CHAPTER XX

THE METRICAL TESTS-I Rime Test and Run-on and End-itopped Line Teat
SiND now, having studied various con- ditions of the life and Hterature of Shakspere's day, let us again devote our attention for a while to some con- siderations of the forms of his poetry, and to tracing from the poems their development along certain artistic and spiritual lines. In the remaining lectures we shall begin to apply the theory of forms already developed^ to the understanding of that general formulation of the phenomena of life which we call Shak- spere's character, just as we shall apply the special doc- trines to the understanding of that special formulation of the phenomena of sound which we call Shakspere's verse. Note in the first place that phenomena of tone-colour, as we saw in the case of phenomena of pitch, reduce themselves in the last analysis to phenomena of rhythm,^
^ S«e The SeiiMte »f EngUsb Vtrit. ciently artended to that > play ean-
' It it, by the way, a circamttaoce not ever really be aatd to have
which I think hat not been uffi- metre. It it alwayt proie meaaure,
201
204 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
We have found that a tone-colour was the joint product of several tones, as, for instance, the flute C was
known ^ z^ as such because it combined the upper partials, ^ ^ while the same tone on the oboe would sound tj^ differently because the even tones here would be obscured and the odd ones relatively more prominent. But since this tone simply represents so many vibrations, we may call it a 250-rhythm ; and this is a 500rhythm, and so on ; and thus we find that the tone-colour is simply a combination of a number of dif- ferent-rated rhythms acting simultaneously upon the ear.
But we have found also that the principle of Opposi- tion is at the bottom of all rhythm. Since, then, tone- colour analyses into rhythm, and rhythm into Opposition, we may strike out the intermediate term in our minds and regard tone-colour — as we have found reason to regard tune, and rhythm proper — as another phase of the great organising principle of Opposition.
And here we may add the second of our two contri- butions, by considering the curious minuteness with which we find this principle flowering out into the most unex- pected effects in verse.
and measured rhythmically, not metrically. For let us examine by the absolutely accurate method of musical notation what is meant by a " pause" as Mr. Furnivall, Mr. Ellis, Mr. Fleay, etc., use that word. It is a rest in music; the interposition of it as they wish wholly changes the metre ; in fsLCt, the interposition of it as demanded by the exigences of dramatic busi- ness (the long pause while one is making eyes, or adjusting the coun-
tenance in silence, or doing any of those hundred things that constitute the actor's part while the audience is looking at him, not listening) almost destroy the metrical charac- ter of dramatic blank verse. Our blank verse is not blank verse, that is, not 5's, at all — as may be easily seen by dividing up the verse prop- erly in musical notation for rests, etc. (Sec The Science 9f English Verse})
THE METRICAL TESTS 205
For example, collate, in this view, two singularly dif- fering preferences of the ear as between the artistic manner of using vowel-colours and the artistic manner of using consonant-colours in English verse. Here, for example, is a line from Tom Hood's poem written in illustration of his comical " Plan for Writing Blank Verse in Rhyme." The plan was for making the three last words of each line rime with each other, though no two lines rimed together — which Hood, writing in the person of a needy poetaster, trumpeted as a discovery that placed him alongside of Newton, Harvey, and Columbus. The poem begins :
Even is come, and from the dark park, hark, The signal of the setting sun — one gun !
and ends :
While ribbons flourish and a stout shout out
That upward goes shows Rose knows those bow's woes.
Now you remember that, in discussing the colours of verse, one of the first matters presented to you was the proper variation of vowel-colours in each line, so that not more than two like colours should be consecutive, and so on — a variation which, although scarcely ever thought of by the lay reader, is absolutely vital to the success of any work in verse. Here in Hood's poem the principle is even more strongly illustrated, you see, by showing that an irresis- tibly comic effect is produced by what we may call — using Professor Sylvester's happy term in a somewhat different sense — these vowel-syzygies. In short, we may formulate the principle that our ear does not like several identical vowel- colours in succession.
But how curious this seems when we come to collate
2o6 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
it with the fact that our ear does like several consonant- colours in succession !
For example, in Shakspere's line,
Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments,
we found that there were actually ten /-colours and six m-coXoMTSj and that these were very graciously recognised and coordinated by the ear. Or, again, in that very justly famous line of Tennyson's which my friend Dr. William Hand Browne has recalled to me as a beautiful illustration of consonant-colours in artistic syzygy.
