is not the work of Chaucer, is written not in septenaries, but in an irregular long line of four beats. We still find verses of one, two and three beats in stanzas; but the alexandrine is wanting. Most of the poems, mentioned in § 156, written in unrimed alliterative verse or in the thirteenline alliterative stanza probably belong to the end of the fourteenth or to the fifteenth century; the two alliterative poems in the Percy MS., Death and Liffe and Scottish Feilde (Battle of Flodden 1513), and Dunbar's The Tua Marriit Wemen and the Wedo belong to the beginning of the sixteenth century. The rhythmical structure of the alliterative verse in these later poems is precisely the same as that in the earlier poems; cp. Adolf Schneider, Die mittelenglische Stabzeile im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert (Bonner Beitr. 12, 103-172). $ 200. Stanza Construction. In addition to the stanzas of seven, eight and nine. lines (with five beats) most of the stanzas, mentioned in § 170-180, with verses of three or four beats, were used in the shorter lyrical and didactic poems. In narrative poems of the fifteenth century the tail-rime stanzas of twelve and sixteen lines and the thirteen-line alliterative stanza remained in use. Also in dramatic poetry stanzas are more common than the short rimed couplet in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In the old Mysteries and Moralities in addition to the simpler stanzas with alternate rime, consisting of four, eight or twelve lines, the tail-rime stanza of sixteen or eight lines, the Octovian-stanza (§ 180) and the thirteen-line Towneley-stanza (§ 175) were much used. Το these came later Chaucer's seven-line stanza, which was much used for prologues and 'noble' rôles. Only gradually these stanzas were replaced by the heroic couplet or the septenary couplet, and it was not before the end of the sixteenth century that rime was banished from English drama. Section III. The Modern English Period. $201. Development of English Prosody in the Modern English Period. Most The metrical forms of NE. poetry have a direct connection with those of the ME. period. of the ME. verse and stanza forms were used and further developed in the NE. period. The chief form of modern English verse, the (rimed or unrimed) verse of five beats comes from the ME. period. NE. prosody, like that of OE. and ME., depends on accent; the verse is constructed by an interchange of stressed and unstressed syllables. In NE., however, it is easier than was earlier the case to make the stressed syllables follow one another at equal periods of time i.e. to write verse of equal bars and with a fixed number of syllables. The attempts made in the sixteenth century to make quantity the basis of English verse accord ing to the model of classical verse had no success; but the attempt to imitate the unrimed verse of classical metres established blank verse (§ 216 ff.). In the sixteenth century, too, people began to examine the structure of English verse and to establish rules for poets (ep. § 8). Each century of the NE. period has its own favourite verse or stanza form, and the same metres have at various periods been variously used. In spite of this, however, it is better to treat NE. prosody as a whole, instead of dividing it into smaller divisions. § 202. Influence of Linguistic Alterations on the Regularity of Modern English Verse. The development of English prosody in the NE. period was largely determined by the great alterations of the language during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. These alterations, as far as they affect the rhythm of the verse, are: 1. Words of romance origin, the accent of which in Chaucer's time was unfixed, became accented on the rootsyllable; with this is related a weakening of final syllables, which were earlier strongly stressed, and a decrease in the number of syllables in words. Chaucer could accent, and in rime had to accent: beautée, vertú, prisóun, service, Aprille, batáille, natúre, aventúre, but the modern accent is beauty, rirtue, prison etc.; the endings -ïage, -ïence, -ïent, -ïoun. -ïous, which in Chaucer's time were disyl labic, are now monosyllabic: marriage, patience, patient, condition, religion, gracious etc. 2. The unstressed e of inflexions -e, -e(n), -es, -ed became silent, silent, except between like like consonants. Thus Chaucer has words, which were disyllabic and could fill arsis and thesis or be used for feminine verse-ending, such as: rote, sonne, ende, speche, ye, smale, lene, straunge, more, slepen, seke, preye, lerne, teche, hadde, spente, foules, strondes, londes, bokes, bathed, loked etc.; in NE., however, all these words are monosyllabic, although some are written as if they were disyllabic: root, sun, end, speech, small, lean, sleep, seek, pray, learn, teach, had, spent, fowls, strands, lands, books eye, strange, more, bathed, looked. It is clear that this shortening of the words must have exerted a great influence on the structure of the verse. Whilst in Chaucer's verse disyllabic thesis could be avoided only by elision, or could be weakened only by slurring two short syllables, the NE. poet has no difficulty in finding monosyllabic theses, and in arranging a regular succession of arses and theses. Since, moreover, as in Chaucer, Gower and Hoccleve, the anacrusis cannot be omitted, the number of syllables in NE. verse, like that in French and Italian verse, is fixed. But the freedom of ME. verse the anacrusis and disyllabic thesis altogether vanished from NE. verse. omission of has not This license |