Chapter V: Introduction: I. the Text (2)

shows that even in his time the _th_ had been converted into _s_. The present practice, then, we may see is merely a change of fashion, and our ancestors' mode of forming the plural was perfectly correct and grammatical, with one exception--of which we still meet instances--that of using _is_ and _was_ as a plural. In my Edition of our poet's plays, I have therefore very generally preserved this structure; for we may alter orthography and punctuation, but not grammar.

On the other hand, I must maintain, in opposition to Mr. Dyce, that the union of a single noun with a plural verb was _never_ a rule of the language, but _always_ an error of the copyist, or a slip of the writer. Of this I can give positive instances.

I one day met in my own History of England the following words, "The _blood_ of Catesby and two others alone _were_ shed;" and on looking at the first edition I found of course that my word had been _was_. In Mr. Lloyd's Critical Remarks on Measure for Measure, in Singer's Shakespeare, we may read "the five _acts_ of the first part of Promos and Cassandra _concludes_ the iniquity of the deputy." Nor is this confined to English; in the Gerusalemme Liberata, and unnoticed by any editor, we find

Non si conviene a te, cui fatto _il corso_
Delle cose e de' tempi _han_ si prudente.--x. 41.

In all cases it will be found to be the consequence of a noun of a different number having intervened between the nominative and the verb. Mr. Dyce, however, tries to make a rule of it by saying that "our early writers" did it when a genitive plural intervened; but that will not apply to passages like these--

Whose _youth_, like wanton boys through bonfires,
_Have_ skipt thy flame.--Two Noble Kinsmen, v. 1.

_The sea_,
With his proud mountain-waters envying heaven,
When I say 'still!' _run_ into crystal mirrors.
Valentinian, iv. 1.

Of others' voices, that my adder's _sense_,
To critic and to flatterer stopped _are_.
Shakespeare, Son. cxii.

This last is the error of the poet, who probably had _ears_ in his mind; yet _sense_ may be a collective: all the others are perhaps to be ascribed to the original printers.

The intensive particle _be_ was prefixed to verbs much more frequently than at present. There was also a frequent ellipsis of the first personal pronoun before such verbs as _cry_, _beseech_, _beshrew_, &c.; and finally the habit--still retained by the vulgar--of cutting away the first syllable of a word prevailed to some extent.

14.

The pronunciation of Shakespeare's time of course differed in many points from that of the present day. Thus _aspect_ and many other words were accented, and properly, on the last syllable; we also have _obdúrate_, _árchbishop_, _cónfessor_, &c. In words such as _case_, _pace_, _lace_, the French sound of the _a_ seems to have been partially retained--Chaucer writes these words _cas_, _caas_, _paas_, _laas_--along with the ordinary English sound. Chaucer also writes 'made' _maad_, Raleigh 'safe' _sauf_; and as the Master of the Revels wrote Shakespeare's name _Shaxberd_, we may suppose that _shake_ and terms of a similar form were pronounced _shak_, &c. If we do not pronounce _lac'd_ as _last_ in "lac'd mutton" (Two Gent. i. 2), we lose the humour of the passage. When Spenser therefore makes _prepar'd_, for example, rime with _hard_, he was probably doing nothing very unusual; for these double sounds--as we may see by the example of _shew show_, _shrew shrow_, _lese lose_--were by no means uncommon. I suspect that _sea_ may have been one of these, and that besides riming with _see_, as indeed Chaucer always writes it, it retained the sound of the Anglo-Saxon [sæ]; for F. Beaumont in his Poems almost invariably makes it rime with such words as _day_, _lay_, _ray_. Waller, followed by Pope, Gay, and other poets, most improperly made _ea_ rime with _ai_, _ay_, as _tea_ with _obey_, &c. As _haste_, _chaste_, _waist_, &c, constantly rime with _fast_, _last_, &c, they were probably, I think certainly, pronounced as they were written, like them; or they may have had a double pronunciation like the words just quoted. As the more usual orthography was _chaunge_, _raunge_, &c, these words would seem to have been pronounced as in French, and as we still pronounce _daunt_, _haunt_, _avaunt_. In words chiefly from the French, terminating in _ci_, _si_, _ti_ followed by a vowel, as in _nation_, _fashion_, _passion_, &c.--to which we may add _ocean_--the usual sound was _s_, not _sh_ as at present. On the whole, the language seems to have been more euphonious than that of the present day.