The moan of doves in immemorial elms, And murmur of innumerable bees,
besides the very striking syzygy of m'Sj there are other predominances of consonant-colour which show in the most striking manner how the ear in its reception of con- sonant-colours is delighted with the very resemblances which it cannot tolerate in vowel-colours. Now from these two facts the inference is clear that in verse there are two precisely opposite functions of vowels and consonants, when coordinated as syzygetic tone-colours — besides, of course, all the other functions discharged by them when coordinated with reference to other particulars : the vowel- colours in the line must differ, the consonant-colours must agree, to give the ear its pleasure. In other words, the vowel-colours represent the chaos element, the consonant-colours the form element, in our opposition list : the vowel-colours represent accident, the consonant- colours law.
We can here advance to the principle that this Oppo- sition, in larger applications, is the life of verse y as we shall
THE METRICAL TESTS 207
hereafter more fiilly find : and so in verse, as in actual life, prevail these great contradictions which I have here set down as a partial list of limiting forms of thought. How wonderfully Shakspere knew and felt all this, just as well in his life as in his verse, we shall, I hope, come to see in these remaining lectures when we analyse his verse in the light of the Metrical Tests which are now to be ex- plained. Meantime, here is a glimpse of his perception of it, which occurs in AlFs Well that Ends Well^ Act IV, Scene III, where the First Lord says :
" The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together : our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipt them not ; and our crimes would despair, if they were not cherished by our virtues."
In coming now to apply the theory of verse, which has been already developed, to the examination of the Metrical Tests, please carefully observe that we are arriving at the convergence of the two distinct trains of study which we have been carrying on, to wit : the tech- nical train, resulting in the physical theory of verse, which has given us the laws of poetic form in special ; and the larger train, which has resulted in showing us at least some of the laws of form in general — and particularly of that kind of form in the afllairs of behaviour which we call character. Now these Metrical Tests, which are to be discussed in this lecture and the next, have for their direct object the settling of the dates of Shakspere's plays. At first thought this does not seem to be a very important matter; we associate dates with antiquaries and dry-as- dusts, and many a man may feel inclined to say, Why potter about your dates and chronologies ? If the plays are good, they are good, whether they were written in 1590 or in 1610.
But it so happens that here a whole view of the
2IO SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
ing, now flitting his wing in the water, — and like as not muddy water, — now sailing over the meadow-grass, now sweeping through the upper heights of heaven. Notice first that all the comedies belong to this period. Loves Labour s Lost^ Two Gentlemen of VeronajMidsummer Nighfs Dream J Merchant of Venice j As Tou Like //, Twelfth Night — this debonair and immortal set of plays comes in the first ten years of Shakspere's life as a writer in London.
There is but one strict tragedy, — Romeo and Juliet ^ — and here the real reason of being is not the tragic death of the lovers, but their young love, which is depicted with the unspeakable fire and freshness of a young imagination. Romeo and Juliet is simply a bridegroom's passionate song, set off with a funeral-hymn for a foil.
Besides these you notice the purely historical plays. Now these do not seize upon some one awful passion or crime, like Othello or Lear or Macbeth or Hamlet y but they are written to comply with the popular and patriotic de- mand for this kind of play, — written more from without than from within, — and they deal with their subjects in what seems to me a distinctly lighter and less personal manner than later plays — the manner of a young man who has not yet been brought into any actual conflict or dreadful grind with the forces of nature and of accident and of pas- sion and of the twist of life, in his own personal relations with his fellow-men. In the 2 and j Henry VI ^ and in Richard III "wt behold the influence of Marlowe's powerful historical plays on our poet ; he is writing more from Mar- lowe than from Shakspere. In Richard II and King John we find him taking two weak and unlovely kings for tide heroes, and doing much work as a playwright. In / and 2 Henry IV he has fallen in love with old Jack FalstafF; and
MI..WILLIAM
I5H-AKESPEARES
COMEDIES, HISTORIES, & TRAGEDIES.
Title-page of First Folio
1
-■ I
THE METRICAL TESTS 211
these plays, although ranging among the historical series by virtue of their titles, really should go among the come- dies in right of those of their dramatis personse, who have retained most hold upon the world's regard. In Henry V we find some show of a serious thought. The wild young Prince Hal, who even in his revels has always impressed us as being among them, not of them, — a sort of amateur roisterer, not a professional light-o'-wit like FalstafFand his crew, — has discovered, on the death of his father, that he too has actual personal relations with life : the meaning of duty, of responsibility, of the fact of one's fellow-men, dawns upon him ; and he makes a magnificent king and manful warrior whom Shakspere paints in glory. Whether Prince Hal's reformation means that Shakspere is now awaking, amid that gay life which flutters about in the comedies of this period, to some graver and deeper neces- sities of life, is a question. Something is thrusting him into larger fields of thought. And this much is clear : that it must be something very terrible, very profoundly shaking his heart. For he has had griefs before now which do not seem to have so stirred him. His old father, John Shak- spere, from the state of a successfiil glove-maker and pros- perous burgess of Stratford, has some time ago fallen into money troubles ; insomuch that when a commission is appointed in 1592 to ascertain whether the Warwickshire people approve themselves good followers of the estab- lished religion by going to church at least once a month, according to the orthodox regulation, it is found that John Shakspere does not attend, and the reason assigned in the report of the commission is that he is afraid of being arrested for debt. Moreover, in addition to such evi- dences that things do not go on well down in Stratford, in 1596 William Shakspere's only son, Hamnet, dies.
