cases where the second syllable originally had a strong subsidiary stress, e.g.: Welcome, dear Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Action nor utterance, nor the power of speech, It is very difficult to distinguish between a real inverted accent and hovering accent, since the gradations of stress in ordinary speech are SO manifold. In spite of all these liberties the metrical scheme must not be lost sight of. "Every poet grades his stresses all the way from the heaviest emphasis down to a mere cipher, and does so not merely for convenience but for artistic effect. In this respect, again, verse illustrates the law of conflict. The ideal scheme persists in our minds, and the exigencies of language, though perpetually at war with its demands, are never able to overthrow it. This conflict. . . is one of the sources of the pleasure that good verse affords." (Lewis, Principles of English Verse, p. 22.) Moreover in longer poems the normal metrical form always appears in spite of many deviations. Thus Wordsworth closes his sonnet Upon Westminster Bridge, from which many of the above verses are quoted, with the quite normal line: And all that mighty heart is lying still. Trisyllabic and polysyllabic compounds or words of romance origin, which have a subsidiary stress on the third syllable, compose two beats in verse, e.g. country-mén, áfternoon - mínistérs, questionáble, mélancholy etc. Disyllabic compounds (kingdom, (kingdom, friendship, falsehood, nightly etc.) within the verse generally have a beat on the first syllable. They can also be used at the end of blank verse: kingdom, friendship etc.); but at the end of rimed verse the second part of the compound has the beat and rimes; i.e. the accent is shifted, e.g. sea-méw: blue, moonlight: bright etc. Disyllabics in -ing do not admit of accent shifting, thus the ME. rime dying king is not permitted; we must have dying flying, béing: seeing etc., cp. § 140. Compounds such as something, nothing, sometimes, almost, always, therefore, towards, into within the verse are sometimes stressed on the first syllable and sometimes on the second. Compounds with un- were in the sixteenth century sometimes stressed unborn, únkind, únknown, úntaught etc. In NE. the chief stress of simple disyllabic romance words lies on the first syllable (§ 202); the earlier stressed final syllable can, therefore, only be used in the thesis. Since rimes to these words are rare or do not exist, they cannot be used in rimed verse; cp. § 140 note. At the end of blank verse words like náture, réason, dúty, opinion can, of course, be used. In the sixteenth century we sometimes find them stressed as follows in rime: natúre, measure, fortúne, pittie etc. The stress of romance prefixes in the sixteenth century is often different from the modern stress. Shakespeare has: cómplete, obscure, sécure, éxtreme - aspéct, instinct, contráry etc. § 207. Quantity. Quantity is also of some importance for English prosody. Syllables, containing a long vowel, are heavier than those with a short vowel; a syllable, ending in two consonants, is longer and heavier than an open syllable, and certain combinations of consonants are heavier than others. One cannot give any definite rules, but the poet must distribute the light and heavy syllables suitably; cp. Parsons, English Versification p. 59. Larminie, The Development of English Metres (Contemporary Review, Nov. 1894, pp. 717-736) and Omond, Study of Metre, pp. 32-47 have also called attention to the importance of quantity in verse. § 208. Metrical Value of Syllables. The poet must have a certain freedom in the treatment of words; sometimes he must be able to shorten certain words, and at other times to lengthen them. Under some circumstances he will have to treat the same group of syllables differently. It is the final syllables of words with which we are here concerned, since the strongly stressed syllables generally present no difficulty. In the sixteenth century many syllables, now silent, were pronounced, and could be used in Thus the ending -ed in Shakespeare is often sounded and sometimes forms a beat of the verse, e.g. R. and J. III, 2, 112 ff.: verse. Tybalt is dead, and Romeo bánishéd! That 'bánished', that one word 'bánishéd' Later, too, the ending -ed is sometimes sounded; it is then generally marked with a grave accent: loved, changed. The romance derivative syllables in e or i+ vowel were often scanned as two syllables in the sixteenth century: marri-age, vali-ant, pati-ence, conditi-on graci-ous, glori-ous etc., whilst they were later generally scanned as one syllable (§ 202). But the poet may by eliding or slurring reduce two syllables to one even in those cases where unstressed syllables have their full value in ordinary speech. Thus the and to are often elided before vowels, e.g. the eternal, the unfortunate, the oppressor's wrong -to attend etc., further final y or ow before a vowel, e.g. many a year, heavy and dark, sea-swallow and cormorant, all glory, all sorrow, all strength (Swinburne), also -le, -re before a vowel, e.g. ripple and plash, whisper and breathe (Watts-Dunton) etc. If a short vowel directly follows a long vowel or diphthong it may or may not compose a syllable, e.g. being, prayer, tower, squire etc. Words with intervocalic v can be used as monosyllables or disyllables, e.g. heaven, seven, devil, In the former case evil, even, ever, never, over. e'en, ne'er etc. are often written. Whether may also be shortened to whe'er. Trisyllabic words are not often xxx, but generally, the unstressed middle vowel being often dropped. This is especially the case before 1, r, e.g. family, memory, favourite, wanderer, murmuring, also before other consonants, e.g. enemy, poisonous, delicate, and where two vowels come together, e.g. shadowy, following etc. Since dramatic verse must often reproduce the rapid speech of ordinary life, we find in Shakespeare many contractions and slurrings of ordinary conversation, e.g. this' for this is, let's for let us, I'll, I've, I'd, you'd for I will, I have, I had, you would, don't, can't for do not, cannot, i' th', o' th', wi' th' for in the, of the, with the etc. In the above cases the vowel of the extra syllable need not be entirely suppressed; it is sufficient if the two syllables can be uttered in the same space of time as that generally required by one syllable, cp. Parsons, p. 22. Thus van Dam and Stoffel W. Shakespeare. Prosody and Text, Leiden 1900, and Chapters on English Printing, Prosody and Pronunciation, Heidelberg 1902, go too far in their attempt to |