Chapter XX The Metrical Tests — I .... 203

Now to apply the theory of forms to the understanding of Shakspere's character and verse — phenomena of tone-colour reduce themselves to phenomena of rhythm — tone-colour, in fact.
CONTENTS
18 simply a combination of different-rated rhythms — the prin- ciple of Opposition at the bottom of tone-colour as well as of tune and rhythm — Tom Hood's comical plan for writing blank verse in rime — illustrates ludicrously the fact that the ear does not like several identical vowel-colours in succession — the ctLTp on the contrary^ does like several successive consonant-colours: ' ments" — these facts show that vowels and consonants have precisely opposite tone-colour funcdons in verse — the vowels represent accident^ the chaos element, the consonants law, the form element — in verse as in life these great contradictions prevail — a glimpse-of Shakspere's perception of this in jf//*s Well that Ends Weil — we are now at the convergence of two distinct trains of study: the laws of poetic form, and form in general, particularly that kind of form we call character — direct aim of the Metrical Tests is the settling of dates — the importance of this in tracing Shakspere's growth — the chro- nology to be substantiated — Shakspere's three periods: of Care- lessness, Bitterness, Forgiveness — the surprisingly intimate revelations suggested by the mere sequence of the plays — dates of these three phases of growth — all the comedies come in the youthful Bright or Carelessness Period — in the only tragedy, Rome» and Juliet^ it is the young love and not the tragic death of the lovers which is the real reason for being — the historical plays of this period written from without, not from within — they are in the manner of a young man who has not experienced the twist and grind of life — in Henry VI and Richard III he is really writing from Marlowe — in Richard II and King John we find mainly playwright's work — Henry IV is really a comedy with FalstafF in the main role — Henry V begins to show more serious thought — evidently Shakspere has now had grieft more stirring than the financial troubles of his father and the death of his son Hamnet — after the brimming comedy of Twelfth Night come suddenly two bloody tragedies, Julius Casar and Hamlet — next appears that wretched slough. Mea- sure for Measure t followed by false-hearted Cressida — then come the enormous single-passion tragedies: Othello, Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Timon — evidences of this bitter period in many of the sonnets from LXVI to CXII — emergence from this bleakness into that heavenly group of plays: Pericles, Cymbeline, Tempest, Winter* s Tale, and Henry VIII — Prospero in the epilogue to The Tempest seems to stand for Shakspere himself — this calm of assured victory also evident in the sonnets — apparent significance of the ini- tialled pane of glass preserved at Stratford — the research to prove that this moral advance was accompanied by a corresponding advance in poetic technic — the five Metrical Tests — Malone's suggestion of the rime test — Rev. F. G. Fleay adds much ex-
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actness to Malone's rest by making an actual table of the rimes in different plays — his claim that the rime test is a final proof of chronology too sweeping — there seems beygnd question to be a gradual decrease of rime as Shakspere grew older — in shorty the rime test is valuable only as cumulative evidence — Englishmen since before Chaucer's time have embodied their deepest feelings in rime — Surrey wrote his Virgil translation without rime — noisy debate fifty years later among Harvey, Nash, Greene, Puttenham, Webbe, Gascoigne, Spenser, and Sir Philip Sidney regarding use of rime — Shakspere undoubtedly reached the plane of artistic technic where he saw that rime was appropriate for some matters and not for others, and used it accordingly — nature of the end-stopped line — example from Midsummer Nigbt^s Dream — contrasting run-Dn lines from The Tempest — stiffness produced by Exclusive use of end- stopped lines illustrated perfectly in Pope — freedom and vari- ety afforded by avoiding this pause at end of each line — Shak- spere' s greater freedom in use of run-on lines in the later plays
— this test generally confirms the chronology suggested by rime test and internal evidences — the greater breadth of thought suggested by the more majestic sweep of this kind of verse — rhythmic functions of both rime and end-stopped lines those of regularity or form — function of the run-on line exactly an- tagonistic to this — the art of verse demands form but no monot- ony, chaos but no lawlessness — story in Beda of the monk's dream of hell — the artist similarly placed between the flame wall of chaos and the ice wall of form — Sonnet CXIX hints at the conversion of the hell of antagonism into the heaven of art.
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