While on the subject of euphony, I must direct attention to one point. Our ancestors probably pronounced _my_, _thy_ (mín, þín, A.-S.), _mee_, _thee_, with a short sound also, when not emphatic, as in _by_, _to_, &c. Owing to its falling out of familiar use, and its employment in the Bible and Liturgy, _thy_ has long--except by the Quakers and the peasantry--been pronounced so as to rime with _fly_, _try_; but _my_ retained its proper sound till within the last few years; Walker, for instance, knew nothing of a change. But now our ears are constantly dinned with an egotistic _my_ like _thy_. I mention this because this new-fangled pronunciation is ruinous to both euphony and humour in our elder writers.

I shall conclude with some remarks upon _its_, a word of which Shakespeare may almost be regarded as the originator; though Spenser, no doubt, had used it _once_ (F. Q. vi. 11. 34) before him. Singer says it "occurs but twice or thrice" in Shakespeare; and Archbishop Trench and others say "three or four times;" while the fact is that its occurs _twelve_, and _it_, as a genitive, no less than _fifteen_ times. We meet _its_ only nine times in the numerous plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, and but half a dozen times in those of Jonson or Massinger.

The Chinese language makes the genitive by merely prefixing the substantive; thus _houe jin_ (_houe_ kingdom) is "man of the kingdom." The same is the structure of the Teutonic and Scandinavian languages, ex. gr., _day light_, &c.; but while all the others make the two substantives form one word, the English sometimes keeps them separate, sometimes unites them by a hyphen, and at other times makes them into one word. Hence we may observe, by the way, that it is needless, as well as cacophonous, to add an '_s_ to a substantive ending in that letter; even the simple turned comma is superfluous, the position alone indicating its genitive sense.

It appears that not only nouns but pronouns were so employed. In the first page of the Canterbury Tales we have--

And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of _which_ vertue engendred is the flour.

Here _which_ is a genitive, for which we should now use _whose_ (the genitive of _who_), a pronoun that our forefathers used of things as well as persons.

In like manner, though _his_ was the usual genitive of _it_ as well as of _he_, it was not uncommon to make the genitive by simply prefixing _it_, as in

Lord, how it could so prettily have prated with _it_ tongue!
Romeus and Juliet, 1562.

and other passages. I do not think it ever occurs in Chaucer, Gower, or Piers Ploughman.

I am therefore of opinion that Shakespeare may be regarded as the chief agent in introducing _its_ into the language. It is to be noticed that it never occurs in the Bible, only thrice, or rather only twice, in Milton, and but once in Waller. Chatterton used it twice in the very first page of his Poems of Rowley; yet the critics of the time did not discern this plain proof of forgery!

On the disputed question of the use of _his_ for the genitive, I will only observe that the fact is that the preceding noun is used absolutely. Thus, as we have "The king, he is hunting the deer," so we have "the king, his palace." The same structure precisely is to be met with in Dutch and German--we meet with it, for instance, in Schiller's Wallenstein; and Captain Burton informs us that in the Kariri language of Eastern Africa, "The Kazi's brother," for example, is _Kazi-ih-zo_, literally "The Kazi, his brother."

II. THE VERSE.

15.

Chaucer introduced into English poetry the iambic verse of five feet, formed by the Provençals in imitation of the Classic Phaleucian and Sapphic hendecasyllables, and adopted from them by the Italian poets. These last, however, though they held the principle of admitting but five _ictus_ in a line, did not limit themselves to eleven syllables, as the following examples will show:--

Che passa i monti, e rompe i muri e l'armi.
Dante, Inf. xvii. 2.

L'oro, e le perle, e i fior vermigli, e i bianchi.
Petr. Son. xxxi.

Non danno i colpi, or finti, or pieni, or scarsi.
Tasso, Ger. Lib. xii. 55.

So the Greeks in their dramatic iambics admitted trisyllabic feet, Æschylus admitting one foot, Sophocles two, Euripides three; while the comic poets, both Greek and Latin, used these feet still more freely, not, however, exceeding the limit of three.

