Chapter XVIII: The Versification of Fletcher and of Beaumont

I. In Plays Individually Composed.

The studies of the most experienced critics into the peculiarities of Fletcher's blank verse as displayed in productions of the popular dramatic kind, indubitably written by him alone,[149] such as _Monsieur Thomas_ of the earlier period, ending 1613, _The Chances_, _The Loyall Subject_, and _The Humorous Lieutenant_ of the middle period, ending 1619, and _Rule a Wife and Have a Wife_ of his latest period, indicate that he indulges in an excessive use of double endings, sometimes as many as seventy in every hundred lines, even in triple and quadruple endings; in an abundance of trisyllabic feet; and in a peculiar retention of the old end-stopped line, or final pause,--occasionally in as many as ninety out of a hundred lines. Attention has been directed also to the emphasis which he deliberately places upon the extra syllable of the blank verse, making it a substantive rather than a negligible factor: as in the "brains" and "too" of the following:

Or wander after that they know not where
To find? or, if found how to enjoy? Are men's brains
Made nowadays of malt, that their affections
Are never sober, but, like drunken people
Founder at every new fame? I do believe, too,
That men in love are ever drunk, as drunken men
Are ever loving,--[150]

and to his fondness for appending words such as "first," "then," "there," "still," "sir," and even "lady" and "gentlemen" to lines which already possess their five feet. It has also been remarked that he makes but infrequent employment of rhyme.

Of this metrical style examples will be found on pages in Chapter XIX,