212 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
But yet, as we see by looking at the dates of these works, the hilarious spirit of the man continues to turn out comedy after comedy, and we find Much Ado About Nothings As You Like Ity Twelfth Nighty and the like, all writ- ten after his son Hamnet's death. So, I say, if the mis- fortunes of his father and the death of his son do not sober his spirit, it must needs be that some prodigious wrench of his soul comes from some hand or other about this time.
At any rate, after this brimming and crystal comedy of Twelfth Night in 1601, here come suddenly two bloody tragedies — Julius desar and Hamlet — in the same and following years. Brutus and Hamlet, these are the two heartbreaking characters which Shakspere draws at this time : both men of strength and parts, yet not of quite strength and parts enough for the need of the moment ; both of them born into a time out of joint, and both — instead of exultantly accepting the responsibility which is thrown upon them of reforming evil — shirking the duty and crying, O cursed spite ^ That ever I was born to set it right! Following upon these, you see, in the next year comes Measure for Measure^ that wretched slough of a play. Never did the world hear a more dismal business than this plot — all murky with shame and weakness and brutality and low suffering and death and dark questions, so that the strong and saintly Isabella scarcely relieves its oppressive atmosphere. Then we have the inconceivable treachery of the false-hearted Cressid ; and here it is worst of all to find our sweet Shakspere preaching worldly wis- dom and Poor Richard maxims. Closely following these come the enormous single-passion tragedies : Othello murders his wife for a causeless jealousy; Lear and his daughters and best friends all die in a heap, all the deaths being brought on by one unfortunate blunder of a silly old
THE METRICAL TESTS 213
man ; Macbeth murders sleep and loyalty and his good King, all at a stroke, for ambition ; Antony betrays wife and country for lust; Coriolanus turns oudaw for re- venge; and Timon twists the neck of the world for misanthropy. These plays are like a mortal outcry of grief. The poor master seems to be wondering, in all this melodious amazement, if the world is really going to be too hard for him, as it was for Hamlet and Brutus and Timon. I seem to find the taste of this bitter period in many of the sonnets, notably in several from Sonnet LXVI to Sonnet CXII.
Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,
wails the first of these piteous sonnets.
No longer mourn for me when I am dead Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell Give warning to the world that I am fled From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell,
begins the seventy-first.
O, lest the world should task you to recite What merit lived in me, that you should love After my death, — dear love, forget me quite, For you in me can nothing worthy prove Unless you would devise some virtuous lie,
says the seventy-second.
Alas, 'tis true [says the one hundred and tenth] 1 have
gone here and there. And made myself a motley to the view, Gor'd mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear, Made old offences of affections new ;
214 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
Most true it is that I have look'd on truth Askance and strangely.
Again, in the next sonnet, he continues this strain :
O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide, The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds. That did not better for my life provide Than public means which public manners breeds. Thence comes it that my name receives a brand. And almost thence my nature is subdued To what it works in, like the dyer's hand : Pity me then and wish I were renew'd.
While in Sonnet XC we have this lamentable outbreak :
Then hate me when thou wilt ; if ever, now ;
Now, while the world is bent my deeds to cross,
Join with the spite of fortune, make me bow,
And do not drop in for an after-loss :
Ah, do not, when my heart hath 'scap'd this sorrow,
Come in the rearward of a conquered woe ;
Give not a windy night a rainy morrow.
To linger out a purposed overthrow.
If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last.
When other petty griefs have done their spite.
But in the onset come : so shall I taste
At first the very worst of fortune's might ;
And other strains of woe, which now seem woe, Compar'd with loss of thee will not seem so.