Chaucer did not allow himself the same licence as his masters. He sometimes admits one such foot, rarely two, and three, I believe, only once. He also uses at times the Alexandrine or verse of six feet.

The first who used this verse for the drama in England was Bishop Bale, who in 1538 published three Interludes, as he termed them, or dramatic pieces on Scriptural subjects. Here are a few lines from the one named God's Promises:--

In the begynnynge, before the heavens were create,
In me and of me was my sonne sempyternall,
With the Holy Ghost, in one degre or estate
Of the hygh godhed, to make the Father coequall,
And thys my Sonne was with me one God essencyall,
Without separacyon at any tyme from me,
True God he is of equall dignytè.

The feet, it will be seen, are here of two or three syllables indifferently; and the same is the case in the couplets which occur also in these plays.

About the same time Nicholas Udall wrote his comedy of Ralph Roister Doister--not printed till 1566--in which we have the earliest specimen of the verse afterwards chiefly used for comedy, namely, one of four feet, the foot of two, three, and even four syllables. It commences thus:--

As long lyveth the mery man (they say)
As doth the sory man, and longer by a day,
Yet the Grassehopper for all his Sommer pipyng
Sterveth in Winter wyth hungrie gripyng.

This measure may be seen in Damon and Pitheas, New Custom, Gammer Gurton's Needle, and other plays, in which we shall find it admitting lines of five and even six and seven feet,--_ex. gr._,

That state is most miserable. Thrise happy are we
Whom true love hath joined in perfect amity.
Which amity first sprung, without vaunting be it spoken that is true,
Of likeliness of manners, took root by company, and now is
conserved by virtue.--Damon and Pitheas.

Contemporary with Bale and Udall, the illustrious Earl of Surrey had introduced into English a new species of verse--blank verse. This was a five-foot iambic measure without rime, and admitting of verses of six feet. His version of two books of the Æneis in this measure was printed in 1557; and five years later, Jan. 18, 1561-2, a play written in it and named Gordebuc, by Norton and Sackville, was performed before Queen Elizabeth at Whitehall, and it was given to the press in 1566. But more than twenty years elapsed before blank verse made its first appearance on the public stage in the Tamburlain of Marlow. From its inherent superiority, it at once became the established form for the drama, still mingled, however, with riming couplets and stanzas.

16.

I have already expressed my opinion that the earliest among the extant dramas of Shakespeare _may_ have been The Comedy of Errors. This is in blank verse, in general strictly decasyllabic, mingled with the riming measures above noticed. His next play would seem to have been The Two Gentlemen of Verona, much of the same form, but differing from it, and from its immediate successors, by admitting in its blank verse trisyllabic feet, as in

A virtuous gentlewoman, mild and beautiful.--iv. 4.

It might seem as if the poet were hesitating about the adoption of a freer kind of verse such as came afterwards into use. Love's Labour's Lost, and the other plays in Meres' list--to which, as may be seen, The Taming of the Shrew is to be added--are all of the same kind. As he advanced in his career, he gradually discarded rime, and admitted the trisyllabic foot more frequently. He also learned to run his verses into each other, thus forming a system; the preposition, for instance, ending one line, and the word it governed beginning the next line.

The blank verse of Surrey and of the authors of Gordebuc--admitting, as we have seen, verses of six feet--may be regarded as strictly decasyllabic. But when it became the standard verse of the theatres it gradually relaxed from its strictness, and admitted trisyllabic feet more and more as it advanced, so that in Fletcher we actually meet with lines containing fifteen syllables, though of no more than five feet. It is most strange that, with these facts staring them, as I may say, in the face, editors, almost without exception, seem to have been haunted by a spectre of five decasyllabic feet. "How often," says Gifford, "will it be necessary to observe that our old dramatists never counted their syllables on their fingers!" They also seem to be unaware of the existence of Alexandrines, or verses of six feet. The play of Othello, for instance, is as full of them as Dryden's riming couplet verse; and yet Mr. Dyce--whom I generally notice as being usually regarded as a leading critic--writes frequently as if such a line were not admissible in dramatic verse.

Again, there are critics who regard a verse as good if it contains ten syllables, no matter how made or how arranged.

Thus Malone gives as good verses,

What wheels, racks, fires, flaying, boiling.--W. T. iii. 2.
Curs'd be I that did so. All the chärms.--Temp. i. 2.
Poürs into captains' wounds? banishment.--Timon, iii. 5.

