And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house

In the deep bosom of the ocean buried."

In the four following verses of the soliloquy (28-31), there is an effective alternation of the normal and of extra-syllable endings: "And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,

To entertain these fair well-spoken days,

I am determined to prove a villain

And hate the idle pleasures of these days."

While with Shakespeare the extra end-syllable is more or less organic, and imparts a liveliness to the verse, with Fletcher it is often a cold, monotonous mannerism.

DISTINCTIVE USE OF VERSE AND PROSE IN SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS.

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writer has exhibited the power which "the great protagonist in the arena of modern poetry" has exhibited, of marshalling words, of stimulating language to its utmost capacity, and moulding it into the "infinite variety" of organic form demanded by all the possible attitudes of the mind and the sensibilities. I say organic form; for, although he adopted, at the outset, as the general tenor of his language, forms employed by his predecessors and contemporaries, yet, such was the plastic power of his mind and feelings over them that they, the forms, were gradually brought more and more under easy submission and became more and more organic, or, in other words, inseparable from the thought and emotion embodied therein. He was the first to mingle, organically, in dramatic composition, blank verse and rhyming verse, and prose. These are all found in harmonious union, often within the limits of a short scene. He may never have defined to his own mind, the peculiar and legitimate functions of each of these modes of language-shaping, but he must have had the nicest and most reliable feeling as to their use. He passes from blank verse to rhyme and from rhyme to prose, and back again to blank verse, and the reader feels all the while, generally, perhaps without thinking so, that it's the most natural thing in the world to do. The rationale and the morale of the varied phases which his verse presents at different periods of his career, it is often difficult to determine; but it is not so difficult to note the distinctive use of the two grand divisions of language-shaping, Prose and Verse, throughout all the Plays. In the first place, all the dramatis personæ that are not

drawn into the higher movements of thought and feeling, are, generally, made to speak in straightforward prose. (This, however, is not so true of the earlier Plays as it is of the later. Shakespeare's nice sense of the peculiar domains of Verse and Prose was gradually developed along with other developments, one of the most important of which was humour.* As Dowden says, “Had Shakspere written the play [Richard II.] a few years later, we may be certain that the gardener and servants (A. III. Sc. iv.) would not have uttered stately speeches in verse, but would have spoken homely prose, and that humour would have mingled with the pathos of this scene. The same remark may be made with reference to the subsequent scene, in which his groom visits the dethroned King in the Tower." And even the leading persons of the drama, in situations demanding no idealization of language, speak often in prose. Hamlet speaks in verse to his mother, to his bosom friend Horatio, to the majestic ghost of his father, and in his soliloquies; but to the old chancellor Polonius whom he despises, to the time-serving courtiers, to the players, and in the scene with the grave-diggers, he speaks in the most off-hand prose. But in this last scene, when his mind turns to the great Roman, he speaks then not only in verse but in rhymed verse:

"Imperious Cæsar, dead and turn'd to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away:
O, that the earth which kept the world in awe,
Should patch a wall t'expel the winter's flaw!"

A character like Falstaff, speaks, of course, in prose. Great and various as are the possibilities by which Falstaff's actual self is backed, his higher faculties are always under the cloud of sensual indulgence; and like all sensualists, his mind never rises above considerations of self- never reaches that pitch of thought and feeling which demands a rhythmical and metrical form of

* See "Dowden's Shakspere: his Mind and Art." Chap. vii. “The Humour of Shakspere."

language. He affects indeed, such a form, in A. II. Sc. iv., of 1 Henry IV.:

"Fal. Well, thou wilt be horribly chid to-morrow when thou comest to thy father: if thou love me, practise an answer.

Prince. Do thou stand for my father, and examine me upon the particulars of my life.

Fal. Shall I? content: this chair shall be my state, this dagger my sceptre, and this cushion my crown.

Prince. Thy state is taken for a joined-stool, thy golden sceptre for a leaden dagger, and thy precious rich crown for a pitiful bald

crown!

Fal. Well, an the fire of grace be not quite out of thee, now shalt thou be moved. Give me a cup of sack to make my eyes look red, that it may be thought I have wept; for I must speak in passion, and I will do it in King Cambyses' vein.

Prince. Well, here is my leg.

Fal. And here is my speech. Stand aside, nobility.
Hostess. O Jesu, this is excellent sport, i' faith!

*

Fal. Weep not, sweet queen, for trickling tears are vain. Hostess. O, the father, how he holds his countenance ! Fal. For God's sake, lords, convey my tristful queen ; For tears do stop the flood-gates of her eyes. Hostess. O Jesu, he doth it as like one of these harlotry players as ever I see !"

This is all the metrical language which Falstaff utters, except the two verses addressed to King Henry V., in 2 Henry IV., A. V. Sc. v. 42 and 50:

"Fal. God save thy grace, King Hal! my royal Hal! . . . Chief Justice. Have you your wits? Know you what 'tis you speak?

Fal. My King! my Jove! I speak to thee, my heart!
King. I know thee not, old man fall to thy prayers;

An interesting transition from prose to verse, is shown in the

3d Scene of the 1st Act of The Merchant of Venice. While Bas

* Trustfull: Qq., Ff.

sanio is negotiating with Shylock for a loan of three thousand ducats, for three months, for the repayment of which Antonio is to be bound, the talk is in business-like prose, and quite unimpassioned except in Shylock's speech in reply to Bassanio's proposal that he dine with him and Antonio :

"Yes, to smell pork; to eat of the habitation which your prophet, the Nazarite, conjured the devil into. I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following; but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you."

This speech, by the way, coming just before the entrance of Antonio, serves well as a transition to the language-shaping which follows. When Antonio comes in, against whom he has long borne bitter grudges for wrongs done him, real or imaginary, Shylock's feelings are intensified, and the language is at once moulded into metre, the pulse of which rises highest in the following speech:

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'Signior Antonio, many a time and oft,

In the Rialto, you have rated me
About my moneys and my usances:
Still have I borne it with a patient shrug;
For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe.
You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog,
And spet upon my Jewish gaberdine,

And all for use of that which is mine own.
Well then, it now appears you need my help:
Go to, then; you come to me, and you say,
'Shylock, we would have moneys:' you say so;
You, that did void your rheum upon my beard,
And foot me, as you spurn a stranger cur
Over
your threshold-moneys is your suit.
What should I say to you? Should I not say,
'Hath a dog money? Is it possible

A cur should lend three thousand ducats?' Or
Should I bend low, and in a bondman's key,
With bated breath and whispering humbleness,
Say this:

'Fair sir, you spet on me on Wednesday last;