the bowels of a freezing cloud Fighting for pa.s.sage, makes the welkin crack, And casts a flash of lightning to the earth.

(MARLOWE: _Tamburlaine_, Part I, IV. ii. 30-46. pub. 1590.)

Ah, Faustus, Now hast thou but one bare hour to live, And then thou must be d.a.m.ned perpetually!

Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of Heaven, That time may cease, and midnight never come; Fair Nature's eye, rise, rise again, and make Perpetual day; or let this hour be but A year, a month, a week, a natural day, That Faustus may repent and save his soul!

_O lente, lente, currite noctis equi!_ The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike, The Devil will come, and Faustus must be d.a.m.ned.

O, I'll leap up to my G.o.d! Who pulls me down?

See, see where Christ's blood streams in the firmament!

One drop would save my soul--half a drop: ah, my Christ!

Ah, rend not my heart for naming of my Christ![27]

Yet will I call on him: O spare me, Lucifer!

(MARLOWE: _Doctor Faustus_, sc. xvi. ll. 65-81. Printed 1604; written before 1593.)

Marlowe is universally and rightly regarded as the first English poet who used blank verse with the hand of a master, and showed its possibilities. With him it became practically a new measure. Mr. Symonds says: "He found the ten-syllabled heroic line monotonous, monosyllabic, and divided into five feet of tolerably regular alternate short and long. He left it various in form and structure, sometimes redundant by a syllable, sometimes deficient, enriched with unexpected emphases and changes in the beat. He found no sequence or attempt at periods; one line succeeded another with insipid regularity, and all were made after the same model. He grouped his verse according to the sense, obeying an internal law of melody, and allowing the thought contained in his words to dominate their form.... Used in this fas.h.i.+on, blank verse became a Proteus. It resembled music, which requires regular time and rhythm; but, by the employment of phrase, induces a higher kind of melody to rise above the common and despotic beat of time.... It is true that, like all great poets, he left his own peculiar imprint on it, and that his metre is marked by an almost extravagant exuberance, impetuosity, and height of coloring." (_Blank Verse_, pp. 22-27.) In the earlier verse of _Tamburlaine_, while showing these new qualities of a metrical master, Marlowe yet kept pretty closely to the individual, end-stopped line; in his later verse, as ill.u.s.trated in the fragmentary text of _Faustus_, he seems to have attained much more freedom, resembling that of the later plays of Shakspere.[28]

Is it mine eye, or Valentinus' praise, Her true perfection, or my false transgression, That makes me, reasonless, to reason thus?

She's fair, and so is Julia that I love,-- That I did love, for now my love is thawed, Which, like a waxen image 'gainst a fire, Bears no impression of the thing it was.

Methinks my zeal to Valentine is cold, And that I love him not, as I was wont: O! but I love his lady too too much; And that's the reason I love him so little.

How shall I dote on her with more advice, That thus without advice begin to love her?...

If I can check my erring love, I will; If not, to compa.s.s her I'll use my skill.

(SHAKSPERE: _Two Gentlemen of Verona_, II. iv. 196-208; 213, 214. ab.

1590.)

Ay, but to die, and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstruction and to rot; This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice; To be imprisoned in the viewless winds, And blown with restless violence about The pendant world; or to be worse than worst Of those that lawless and incertain thoughts Imagine howling,--'tis too horrible!

The weariest and most loathed worldly life, That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment Can lay on nature, is a paradise To what we fear of death.

(SHAKSPERE: _Measure for Measure_, III. i. 118-132. ab. 1603.)

This Mr. Symonds cites as "a single instance of the elasticity, self-restraint, and freshness of the Shaksperian blank verse; of its freedom from Marlowe's turgidity, or Fletcher's languor, or Milton's involution; of its ringing sound and lucid vigor.... It ill.u.s.trates the freedom from advent.i.tious ornament and the organic continuity of Shakspere's versification, while it also exhibits his power of varying his cadences and suiting them to the dramatic utterance of his characters." (_Blank Verse_, p. 31.)

Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves; And ye that on the sands with printless foot Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him When he comes back; you demi-puppets, that By moons.h.i.+ne do the green-sour ringlets make, Whereof the ewe not bites; and you, whose pastime Is to make midnight mushrooms; that rejoice To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid (Weak masters though ye be) I have bedimm'd The noontide sun, called forth the mutinous winds, And 'twixt the green sea and the azur'd vault Set roaring war: to the dread rattling thunder Have I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak With his own bolt: the strong-bas'd promontory Have I made shake; and by the spurs pluck'd up The pine and cedar: graves, at my command, Have wak'd their sleepers, op'd, and let them forth By my so potent art.

(SHAKSPERE: _The Tempest_, V. i. 33-50. ab. 1610.)