Mr. Collier regards as a good verse,

To yond generation you shall find.--M. for M. iv. 3.

"Doth comfort thee in _thy_ sleep. Live and flourish" is the usual reading in Rich. III. v. 5; mine is at least more euphonious.

It has never to my knowledge been sufficiently noticed that Shakespeare makes occasional use of the seven-foot verse of Golding's Ovid and Phaer's Virgil, works in which it is evident he was extremely well-read. Such are the following lines:--

For often have you writ to her, and she in modesty,
Or else for want of idle time, could not again reply;
Or fearing else some messenger, that might her mind discover,
Herself hath taught her love himself to write unto her
lover.--Two Gent. ii. 1.

A cherry-lip, a bonny eye, a passing-pleasing tongue.
Rich. III. i. 1.

My visor is Philemon's roof; within the house is Jove.--
Why then your visor should be thatch'd.--
Speak low, if you speak love.--Much Ado, ii. 1.

Convey the wise it call: steal! foh! a fico for the phrase!--
Well, sirs, I am almost out at heels.--
Why, then, let kibes ensue.--Mer. Wives, i. 3.

As many devils entertain, and To her, boy! say I.--Ib.

Thou art the Mars of malcontents. I follow thee, troop on.
Ib.

Die men like dogs; give crowns like pins; have we not Hiren
here?--2 Hen. IV. ii. 4.

Rouse up Revenge from ebon den, with fell Alecto's snake.
Ib. v. 5.

A damned death! Let gallows gape for dogs, let man go
free.--Hen. V. iii. 6.

These last six, we may see, all belong to Ancient Pistol. We possibly might add:

He's ta'en, and, hark! they shout for joy.--
Come down, behold no more.--Jul. Cæs. v. 3.

17.

I will now make a few general observations on the dramatic verse of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. In the first place, as observed above, we may lay it down as a general rule that their verse--I may perhaps include even that of Marston--is never rugged or inharmonious, but that when it appears to be so it is owing to the copyist or the printer, or to the fact of the manuscript having been damaged, and not unfrequently to want of skill in the reader.

An apparent cause of imperfection in lines is the reader's ignorance of the poet's mode of pronunciation. Thus it was then the custom--one not quite lost yet--in prose as well as in verse, if two words came together, one ending, the other beginning, with an accented syllable to throw back the former accent: hence Shakespeare said, for example, "the dívine Desdemona." If critics kept this fact in mind, they would not reject Tieck's excellent emendation of "the précise Angelo" for "the prenzic Angelo" in Measure for Measure, on account of the accent, when in the very same play we have "a cómplete bosom," i. 4; "O just, but sévere law!" ii. 2; "Will bélieve this," _ib._; "Our cómpell'd sins," _ib._ 4, &c.; we have actually "précise villains," ii. 1. How would they read

Might córrupt minds procure knaves as corrupt (Hen. VIII. v. 1)?

In fine, it must be remembered that _ion_, _ien_, and other double vowels were pronounced dissyllabically, as _oceän_, &c.

Again, neither editors nor readers are in general aware that poets like Shakespeare, who were born in those parts of England where the _r_ at the end of words or syllables has the light sound peculiar to the English language, frequently pronounce as dissyllables those monosyllables, such as _fire_, _hour_, _more_, _where_, &c., ending in _r_ after a long vowel or diphthong, as in

I know a bank, where the wild thyme blows.--M. N. D. ii. 1.

Here "where" is to be pronounced nearly _wheaa_; for so the English really do pronounce it, though they may fancy such not to be the case. Malone, as being an Irishman, seems to have been the first to notice it. Of these monosyllables there are upwards of thirty in Shakespeare, and as many in Fletcher; while in the learned Jonson we only meet with _fire_, _hour_, _our_, _your_, _wear_. In my Edition, and in this work, I have marked them with a diæresis, as _whëre_, _heär_, &c. It is rather remarkable that it is almost solely to his higher characters, such as Hamlet and Coriolanus, that Shakespeare gives this pronunciation. We also find this dissyllabic pronunciation in such words as _born_, _morn_, _horn_, &c.