But, as suddenly as he entered it, our strong man emerges from this Dark Period into one which, without wishing to be fanciful, I have found no other name for than the Heavenly Period. He is, as his sonnet says, renewed. Instead of the bleak storms of the Hamlet and Macbeth time, now we have the great and beautiful calm of a spirit
THE METRICAL TESTS 215
which, after having seen and shared in all the crime and all the grief of the world, has at length attained God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain. If you con- template this group of plays which I have here placed in the last period, you find them all hinging upon the sweet that follows the bitter : Pericles^ Cymbelinej Tempest j Win- ter s TaUj Henry VIII ^ all these, in great and noble mu- sic, breathe of new love after estrangement, of the recovery of long-lost children, of the kissing of wives thought dead, of reconciliation, of new births of old happiness — most of all, of sweeping magnanimity, of heavenly forgiveness. If we listen to that epilogue of "The Tempest^ we cannot help believing that it is the old poet Shakspere himself who is writing his last play, or believes he is, and who, in the guise of Prospero, is laying down the mantle of his magic and preparing to depart from the lonesome island of this world into the Strange Country. NoWy he says in this epilogue which is spoken by Prospero, Now my charms are all oerthrown^ And what strength I havens mine own^ Which is most faint ; and you cannot forget the beautiful and passionate fervour of his closing appeal :
As you from crimes would pardoned be, Let your indulgence set me free.
And finally we seem to discover the recollection of this great struggle, and of his final triumphant emergence from it into the calm of assured victory, in many of his sonnets. It seems most probable that after Shakspere's eventful London career he went back to Stratford about 161 2, or a little before, and quietly took up the life of a simple citi- zen with wife, children, grandchild, and friends, and so lived there until his death. The calm content which could enable him to do this doubtless came into his spirit con-
2i6 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
temporaneously with all these plays of sweetness and for- giveness.
I take great pleasure in contemplating what seems to be the only genuine relic of Shakspere preserved at Strat- ford, and which brings vividly to our eyes this period of peaceful reunion with his wife and of tranquil life in the tranquil Warwick country. The relic I speak of is a round piece of glass some four or five inches in diameter on which are painted the letters W and A — for fVilliam and Anne — under the common letter S, for Shakspere^ with the date 1615, as if it were a sort of memorial of the enclosure of the life of this once parted William and Anne in a final circle of harmony, reconciliation, and pardon.
Here, then, we have the ground-plan of Shakspere's career, and our research is now to convince us not only that this is true but that this advance in moral scope is accompanied by — or, better, is only another phase of — a corresponding advance in Shakspere's technic as a verse- artist.
The Metrical Tests which I am to bring before you are five in number : the Rime Test, the Run-on and End- stopped Line Test, the Weak-ending Test, the Double- ending Test, and the Rhythmic Accent Test. The first of these in the historic order was the rime test, and I may therefore properly begin with some account of that.
It is just about a hundred years ago since Malone — whose name you all recognise as that of one of the most acute editors of Shakspere — remarked, in the course of certain comments on the play of Lovers Labour's Losty that rimes were much more frequent in those of Shakspere's plays which seemed to belong to the early portion of his authorial career than in those of the later portion ; and he concluded his remark by observing : ** Whenever, of two early pieces, it is doubtful which preceded the other, I
THE METRICAL TESTS 217
am disposed to believe (other proofs being wanting) that play in which the greater number of rhymes is found, to have been first composed." But this obser- vation of Malone's remained in the condition which I have heretofore described as inexact criticism for a long time. In the year 1874 a paper by the Rev. F. G. Fleay was read before the New Shakspere Society, in which that scholar took up Malone's idea and carried what he called Malone's " qualitative analysis " to the far more accurate plane of quantitative analysis. In other words, Mr. Fleay went patiently to work and counted the actual number of rimes in Shakspere's plays : and having thus arrived at a basis for exact conclusions, he set down the plays in the order of the relative frequency of their rimes, and boldly claimed that this tabulation must represent the actual order in which those plays were written by Shakspere, upon the theory that Shakspere gradually more and more disused the effect of rime as he grew older. In Mr. Fleay's Table (pages 218, 219), Lovers Labour* s Lost shov/s 1,082 rimes out of a total of 2,789 lines, and so on.
Of course it was to be expected that in announcing a theory so novel as to propose reducing a whole artistic career to numbers and showing it up in terms of 2, 4, and 6, the theorist went too far. Without now going into the details of the matter, we may fairly consider ourselves entitled to say, as summing up the present stage of the rime test, that upon applying all the numerous other evi- dences and tests which scholarship has accumulated there seems to be no doubt that a steady decrease in the number of rimes is shown, as between Shakspere's early plays and his later 'ones, so that there are, for instance, in general, many less rimes in the plays of the second period than in those of the first, and many less in those of the third period than in those of the second.
21 8 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
METRICAL TABLE OF SHAKSPERE'S
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