speare, was intended by him to be read, or was commonly read in his day, must therefore remain somewhat doubtful. If, however, the e was elided in the pronunciation, such verses would be prosodically exactly of the same form or structure with those, also of very frequent occurrence, in which all that we have for a fifth foot is the affix or termination tion, on the assumption that that was pronounced only as one syllable.

One way of disposing of such lines would be to regard them as a species of hemistich or truncated line. Verses which, although not completed, are correctly constructed as far as they go, occur in every Play in great numbers and of all dimensions; and those in question would be such verses wanting the last syllable, as others do the two or three or four or five last. This explanation would take in the case of the lines, "She dreamt to-night she saw my statue," and "Even at the base of Pompey's statue," and of others similarly constructed, supposing statue to be only a dissyllable, as well as all those having in the last foot only tion or ed. But most probably this particular kind of truncated line, consisting of nine syllables, would not occur so frequently as it does but for the influence exerted by the memory of the old pronunciation of the two terminations just mentioned even after it had come to be universally or generally disused. For instance, although the word satisfaction had already come in the age of Shakespeare to be generally pronounced exactly as it is at the present day, the line "But for your private satisfaction" was the more readily accepted as a sufficient verse by reason of the old syllabication of the word, which, even by those who had abandoned it (as Shakespeare himself evidently had

done), was not forgotten. Other lines having nothing more for their tenth syllable than the verbal affix ed, in which also an elision had become usual, would be acted upon in the same manner; the ed would still retain something of the effect of a separate syllable even when it had ceased to be generally so pronounced. But after the public ear had thus become reconciled and accustomed to such a form of verse, it might be expected to be sometimes indulged in by poetic writers when it had to be produced in another way than through the instrumentality of the half separable ed and the half dissyllabic tion. The line "But for your private satisfaction," pronounced as we have assumed it to have been, would make such a line as "She dreamt to-night she saw my statue seem to have an equal right to be accounted legitimate, seeing that its effect upon the ear was precisely the same. Still the conservative principle in language would keep the later and more decided deviation from the normal form comparatively infrequent. Sometimes a singular effect of suddenness and abruptness is produced by such a form of verse; as in the sharp appeal of Menenius, in the opening scene of Coriolanus, to the loud and grandiloquent leader of the mutinous citizens,

What do you think,

You, the great toe of this assembly? Unless, indeed, we are to assume the verse here to be complete and regular, and that assembly is to be read as a word of four syllables, as-sem-bl-y. In the present Play, however, at 294, we have an instance to which that objection does not apply. The line "Look, how he makes to Cæsar: mark him" — is of precisely the same rhythm with "She

there

dreamt to-night she saw my statue," and also with the one by which it is immediately preceded — "I fear our purpose is discovered” (in 293), as well as with "He says he does; being then most flattered" (in 195), and many others, read (as it is probable they were intended to be) without the distinct syllabication of the ed.

After all, Shakespeare's word may really have been statua, as Reed and Steevens suppose. This is decidedly the opinion of Mr. Dyce, who, in his Remarks on Mr. Collier's and Mr. Knight's editions (p. 186), calls attention to the following line from a copy of verses by John Harris, prefixed to the 1647 Folio of the Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher:

Defaced statua and martyr'd book.

"I therefore have not," he adds, "the slightest doubt that wherever statue occurs, while the metre requires three syllables, it is a typographical error for statua." Perhaps the best way would be to print statua in all cases, and to assume that that was the form which Shakespeare always wrote. Statua would have the prosodical value either of a dissyllable or of a trisyllable according to circumstances, just as Mantua, for instance, has throughout Romeo and Juliet, where we have in one place such a line as

or

For then thou canst not pass to Mantu-a (iii. 3),

But I will write again to Mantu-a (v. 2),

and in another such as

or

Sojourn in Mantua; I'll find out your man (iii. 3),

So that my speed to Mantua there was stayed (v. 2). We have a rare example of the termination tion

1

forming a dissyllable with Shakespeare in the middle of a line in Jaques's description of the Fool Touchstone (As You Like It, ii. 2) : —

He hath strange places crammed

With observation, the which he vents
In mangled forms.

This may be compared with the similar prolongation of the -trance in the sublime chant of Lady Macbeth (Macbeth, i. 5),

The raven himself is hoarse

That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan

Under my battlements,

or with what we have in the following line in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, ii. 4, —

And that hath dazzled my reason's light,

or with this in A Midsummer Night's Dream, iii. 2,

O me! you juggler! you canker-blossom.

The name Henry, in like manner, occasionally occurs as a trisyllable both in the three Parts of Henry VI., and also in Richard III.

The following are examples of what is much more common the extension or division of similar combinations at the end of a line:

The parts and graces of the wrestler.

As You Like It, ii. 2.

And lasting, in her sad remembrance.

Twelfth Night, i. 1.

Ibid., i. 3.

The like of him. Know'st thou this country?

Which is as bad as die with tickling.

Much Ado About Nothing, iii. I.

O, how this spring of love resembleth.

Two Gent. of Ver., i. 3.

Com. of Err., i. I.

And these two Dromios, one in semblance.

These are the parents to these children. - Ibid.

Fair sir, and you, my merry mistress.

Tam. of Shrew, iv. 5. In other cases, however, the line must apparently be held to be a regular hemistich (or truncated verse) of nine syllables; as in

Unless, indeed, in this last instance we ought not to read commandement (in four syllables), as Spenser occasionally has it; although I am not aware of the occurrence of such a form of the word elsewhere in Shakespeare.

-

246. And these does she apply for warnings and portents. This is the reading of all the Folios. It is not quite satisfactory; and the suspected corruption has been attempted to be cured in various ways. Shakespeare's habitual accentuation of portent seems to have been on the last syllable. If the passage were in any one of certain others of the Plays, I should be inclined to arrange the lines as follows: :And these does she apply for warnings and

Portents of evils imminent; and on her knee

Hath begged that I will stay at home to-day. The crowding of short syllables which this would occasion in the second line is much less harsh and awkward than what the received arrangement produces in the first. But so slight a monosyllable as and in the tenth place would give us a structure of