As in French poetry the _e muet_ in words forms a distinct syllable, _ennemi_, for example, being read as a trisyllable; so we find _angry_, _entrance_, _children_, _mistress_ (often written _misteris_), _country_, _witness_, _juggler_, _wondrous_, &c., forming three, _remembrance_ four syllables. _Captain_ was sometimes _capitain_, as in French. Many of these cases, we may observe, are mere solutions of contractions, _angry_, for example, being simply _angery_ contracted.

18.

In opposition to the commonly received theory, I will venture to lay it down as a fixed principle that the dramatic poets rarely, if ever, used short lines, except in speeches of a single line, or in the first or the last line of a speech. This will be apparent to any one who examines the pages of Jonson and Massinger, who printed their plays themselves, or those plays of Shakespeare, Fletcher, and others which are the most correctly printed. Wherever a line of less than five feet occurs, it will be found to have been produced by omission of words or by malarrangement of the text. In plays such as Timon, Troilus and Cressida, or Fletcher's Sea Voyage, of which the original copy was in bad condition, lines of this kind are of course most numerous. I may here observe that in this last-named play, the metre of which Mr. Dyce has pronounced to be "_incurably_ defective," I have, by simple rearrangement of the text, rendered it as correct as in any other of Fletcher's plays.

Even in this also Shakespeare took liberties in which his brethren did not venture to indulge. _He_ began and ended not only speeches, but paragraphs of speeches, with short lines. Nay, he even made the concluding short line of one paragraph and the incipient short line of the next form a single line, thus--

It hath the primal eldest curse upon it:
A brother's murder.--Pray can I not?--Ham. iii. 3.

Of greatest justice.--Write, write, Rinaldo.
All's Well, iii. 4.

Splitted the heart.--This is the sword.
Ant. and Cleop. v. 1.

In the case of final riming couplets the first line may be short, but _never_ the second.

19.

Nothing is more common in the works of our old dramatists than malarrangement of the text, some lines being too long, some too short; but among them they are sure to contain the requisite number of feet. Editors have often taken the most justifiable liberty of rearranging the text; but on other occasions they have exclaimed against those who have followed their example. In this case, however, the only limit to the discretion of an editor is that of not putting--except in the cases above mentioned--more or less than five or six feet in a line. I must not omit to observe that editors have done injury to many passages, by the decasyllabic superstition which I have already noticed.

I will give one instance of a place where a most slight rearrangement gives perfect harmony to what has been a stumblingblock to editors:--

And sandy-bottom'd Severn have I sent him
Bootless home, and weather-beaten back.
1 Hen. IV. iii. 1.

The last line, it will be seen, is the merest prose, but transfer "him" to it from the preceding line, and we at once get harmonious verse.

The following passages are thus arranged in the original editions:--

The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling; doth glance
From heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And, as imagination bodies forth the forms of things
Unknown, the poet's pen turns them to shapes,
And gives to airy nothing a local habitation
And a name. Such tricks hath strong imagination, &c.
Mids. Night's Dream, v. 1.

It seldom visits Sorrow; when it doth, it is a comforter.
We two, my lord, will guard your person,
While you take your rest, and watch your safety.--
Thank you. Wondrous heavy.
Temp. ii. 1.

Those, then, who would refuse an editor the right of rearrangement are bound, if they would be consistent, to retain such passages as these unaltered. I may here make the boast that mine is the _only_ edition of these plays in which the text is strictly metrical throughout.

20.

Beside all those forms of verse, the plays of our old dramatists contain a large quantity of prose. But it is only prose to the eye; for it is in reality as metrical as what is printed in separate metric lines, consisting of lines of five or six feet, each of two or three syllables, but printed continuously like prose. I therefore denominate it "_Metric Prose_" as being metric in substance, prose in form, and as, moreover, it is termed _prose_ both by Chaucer and Shakespeare, probably from its less elevated character and from its being written continuously and without rime or alliteration. I am disposed to regard the former as being its inventor; and perhaps his reason for writing it continuously may have been merely the wish to save paper. We know, from M. de Maucroix's letter to Boileau, that the French poet Racan, whose poems were of course in rime, also wrote them continuously, and, as it would appear, for the same reason, though paper must have been less valuable in his time. As, however, the Anglo-Saxon and early English alliterative verse was written continuously, Chaucer may have been only following an established mode. It may be remarked that the poetry of the Hebrew Scriptures is also written and printed continuously.