No attempt can be made to represent adequately the blank verse of Shakspere. The specimens, chosen respectively from his earlier, middle, and later periods, ill.u.s.trate the trend of development of his verse. In the earlier period it was characterized by the slight use of feminine endings and _enjambement_; in the later by marked preference for both, and by general freedom and flexibility. In other words, Shakspere's own development represents, in a sort of miniature, that of the history of dramatic blank verse. According to Furnivall's tables, the proportion of run-on lines to end-stopped lines in _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_ is one in ten, while in _The Tempest_ it is one in three. The increased use of "light" and "weak" endings is closely a.n.a.logous. Professor Wendell says of the verse of _Cymbeline_: "End-stopped lines are so deliberately avoided that one feels a sense of relief when a speech and a line end together. Such a phrase as

'How slow his soul sail'd on, how swift his s.h.i.+p'

is deliberately made, not a single line, but two half-lines. Several times, in the broken dialogue, one has literally to count the syllables before the metrical regularity of the verse appears.... Clearly this puzzling style is decadent; the distinction between verse and prose is breaking down." (_William Shakspere_, p. 357.)[29]

I, that did help To fell the lofty cedar of the world Germanicus; that at one stroke cut down Drusus, that upright elm; withered his vine; Laid Silius and Sabinus, two strong oaks, Flat on the earth; besides those other shrubs, Cordus and Sosia, Claudia Pulchra, Furnius and Gallus, which I have grubbed up; And since, have set my axe so strong and deep Into the root of spreading Agrippine; Lopt off and scattered her proud branches, Nero, Drusus; and Caius too, although replanted.

If you will, Destinies, that after all, I faint now ere I touch my period, You are but cruel; and I already have done Things great enough. All Rome hath been my slave; The senate sate an idle looker-on, And witness of my power; when I have blushed More to command than it to suffer: all The fathers have sat ready and prepared, To give me empire, temples, or their throats, When I would ask 'em; and, what crowns the top, Rome, senate, people, all the world have seen Jove but my equal; Caesar but my second.

'Tis then your malice, Fates, who, but your own, Envy and fear to have any power long known.

(BEN JONSON: _Seja.n.u.s_, V. iv. 1603.)

Jonson's blank verse, says Mr. Symonds, is that "of a scholar--pointed, polished, and free from the lyricisms of his age. It lacks harmony and is often labored; but vigorous and solid it never fails to be." He also instances the opening lines of the _Sad Shepherd_ as exceptional in their "delicate music." Beaumont's verse is in many ways similar in structure to Jonson's, yet commonly more melodious.

"He is all (As he stands now) but the mere name of Caesar, And should the Emperor enforce him lesser, Not coming from himself, it were more dangerous: He is honest, and will hear you. Doubts are scattered, And almost come to growth in every household; Yet, in my foolish judgment, were this mastered, The people, that are now but rage, and his, Might be again obedience. You shall know me When Rome is fair again; till when, I love you."

No name! This may be cunning; yet it seems not, For there is nothing in it but is certain, Besides my safety. Had not good Germanicus, That was as loyal and as straight as he is, If not prevented by Tiberius, Been by the soldiers forced their emperor?

He had, and 'tis my wisdom to remember it: And was not Corbulo (even that Corbulo, That ever fortunate and living Roman, That broke the heart-strings of the Parthians, And brought Arsaces' line upon their knees, Chained to the awe of Rome), because he was thought (And but in wine once) fit to make a Caesar, Cut off by Nero? I must seek my safety; For 'tis the same again, if not beyond it.

(FLETCHER: _Valentinian_, IV. i. ab. 1615.)

I can but grieve my ignorance: Repentance, some say too, is the best sacrifice; For sure, sir, if my chance had been so happy (As I confess I was mine own destroyer) As to have arrived at you, I will not prophesy, But certain, as I think, I should have pleased you; Have made you as much wonder at my courtesy, My love and duty, as I have disheartened you.

Some hours we have of youth, and some of folly; And being free-born maids, we take a liberty, And, to maintain that, sometimes we strain highly....

A sullen woman fear, that talks not to you; She has a sad and darkened soul, loves dully; A merry and a free wench, give her liberty, Believe her, in the lightest form she appears to you, Believe her excellent, though she despise you; Let but these fits and flashes pa.s.s, she will show to you As jewels rubbed from dust, or gold new burnished.

(FLETCHER: _The Wild-Goose Chase_, IV. i. 1621.)

The verse of Fletcher is highly individual among the Jacobean dramatists, though in a sense typical of the breaking down of blank verse, in the direction of prose, which was going on at this period. The distinguis.h.i.+ng feature of Fletcher's verse is the constant use of feminine endings, and the extension of these to triple and even quadruple endings, by the addition of one or more syllables.

Twelve-syllable lines (not alexandrines, but ordinary lines with triple endings) are not at all uncommon; and the additional syllable or syllables may even be emphatic. In general the tendency was in the direction of the freedom of conversational prose. Such a line as

"Methinks you are infinitely bound to her for her journey"

would not be recognized, standing by itself, as a five-stress iambic verse; properly read, however, it takes its place without difficulty in the scheme of the metre.[30]

Whatever ails me, now a-late especially, I can as well be hanged as refrain seeing her; Some twenty times a day, nay, not so little, Do I force errands, frame ways and excuses, To come into her sight; and I've small reason for't, And less encouragement, for she baits me still Every time worse than other; does profess herself The cruellest enemy to my face in town; At no hand can abide the sight of me, As if danger or ill luck hung in my looks.

I must confess my face is bad enough, But I know far worse has better fortune, And not endur'd alone, but doted on; And yet such pick-hair'd faces, chins like witches', Here and there five hairs whispering in a corner, As if they grew in fear of one another, Wrinkles like troughs, where swine-deformity swills The tears of perjury, that lie there like wash Fallen from the slimy and dishonest eye; Yet such a one plucks sweets without restraint.

(THOMAS MIDDLETON: _The Changeling_, II. i. ab. 1623.)

Middleton carried on the work of fitting blank verse for plausibly conversational, as distinguished from poetic, effects. Often his lines are more difficult to scan than Fletcher's, and still less seek melodiousness for its own sake. Characteristic specimens are verses like these: