"The cæsura is a pause not counted out of the regular time of the rhythm, but corresponding to the pauses between phrases in music, and nearly always coinciding with syntactical or rhetorical divisions of the sentence."

-Alden's "English Verse."

"When the sense pauses at the end of the line, the verse is called 'end-stopt'; when the sense does not so pause, the verse is called 'run-on'."

-Adapted from Gummere's "Handbook of Poetics."

The words "rhythm," "metre," and "verse accent" are here used synonymously to indicate a regular recurrence of accented syllables varying with unaccented. This use is based upon the following from Gummere's "Handbook of Poetics."

"Now, when the ear detects at regular intervals a recurrence of accented syllables, varying with unaccented, it perceives Rhythm. Measured intervals of time are the basis of all verse, and their regularity marks off poetry from prose. From the idea of measuring these timeintervals, we derive the name Metre; Rhythm means pretty much the same thing,-a 'flowing', an even, measured motion.. We have seen that verse is now marked off by the regular recurrence of a stress or accent falling on certain syllables."

Five foot iambic verse became a great English measure with Chaucer. So far, however, as later poets were concerned the "Canterbury Tales" might, metrically speaking, have been written in another language. The breaking down of inflections had gone on so rapidly and was so complete at the time of Elizabeth that the versification of Chaucer had become one of the lost arts. Indeed, he was scarcely credited with having a system at all. Just as most of the writers of Pope's age, in their profound ignorance of the principles of the Greek lyric, were accustomed to use the word "Pindaric" as a synonym for "lawless" in relation to the structure of the ode, so the Elizabethans seem to have felt that Chaucer's verse was a simple, rough, accentual measure, the product of an age ignorant of art. The second, fifth, and ninth Eclogues of the "Shepherds' Calendar," in which Spenser is evidently imitating what he thinks is Chaucer's versification, show how completely the greatest poet of one age could misunderstand the greatest poet

of another. Thus it was that the broken conduit of an altered language failed to convey to succeeding generations the delicate and perfect art of the early master. The enrichment of English poetry through the restoration of its greatest measure was to come in a somewhat different form and from a foreign source.

About the middle of the fifteenth century there grew up that freer interchange of thought between Italy and England which resulted in the leavening of English life and literature with the new power and beauty of the Italian Renaissance. Mr. Einstein, in his book "The Italian Renaissance in England," has shown how largely this intellectual impulse was conveyed to England, first by the visits of English scholars and travellers to Italy, and later by those of Italians to England. The greatest of these English travellers, if we consider results, was Sir Thomas Wyatt the elder. His return from Italy in 1527 marks the beginning of the English Renaissance on the poetical side. Introducer of the sonnet form, and of what was vastly more valuable, the spirit of Petrarch, he became the formative influence of one who was destined to be even more important than himself in the history of English poetry-Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. It is now believed that Surrey himself never went to Italy, but it is certain that, whether at first or second hand, his mind was saturated with the new Italian idea of form in poetry. Making use of the experiments of Wyatt in verse technique, Surrey proceeded both to develop the work of his friend and to make experiments of his own which were to reform and develop English versification beyond anything then dreamed of by his contemporaries. A full account of these reforms may be found in Mr. Courthope's "History of English Poetry," but the only one of particular importance in this connection is his hitherto unknown treatment of the iambic pentameter line. In 1541 there had appeared Malza's Italian translation of Virgil, the lines being rendered into iambic pentameter unrhymed. It is thought that this work may have suggested to Surrey the idea of using the same measure in his own translation. However that may be, it is certain that the first poem in English blank verse appeared in 1557 when, ten years after Surrey's death, his translation of the second and fourth books of the "Eneid" was published.

Immensely important as this work is historically, it makes, in the main, rather uninspiring reading. It is true

that there are many passages of considerable excellence, but most of the lines are rigidly decasyllabic, monotonous with the beat of a verse-pause rarely varied from the end of the second foot, and stiff with a great preponderance of end-stopt lines. These defects, however, are due rather to a preconceived theory as to how the verse should be written than to lack of power of musical expression, for in good passages the verse has considerable variety. Moreover, after the chaos of many years, it was imperative that good verse should first of all stand as the expression of an art in which there were cognizable laws. This was Surrey's priceless contribution to the theory of versification. It required the genius of Shakespeare to show to what extent the law of variety could invade this greater law of uniformity to produce a result the most harmonious and satisfying that has ever been reached in poetry.