Surely it is no egotism to state a plain truth! I therefore say that, as far as I know, I am myself the very first who, for the last century or more, has discerned the existence of this metric prose. My discovery was very gradual. I first recognized it in the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, and, advancing step by step, I at length arrived at the certainty that for three centuries and a half, from Chaucer and Wickliffe to Dryden and Tillotson, almost every work claiming to be regarded as a literary composition is in this form. Such are histories from Sir T. More to Clarendon, translations, controversial and philosophical works, as those of Hooker, Brown, Taylor, and Cudworth, versions of the Scriptures from Wickliffe to the authorized one inclusive, sermons, inclusive of those of Barrow, South, and Tillotson, the Liturgy, except the Creeds, Te Deum, and Catechism, all prefaces, dedications and letters of compliment, &c. The chief exceptions were Hall and the other chroniclers, Purchas, Hakluyt, Fuller, Bunyan, Ludlow, L'Estrange, and Mrs. Hutchinson. The Ecclesiastical Policy, The Liberty of Prophesying, and The Areopagitica, for example, are as decidedly metrical as The Paradise Lost, only admitting more trisyllabic feet, and being printed continuously. Hence, too, in a great measure, arises the charm which we find in the prose of our old writers, and of which we have been ignorant of the secret source; as when Cowper styles Sidney "warbler of poetic prose."

I do not, however, say that this prose was read as verse, with a slight elevation of tone at the end of each metric line. It was, I think, read as prose, as Cowper of course read the Arcadia; but the metre diffused a secret charm through it, which could be felt even by those who were ignorant of the cause. How easy, by the way, must this mode of writing prose have made verse-making to the writers of those days! and how rapidly that prose could be written is proved by the assertion of Sir Kenelm Digby, who says that in the space of twenty-four hours he sent out and bought the Religio Medici, read it through, and wrote his Observations on it, which fill upwards of seventy printed pages, and are metrical--a fact almost inconceivable.

The only writer of the last century who, as far as I am aware, used this metric prose--for we seek it in vain in Addison, Pope, Johnson, Gibbon, &c.--is the historian Robertson, of which fact Mr. Buckle seems to have had a dim conception; for he speaks of his "_measured_ style." It is a question where Robertson got it; for he could hardly have invented it, and I think it must have been in Knox, Spottiswoode, and the Scottish writers of the two preceding centuries, who all wrote like their English contemporaries. At the same period, however, his countryman Macpherson invented a new kind of metric prose for his 'Poems of Ossian.' Even the present century presents us with an instance in Mr. Lecky's eloquent 'History of Rationalism,' which is as metrical as the Areopagitica of Milton. Possibly my own remarks on the subject in 'Notes and Queries' may have directed his attention to it.

Gascoigne's comedy of The Supposes, performed in 1566, a translation from the Italian of Ariosto, appears to have been the first play written in this metric prose; Lyly also, somewhat later, wrote in it his courtly comedies; and it gradually, combined with blank verse, got entire possession of the scene. The last, I believe, to use it was Dryden. Ordinary prose--probably in imitation of the French and Italian comic drama--seems to have been first used after the Restoration, in the comedies of Killigrew, Shadwell, Wycherley, Etheridge, Sedley, and other dramatists of that period.

It is rather remarkable that a union of verse and prose, similar to this union of regular and irregular verse of our drama, occurs also in that of India. Sir William Jones tells us, in his preface to Sacontala, that the Hindoo plays "are all in verse where the dialogue is elevated, and in prose where it is familiar." Coleridge, who had not the slightest suspicion of the existence of metre in the dramatic prose, makes the following just remarks in a note on Fletcher's Custom of the Country:--"In all comic metres the gulping of short syllables and the abbreviation of syllables ordinarily long, by the rapid pronunciation of eagerness and vehemence, are not so much a licence as a law--a faithful copy of nature." This I think completely justifies the frequent use of the syncope and synæresis in metric prose.

The same critic again says of Milton's noble conclusion of his treatise 'Of Reformation in England,' "Written in the fervour of his youthful imagination, in a high poetic strain that wanted metre only to become a lyrical poem." He felt, but did not see, that the metre actually _was_ there.

The fact of this prose being metric causes us sometimes to doubt whether a passage should be printed as verse or as prose; and sometimes what is verse in one edition is prose in another. Thus Mercutio's celebrated account of Queen Mab, in Romeo and Juliet, which is most perfect decasyllabic verse, is properly printed as such in the 4to, 1597, while in all the subsequent early editions it is made prose; and prose it would probably have been at this day had no copy of that edition remained. On the other hand, most modern editors have most improperly printed the Nurse's speeches in the preceding scene as verse, while they are, and rightly, prose in all the original editions. An editor is, I think, at perfect liberty to use his judgement in this matter.

The following extracts, in which the termination of each line is marked, will enable the reader to judge of the truth of my theory. I must at the same time remind him that such contractions as _I'll_, _I've_, are rare in these prose scenes, such being left to the knowledge and skill of the actor or reader.

"As I remember, Adam, it was upon this fashion. | _He_ bequeathed
me by will but poor a thousand crowns; | and, as thou sayest,
charged my brother on his blessing | to breed me well; and there
begins my sadness. | My brother Jacques he keeps at school, and
report | speaks goldenly of his profit; for my part he keeps me |
rustically at home, or, to speak more properly, | stays me here
at home unkept; for call you that keeping | for a gentleman of my
birth, that differs not from the stalling | of an ox? His horses
are bred better; for besides that | they are fair with their
feeding, they are taught their manage, | and to that end riders
dearly hired; but I, his brother,| gain nothing under him but
growth, for the which | his animals on his dunghills are as much |
bound to him as I. Besides this nothing that he | so plentifully
gives me, the something that Nature gave me | his countenance seems
to take from me. He lets me feed | with his hinds, bars me the
place of a brother, and as much as | in him lies mines my gentility
with my education. | This it is, Adam, that grieves me; and the
spirit of my father, | which I think is within me, begins to mutiny
| against this servitude. I will no longer endure it, | though yet
I know no wise remedy how to avoid it."--As You Like It, i. 1.

"I will tell you why; so shall my anticipation | prevent your
discovery, and your secresy | to the king and queen moult no
feather. I have of late |--but wherefore I know not--lost all my
mirth, | foregone all custom of exercises, and indeed | it goes so
heavily with my disposition, | that this goodly frame, the earth,
seems to me a sterile | promontory, this most excellent canopy,
| the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, | this
majestical roof, fretted with golden fire, | why, it appeareth
nothing to me but | a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. |
What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! | how infinite
in faculties! in form and moving | how express and admirable! in
action how like an angel! | in apprehension how like a god! | the
beauty of the world! the paragon | of animals! And yet to me what
is | this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me; | no, nor
woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so."--Hamlet,
ii. 2.

"Here comes Romeo, here comes Romeo.--Without his roe, | like a
dried herring. O flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified! | Now is
he for the numbers that Petrarch flowed in; | Laura to his lady
was a kitchen-wench; | marry, she had a better love to be-rime
her; | Dido a dowdy; Cleopatra a gypsy; | Helen and Hero hildings
and harlots; Thisby | a grey eye or so, but not to the purpose.
| Signior Romeo, _bon jour_. There's a French salutation | to
your French slop. You gave us the counterfeit | fairly last
night."--Romeo and Juliet, ii. 4.

"Nay, sure, | he's not in hell. He's in Arthur's bosom, if ever |
man went to Arthur's bosom. 'A made a finer end, | and went away
as it had been any christom child. | 'A parted even just between
twelve and one, | even at the turning of the tide. For after I saw
him | fumble with the sheets, and play with flowers, and smile |
upon his finger's end, I knew there was but one way; | for his
nose was as sharp as a pen, and 'a babbled of green fields. | How
now, Sir John! quoth I. What, man! be of good cheer! | So 'a cried
out God, God, God! three or four times. | Now I, to comfort him,
bid him he should not think of God; | I hoped there was no need
to trouble himself | with any such thoughts yet. So 'a bade me
lay | more clothes on his feet. I put my hand into the bed, | and
felt them, and they were as cold as any stone. | Then I felt to
his knees, and so upward and upward, and all was | as cold as any
stone."--King Henry V. ii. 3.

COMEDIES.

COMEDY OF ERRORS.