The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] | Page 4

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