The next important advance in the evolution of blank verse was its application to the drama. Hitherto the favorite verse for serious plays had been the curious, jigging, seven foot metre of "Cambises" and "Appius and Virginia." In 1561*, however, Sackville and Norton experimented with the new metre for dramatic purposes and produced the first play in blank verse, "Gorboduc, or Ferrex and Porrex." In this the verse structure follows very closely the model set by Surrey, and by actual count the lines are even more regular both in place of cæsura and in regularity of iambic accent than those of the "Eneid." The only real advance lies in the decreased number of endstopt lines. This change seems, in some degree, to have been forced upon the authors by the exigencies of dramatic form, rather than to have been a deliberate improvement, for the play has none of the ease of later blank verse dialogue. The speeches are solid blocks of verse, many of them fifty lines or more in length.

In spite of its faults, however, "Ferrex and Porrex" went far toward demonstrating the fitness of the new form for the serious drama. From its appearance until 1587, a date which marks the beginning of the great blank verse drama, a number of tragedies were produced in this measure. Of these "Locrine" is typical of the advance made in verse form and is the only one that need be mentioned in detail. Its author is unknown, its date uncertain,

*Facts and dates relating to plays are taken from Ward's "History of English Dramatic Literature."

though the latter is conjectured to be about 1585. The regularity of its verse accent is almost as great as that of the preceding plays, while it approaches Surrey in the number of its end-stopt lines. In variety of the cæsural pause, however, there is a distinct gain. This falls at the end of the second foot only 19 times out of 50, as against 35 times in "Ferrex and Porrex" and 30 times in Surrey.

The year 1587 gave a new impulse to the writing of blank verse, for to it are assigned with probable correctness Marlowe's "Tamburlaine," second part, and Kyd's "Spanish Tragedy." In the hands of these two men the measure now became the splendid and popular expression of a splendid and popular art. Both these plays were extraordinarily and widely influential, but it was the verse of "Tamburlaine" that dazzled the literary world, and sealed the fate of the rhymed drama. It is curious to observe, however, upon a closer analysis, how much of the undeniable splendor of the verse in this play is merely the surface splendor of magnificent rhetoric. In general an improvement on that of "Locrine," it still shows a surprising conformity to the Surrey type, though in the rush of the diction and the give-andtake of shortened speeches, one often fails to notice the persistence of characteristics that mark it as still far from great blank verse. Analysis also reveals the fact that technically the verse of "Tamburlaine" is almost identical with that of the "Spanish Tragedy." This gives a new interest to the question of the possible priority of Kyd's production. Did he arrive at this relative excellence of technique uninstructed by Marlowe? If so, then the probable author of the first "Hamlet" deserves a higher place in literary history than it has been customary to assign to him.

At this point the natural evolution of blank verse is interrupted by a remarkable phenomenon. In 1588 Thomas Hughes, assisted by several other writers, produced a tragedy entitled "The Misfortunes of Arthur" which in technique can be dealt with in this period only as the great exception. A drama constructed on the old Senecan model, its interminable set speeches, sententiæ, and utter lack of action place it, on the one hand, as far behind the work of Marlowe and Kyd, as the real beauty and variety of its verse surpass them, on the other. Metrically, "The Misfortunes of Arthur" has nothing to learn from "Tamburlaine." This is shown especially in its use of the cæsural pause. In a fifty-line passage, the cæsura occurs in nine

different positions, or in every possible place in the verse, a variety. unknown in any previous production and not reached by Marlowe until "Edward the Second." Moreover, in nine cases the pause falls in the fourth or fifth foot, a result which is not again reached until "Hamlet" showed the world the perfection of blank verse.

With the possible exception of "Solyman and Perseda," if that is later than the "Spanish Tragedy," Kyd's work was now done, and the year 1588 left Marlowe alone to work out the theory of blank verse with what assistance could be rendered by the dramatists Peele and Greene. The interrelation of these three is a matter of some importance. Both Robert Greene and George Peele had undoubtedly produced before this time successful plays written in rhymed couplets. The appearance of Marlowe's play, however, caused a sudden wane in the popularity of this form. Universal acclamation of the new measure rendered it necessary that he who would write dramas thereafter should write them in the verse of "Tamburlaine." Reluctantly, therefore, these authors began the use of blank verse, sometimes obviously imitating the master. In this spirit Peele produced "The Battle of Alcazar" and Greene, "Alphonsus King of Arragon," though the latter shows such an absurd exaggeration of style that Professor Gayley believes it to have been written as a satire on one whom at this time Greene very cordially hated.

There was, however, in each of these men a genuine though diverse poetic power, and having put their hands to the new measure they were able to produce work that in verse technique may stand worthily beside anything except Marlowe's best. "Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay" is a much better example of Greene's work in the Marlowesque manner than is "Alphonsus." Aside from likenesses in style, which do not concern us here, there exists in the structure of the verse itself a remarkable similarity to that of "Tamburlaine." The following condensation from the complete table of analysis will show that this is true: